Census and Sensibility

There was an article in the paper the other day that said that the U.S. Census Bureau came in well under budget this year. The Secretary of Commerce, the department that oversees the Bureau, said there were two main reasons: one, a fund set aside for natural disasters or epidemics that might interfere with the counting was not needed, and two, because of the high unemployment rate, the enumerators hired were more educated and experienced workers. That last bit made me swell with pride a little, as I was one of those enumerators.

Yes, I had one of those canvas bags, like the one seen above, and went door to door asking personal questions of unsuspecting people. On the whole, it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't a lot of fun, either, as every door I knocked on represented an address that had not sent their form back in (those who did so were not bothered). This meant mostly that the address had a new resident from when the forms were mailed (we wanted to know where people were living on April 1), or that the resident was not particularly interested in being a good citizen.

I learned some things over the course of my tenure. I spent most of my time in my own apartment complex, so for one thing I learned where some very attractive women live. Also, because my area is heavily populated by people from India, I found that they are much kinder and more hospitable than home-grown Americans. Though many of the Indian folks are not citizens (they are here on work visas, calm down, Tom Tancredo) they cheerfully gave me information, patiently spelling their complicated names.

I also learned the various ways people can be rude. One woman resolutely refused, and scoffed when I told her that she was required to participate by law. Another woman started giving me her information, including her name, but when asked her phone number (an invasive question, I'll admit) she said she didn't want to participate. When I informed her I already knew her name, she insisted on taking the form. I informed her that it was government property. We had quite a tense conversation, and I needed a drink when I got home.

The group I worked with were all great people and we did a lot to help each other. We came to know tough addresses by nicknames--I called one woman the "plant woman," because she had a terrace covered with potted plants, but never seemed to be home. I knew she had to come home some time to water the damn things. She lives just about 100 feet from my apartment, so one morning I walked outside and saw her door open. I ran back, grabbed my badge and tote bag, and finally was able to interview her. I called another fellow "mold guy" because he owns some sort of mold removal business. He was always telling me he was too busy (the whole thing takes less than five minutes) and gave me a phone number that he never picked up, leaving an outgoing message that announced that he did not retrieve messages from it. A co-worker inherited him, and finally got him on the phone after sending him a text message while he was at an airport.

There were also some eerie moments, such as when I drove down a long dirt road, fronted by No Trespassing signs, to find a boarded up farmhouse. It was like something out of a Stephen King novel. I half expected to see a mentally retarded boy playing a banjo. I didn't even get out of the car, marking it as "vacant" and skedaddling.

At least I never had a gun drawn on me, as a few census workers did across the country. Any hostility over the census I blame on antigovernment fervor, especially from the Tea Party, led by one of their idiot queens, congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who urged her constituents not to cooperate, because she had some sort of notion that the information would be used to round everyone up and ship them into concentration camps. I actually hoped that her constituents heeded her words, as one of the things the census figures do is determine how many congressman a state gets. If Minnesota, Bachmann's home state, lost a congressional district, it would likely be Bachmann's. Oh, delicious irony!