Census Worker, not yours truly

I had applied for the census positions shortly after my layoff last November (2009) in Los Angeles. Since I moved to Palm Springs in April, they transferred my application there. I worked for the Census in May, June and July 2010.

My job for them was to basically check up on the work of other enumerators (interviewers) to make sure their data was accurate (i.e., that they didn’t just make all the shit up, etc.).

We were trained for two or three days out at the La Quinta library. Training consisted of a supervisor reading us the manual as we followed along. I’m not kidding. To be fair, there were a few quizzes every now and then. This wasn’t a job where there was a lot of gray area – the procedures were pretty much cut and dried and they knew exactly what they wanted from us (conformity and obedience).

What I liked about this job:

• it paid a fairly decent wage for part-time work, and they reimbursed you for gas.
• there were professional colleagues – nearly all of my Palm Springs cohorts were people in the same boat – professionals who had lost their jobs because of the recession. My boss owned a realty company!
• Independence – you got to do the job alone either at home on the phone or by visiting the contacts out in the field, and you got to choose your own hours (within broad guidelines).

The one thing that makes this site a little time consuming is having to answer 20 questions before you can submit one of yours but they’ve speeded this up by batching them as ‘take 10’. one useful thing from a marketing point is that every question has to link to an authoritative source for the correct answer, so if you’ve written an informative article just think up a good question and link. cialis online price Avoid foods such as nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, junk foods, canned foods, etc. acheter pfizer viagra With passing time season keeps changing and with changed season we viagra no prescription online do suffer from cold, fever and FLU. However, order generic cialis opacc.cv the good news is that most of the males are afraid to seek help when they face erection problems.
What I didn’t like about this job:

• There wasn’t enough of it! It turned out to be intermittent, very part-time. I had been under the impression that it would be full-time for a couple of months, but it wasn’t.
• Dullness of the target population. The vast majority of people we had to visit in Palm Springs were ghosts – meaning, they just weren’t there. Since we were following up on previous work, it mostly involved people who couldn’t be found because they were seasonal residents and had long fled for more temperate climes, where they’d be counted at their permanent residence. I was hoping for a broad range of colorful characters I could use to inform my writing.
• The weather. It got insanely hot during this period, so we had to go out and try to find people in 115 degree (and more) heat.
• Forms. It was the government, for heaven’s sake. There was a ton of esoterica to fill out everyday. It seemed I always missed something.
• Dogs. Not many nasty canines, but a few that would not let this census worker anywhere near their castle!
• Rage-filled American citizens. They were fairly rare, but there were just those people who did not want to take part in any way and did not want you at their door, and were not shy about vocalizing their irritation. Names were called. Doors were slammed. Threats were issued. (Yes, these are the ones to use in fiction.)

So, they just announced the other day that there’s 308,745,538 people living in the U.S. I guess I counted a few of those myself.