We Just Can’t With Reader Polls Anymore.

Everybody loves being recognized for their hard work. Hell, everybody loves being recognized for doing nothing special, too. And they should! Being a person in the world is tough enough, and adding a layer of competitiveness with winners and losers is pretty soul crushing.

Some of us love competition. There’s…well, competitions for that. When I was a young’un I joined the Junior ACF and did some culinary competition. I even got a bronze medal once! Pretty nice!

But sometimes you’re just thrust into competition. Such it is when you are entered into a Reader’s Poll.

To me, there is nothing worse than begging for people to vote for me as “best” in some category. I did it for years, sending out newsletters and making posts and videos appealing to our customers.

Reader Polls by definition are a popularity contest. It’s already pretty hard to compete with another business that is in a bigger market, serves more people per day, and is open more days of the week. And it’s pretty hard when you’re trying to do life and work to compete with some folks that dedicate a great deal of energy to getting folks to vote for them.

And the whole notion of “best” is pretty weird to me, anyway. I just don’t get it. Now, don’t get me wrong, I won’t kick a “best of” out of bed for eating crackers, but I’m not inviting it in, either.

So that’s it. I’m not putting forth any more effort into these “best of” lists anymore. I just can’t.