I recently started my job as an enumerator with the Census Bureau. My brief employment has done nothing but reinforce the stereotype about the inefficiency of government.
I started my four days of training on April 20th at Brookline High School. You might expect that if you were holding training in a large building, then you might put up signs indicating exactly where in the building people should go. The Census Bureau apparently doesn’t think like that.
After finding my way to where I was supposed to be, we were broken up into groups of about 15. I wasn’t excited to learn that training was going to average nine hours a day for the next four days. This was the week right before finals, and I definitely should have been studying. But at $22.75 an hour, I felt like I needed to take the job so that Tyra and I could catch up on some of our debt this summer.
We settled into our classroom and spent the entire first day filling out paperwork and getting fingerprinted. It was quite boring, but I enjoyed absurdity of one of my fellow trainees. Her name was Beth. (Actually her name was not Beth, but I’ll be using pseudonyms.) We were each given name cards to display on our desks. On the first piece of paperwork that we filled out, Beth announced, “Oh my goodness, I just misspelled my name!” In the first 45 minutes Beth managed to knock her name card on the ground seven times (yes, I was keeping track) before she finally changed desks and I couldn’t observe her anymore.
The highlight of the first day was our taking the oath of office. We stood up, raised our right hands and took the oath, in which we literally swore to uphold and defend the constitution. How does a census enumerator defend the constitution? I don’t know either.
The second day we actually started training as opposed to merely filling out paperwork. Beth continued to amuse. At one point Todd, our trainer, was going over the process of meeting at the end of a day of enumerating. He made the mistake of not speaking literally enough for Beth’s understanding when he said, “so at the end of the day, you’ll need…” Beth followed up by asking, “What do you mean by ‘the end of the day’ when we’ll be working in the evenings?” It’s a figure of speech, Beth.
Later, Todd went over the procedure for procuring mileage reimbursements in the event that we had to drive. Beth interjected, “It doesn’t say anything about bicycle mileage.” No, Beth, it surely doesn’t. It didn’t take long on the second day to figure out why training took four days. Certain trainees (featuring Beth as the most prominent offender) asked endless variations of hypotheticals that we could possibly run into while enumerating. The next couple days were pretty much devoted to such hypotheticals. It felt like a bad 1L class.
Let me toss in a couple more Beth highlights before I move on from training. At one point while Todd was talking, Beth said, loudly enough for all of us to hear, “Ah.” Todd stopped, naturally, and asked Beth if she had a question. She replied, “No, I’m just going ‘Ah.’” Thanks for that, Beth. Later, Beth interrupted Todd, and said, “So if we went to a house and the people weren’t home, but a neighbor was in the lobby…” when Todd interrupted her and said, “Let me just stop you right there, cause I think I know where you’re going and I’m just about to address that.” Beth replied, “Actually, I’m not really headed anywhere.” Then why were you talking, Beth? Finally, in what had to be the comedic summit of the week, Todd was summarizing the training when he started riffing on how absurd some of it was. “Be sure to keep your eyes open while driving. Don’t forget to breathe. If you do choose not to breathe make sure you breath once every, how often, five minutes.” Beth: “Does it really say that?” Wow.
Since the training ended the job itself has been a disappointment. The first week of work was the week that finals started. I told Todd (not only our trainer but our “crew leader” for the duration of the job) that I could only work three days that week, which was still a stretch for me. Three different times he called me that week and asked if I was sure I couldn’t work Saturday (my final was Monday morning).
After only two weeks of work we were informed last week that the work was going faster than they expected and that hours were going to be cut (I only work on Friday this week) and that we were probably almost done. We were told when we were hired that the job was going to last at least eight weeks and that it was expected to average 20 hours a week. I’m so glad I very well might have sacrificed a chance at better grades for this dumb job.
It hasn’t been all bad. After walking home from my second day of work I glanced up and saw a woman dressing in a second floor window. I saw her boobs! Unfortunately, it wasn’t exactly a pleasant sight. I’ll leave it at that.
Ryan Bleek
Amazing! Your trainer’s real name wasn’t Todd either was it? I’ve always appreciated your short comedic skits about “Todd” the oppressed and disrespected husband. So was Todd the trainer anything like this poor fictitious sap? I wonder who “Beth” voted for in the general election, and why? So many unanswered questions from this post, but I loved it, literally.
Todd was not his real name. And you reminded me of one key story about Beth that I left out. On Thursday, after it was clear to everyone that she was special, she said that she needed to leave early because she was running for city council and needed to go make a speech. I hope she won.