My Cantankerous Scale of 1 to 10

We’ve all seen numerous questions in our lives asking for our opinions based on a scale of one to ten. In grade school and high school we were asking questions like “How much do you like me? How pretty am I? As adults we are asked to rate how the service was at the local restaurant or how much we agree with this statement or that. We don’t seek out these questions; we are usually prompted for our opinions (unless you are one of those people who believe you can get rich answering survey questions). They offer guidelines of what the numbers are supposed to represent like we don’t already know that 1 means bad and 10 good. Of course there are those that like to switch them around so you get confused which is bad and which is good. Well, below I offer my guidelines to these ratings.

ONE - If something is a one I’m not wasting my time answering the question anyways so why even include it in the scale. If it is a question that I have to answer because I was stupid enough to start taking some stupid survey in the first place all of the questions I answer start becoming ones. Especially if it is one of those surveys that never seem to end then I just start putting 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1…

TWO – Let’s face it, if something is a two, I’m giving it a one. You might as well just remove this number from the choices. There are no twos. Twos are for those sissy people that feel bad about rating a one a one.

THREE – That’s a good BAD number. That’s a number that tells them you really think it’s not that good. Of course if you are the one wanting the results you should count all threes as ones.

FOUR – This is a number to use when answering something you really don’t care about but it is leaning on the bad side; FOUR is the same as SIX with bad connotations.

FIVE – This is the number for wishy-washy people who can’t make up their minds and for questions you really could care less about.

SIX – This is a number to use when answering something you really don’t care about but it is leaning on the good side; SIX is the same as FOUR with bad connotations. WOW, it is the opposite of four, same wording and everything. Bet you didn’t see that coming.

SEVEN – Now we are starting to get into the meat of the numbering system. Most things we are asked to rate end up on the good side. I believe this is because in school we really don’t use the lower numbers in our grading system. Let’s face it, there are A’s, B’s, C’s, D’s and F’s and we have been conditioned that anything below a SIX is failure at its best. So when rating something a seven we are basically stating what we are rating is average. Not especially outstanding but of good quality.

EIGHT – GOOD, that’s what it means. It is above average and we like what we see. There can be some improvement made but it stands on its own and is of acceptable performance. There is no ambiguity here, good means good.

NINE – This is for those things that are excellent and outstanding. The word exceptional comes to mind. It really can be considered the highest number on the scale because most things in life are not perfect.

TEN – Simply means FANTABULOUS. It is something that is orgasmic, makes your mouth water and leaves you wanting more. Caution, tens can lead to obsession.

In conclusion, I leave you with these definitions.

ONE = BAD, NOT WORTH YOUR TIME
TWO = ONE
THREE = ONE
FOUR = FIVE
FIVE = WISHY-WASHY OPINION
SIX = FIVE
SEVEN = AVERAGE
EIGHT = GOOD
NINE = EXCELLENT
TEN = ORGASMIC

Or even more simplistic

ONE = Yucky
FIVE = no opinion
TEN = Yummy

Final pondering of cantankerousness:

Why do we all want to be number one and then say people are tens when they’re great?