they really are hard to resist
I am running a social media group for my capstone class. If you have any interest in the changing American Dream and New Normal of our lives post-recession, you should totally check out the facebook fanpage (shameless plug, I know). I’ve been working with a fellow foodie on a great recipe, cost cutting, ingredient story. So don’t worry more shameless plugs to follow. But anyway everyone in my class is kind of a big deal in the sense that they lead very busy lives and don’t have time to contribute to meaningful discussion and social media things online. So my professor requested that everyone get on and start doing something. These kind of pleas go out every week with little success, so I went a step further. I bribed them. I believe my email went a little like this:
I will keep track of who does and does not contribute and those who do contribute will receive a special reward for their hard work.
Bribery may not be the most up and up way to get people to accomplish something, but these very important people in my class probably spend an average of 3 hours a day on facebook (that is a totally unscientific guess, but I bet if I were to be scientific the number would be higher). I was asking for maybe 10 minutes of their hours of facebook use. And I would not have gotten it. So I offered a reward. And then I woke up at 6:30 yesterday morning (on my day off) and took a shower (I think it’s kind of gross to bake before you shower) and started making soft pretzels. And when I opened the lids on the containers of soft pretzels in class, I started hearing from everyone about how much they posted on facebook over the week. Of course I knew who had and who hadn’t. I kind of check the page and post more than any of them.
Honestly, it felt good to reward the people who had helped out. And I am a firm believer in the power of baked goods. In a kitchen, when something is accomplished, there is normally room for a nibble. In the rest of the world, accomplishments tend to not be as tangible. A pat on the back is hardly as satisfying as a bite of the not-entirely-perfect creme brulee. So I feel people need edible rewards, bribes, whatever you want to call them. And I was not sad to wake up to leftover pretzels for breakfast this morning.
Happy Eating!!!
Emily
p.s. If you have missed my ongoing soft pretzel saga or have no tried to make soft pretzels, here’s the link to my latest installment (pretzel) and here’s the link to the NY Times piece about how to bake baking soda (baking soda) and here’s the link to the pretzel recipe I use (pretzel recipe).
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