Editor’s note: War Stories is a semi-regular feature in which Art Shulman, president of Shulman Research, Van Nuys, Calif., presents humorous stories of life in the research trenches.

Sometimes moderators can make things so interesting for clients observing focus groups that the clients do strange and destructive things.

During one group, moderator Joel Reish was waiting for respondents to finish a projective sentence completion when there was a tremendous noise behind him, where the mirror was located. Reish instinctively raised his arms to protect his head, then looked back to notice the mirror shaking.

He politely excused himself and retreated to the back room, where his client, sitting on the floor, sheepishly reported what had happened. The rotund gentleman was so anxious to see what one particular respondent had written that he couldn’t wait for Reish to ask the consumers to read their answers. So, in an attempt to get close enough to read the response, he climbed up on the ledge just behind the mirror. CRASH! No more ledge.

Reish reports this was the first time in his career that the expense account he submitted included anything like a carpentry bill for $1,200.

By the way, there is a market research myth, possibly equivalent to an urban myth, that a client once actually fell through the mirror. Can anyone out there substantiate this? Did it really happen at least once?

Ellen Gregory of Marketing Research Services cites a study she was involved with where, at the end of a 16-week home-use test, respondents were asked to return a scale they’d been given to weigh the test product. One of Gregory’s employees called a respondent to inquire why she hadn’t kept her scheduled appointment that morning to return the scale. The woman explained that the police were in her home at that very moment, and since both she and her husband were being arrested, she would not be keeping the appointment - at which point Gregory’s dedicated employee asked if she could meet her outside the jail and retrieve the scale. The respondent considered the offer, but declined.

Gregory also recalls a project where she herself was conducting the final visit of a door-to-door study involving a home-use test. Late in the afternoon she was greeted at the door by a visibly embarrassed woman whose hair was a mess and whose clothes were wrinkled. She apologized for her appearance, but asked Gregory in to do the interview.

Toward the end of the interview Gregory needed to observe the storage of the product, so the woman led her to the bathroom, where the product was located. They had to travel through the bedroom, where a young man, hair messed, sat in bed, under the covers. Gregory could tell the man was not wearing a shirt. She couldn’t tell what else he wasn’t wearing.

The woman did not introduce the man as her husband.

Gregory quickly asked the rest of her questions, then scrammed out of there. (Market researchers are so considerate of other people’s needs!) That was the last time Gregory agreed to do a door-to-door project.

That woman at least was embarrassed about what she had been doing. Not so the woman remembered by Pat Sabena of Patricia Sabena Qualitative Research Services. In a focus group session about contraceptives, Sabena’s young respondent gleefully revealed that she wore different hair ribbons to match the different bed sheets for her different lovers.

Sabena did not probe further into that response.