Officially unemployed. Though thanks to the pay schedule of the Census, I’ll be getting paychecks for a few more weeks.
Now, on to other shenanigans.
Tag: Census
Big Brother
NRFU is finally over, and I must say it’s a relief. Towards the end it was getting a bit frustrating. Another operation is coming up, and I won’t have more than a few days of downtime, but I’ll use that to reflect on something NRFU taught me: People are still scared of the government.
There’s an important distinction to make here – I don’t mean that people do not trust the government, or that they don’t have any faith in it getting things right, but I mean that people are actually scared of the government. Even after Hollywood abandoned the Top Secret Government Agency for the vigilante movies of the late aughts, because the very thought of the government pulling off something extremely complicated and secretive was too much to ask for the audience’s suspension of disbelief, people still fear the feds.
I find this incredibly interesting, but maybe it has always been this way. And I’m by no means interacting with a perfect cross section of Americans – these are the people who didn’t send in their Census for one reason or another. I guess I don’t really know if this is a popular sentiment, but it is out there.
I also got to learn a bit about bureaucracy from the inside. This reaffirmed some of my assumptions, and shed some light on things I didn’t know I didn’t know. In the field, we would have a running joke about the incompetence of the people at our LCO, but after many visits to the Office, I began to realize it was just a mutual misunderstanding that stemmed from the very set of rules that tied us all together. Bureaucracy itself is the problem, not the people inside of it. Interesting.
Options
The short bus is coming along nicely. I can’t wait to see it in action. It keeps triggering these visions of a veggie fueled caravan with a dedicated fuel pickup truck so the systems can be separate from the living quarters, and attached to a more maneuverable vehicle. Sadly, I don’t think I’d be able to convince enough people to dedicate the time and resources such a project demands. I’m not sure I could.
Census work plods onwards, though some of my enumerators are starting to jump ship. One greets me as I walk in the door with a smile and “I quit.” “OK, I just need you to write that down so they don’t have to take my word for it.” He begins to write, and after a moment shows me the note: ‘I quit.’ “Good, but you should probably date it.” A moment later: ‘I quit today.’ “Could you make it sound more official?” He thinks for a second, and sets to writing again. When my attention returns to the note he is holding out for me, I read, ‘I quit today, the first day of the six month of the two-thousand and tenth year of our lord.’ “Good, they’ll like that.”
I’m told there is another operation after this one, and I’m in a position to stay on board (or even advance). There is one sticking point of a week where I’ll be away at Grey Fox…I’m not sure whether that will be an issue or not. And I’m not sure about how long this current operation will go on for, and whether the short bus (henceforth referred to by its Christian name, Caesar Rodney) will set off before the Census decides that it is tired and going home. Joe Hollay has said that he will be onboard this time around, which is a huge incentive to get my ass on the bus. Or on my bus. Ass and bus must meet.
No Sense in Census
Census job is looking pretty good. I’m officially in now, which wasn’t the case up until Thursday. I’m pretty sure this is the job I was born for, and I’m sad that it only comes along every ten years. I need to find out how to get involved in the stuff they do in the meantime (which apparently there is a lot of).
Also, it seems less likely than they made it seem that it will go over into the summer, so I may get to do Manhattan this summer after all. It’s the best of all worlds.
Developments
So. I just got a job offer from the Census. Interestingly enough, it’s the third one I’ve gotten since I’ve applied. Each successive offer has been for a better paying and more desirable position. The first was a clerical job, located in an office that was just too far away. The second job was the one I was gunning for, but my return trip to get the bus was a dealbreaker for them. This third job is close to home, and starts after I’m back with the bus. Marvelous!
However, it presents an interesting predicament. This job may very well last the entire summer, conflicting with my plans to live in NYC. If push comes to shove, this job will win. I can’t scoff at this money, since it will put me much closer (probably a year ahead of schedule) to getting my own place and unplugging. I am going to do New York at some point…it just may not be this summer. :(