Continuing Census Education

I just saw this at Michelle Malkin's blog. It makes the Census waste detailed in my little post a few days ago look thrifty.

As an added bonus, this anonymous Census Corps emailer also enlightens us about even more Census Bureau titles and jobs -- Census Enumerator and Census Quality Controller. Plus, we get a vivid description of our government at work, teaching the masses in the heretofore unknown bastion of higher education, Census University!





By Michelle Malkin • March 30, 2010 04:10 PM

If even half of what this anonymous reader who e-mailed about his experience as a Census worker is true, imagine the squandering of tax dollars taking place on a mass scale. Crikey.

Hi, Michelle:

I would first like to apologize for stealing your tax dollars, but if it wasn’t me, it would be someone else. I am an underemployed 20-something Tea Partier, and after reading about how much government waste was going to the 2010 census, I figured that I might as well “git me some of dat Obama money” until I find something more solid.

…I’m currently in my second tour of “temporary employment” with the Bureau….I’m not participating in or approving of what the census data I collect could likely be used for, but all I am is data entry at the moment.

Last summer I participated in the ‘address canvassing’ (AC) project. What this entailed was walking around a neighborhood, literally door to door, with a little hand held computer. My job was not to enter addresses so that these people could receive their form, but to make sure that the addresses that the first wave of people put into the system and appeared on the computer was actually there. 99% were. Sure there were a few missing that you did have to manually enter, but out of the thousands of address that I checked, we’re talking 20 or less that had to be manually entered. I didn’t have to knock on any doors or ask any questions, unless someone came out and was angry that I was walking around the neighborhood looking at pretty address numbers on door frames. If they were mad, I gave them a little sheet that explained the confidentiality of the census. But mostly, it was me getting paid $15.25/hour plus mileage to take my dog for a walk and pushing a few buttons.

In an average suburban neighborhood where the houses are somewhat close to each other, it was no problem to do about 35-40 addresses per hour once you learned how to quickly enter data into the computer. The census said that I should be doing about 12-15 per hour. My direct bosses told me that I should NOT be doing 35-40 because it was making them and other people look bad. So instead of walking at a snails pace, I just did my 35-40/hour and doubled my time when I submitted my hours. Again, sorry for the tax dollar grab, but I was told not to be so darned efficient or else I’d be cut!

To recap: A first wave of people spent god knows how many hours finding the addresses on every street in America. I’m in the second wave, making sure they did their jobs. Then there were people (Quality Control), who were the third wave, making sure I did my job! I was not fortunate enough to get a QC position.

Let me get into another area. Training. To do the above job, I could have been trained in a single morning learning computer functions and mapping, maybe a little bit of recap after a lunch break. No way it should have gone longer than 5 or 6 hours, being generous. Turn on the computer, find your area that you were assigned, learn how to enter the different kinds of dwellings, and how to use a stylus. But no. We were subjected to a 5 day, 40 hour training period that made me want to tear my hair out. Because what I, a college educated non-moron, could have learned in 5 hours, 80% of my class of trainees were aggravatingly slow and confused by the process. Old people, high school dropouts, flat-out idiots. The census takes all comers. Oh and the stupid questions they ask! Thinking back gives me nightmares. I’m really not turning my nose up at these people, but it just saddened me to see good people struggling with such a menial task.

So much time was wasted on the first day, for the rest of the days, I just sat in the back reading the paper, books, staring at the ceiling. At the end of the training, you are given a written test. You have one hour to complete the exam and only need to get 60%. I flew through it in 15 minutes, missed one question, and was a full-fledged graduate of Census university. For $15.25/hour, plus my mileage at 50 cents per mile to a facility which was round trip about 80 miles. So training alone wasted about 35 hours and 320 miles. That’s about $700 right there. Thanks, taxpayers!

Now to my second wave, which is something called Group Quarters Enumeration. This is something I could have learned to do over breakfast. We got a 3 day training. This one is going to places considered group quarters, i.e. nursing homes, soup kitchens, churches where priests live, and the like. Not apartment buildings or anything like that. And of course homeless, people, let’s not forget that.

This one is about to start. My first assignment is a [redacted] in which I have just learned there are no inhabitants who live there full-time or the majority of the time. After talking this over with my boss and feeling cheated that I’m losing hours since there’s nobody to distribute census forms to, I have been told to drive to this [place] (25 minutes from my house), confirm in person, and drive back. Credit me with half an hour there, half an hour back, and half an hour confirming, and I’m getting an 1.5 hours plus the mileage. What a wonderful use of funds!


Why didn't I think about doing this?!?!

The Census is Blowing in the Wind -- UPDATED!

And it just keeps getting better. . . .

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports today that there are more Census shenanigans afoot in northwest Arkansas. It seems that several folks in Springdale, Arkansas, have received personalized, bar-coded Census forms that list Fayetteville as their town of residence. Trust me -- there is little love lost between Fayetteville and Springdale, so the Springdale mayor is all over it making sure that Springdale won't come up short.

Nonetheless, several folks were perplexed by the Census foul-up and contacted the Census Bureau to get some answers. Carl Henson, a Census office manager, said, "he does not know how many questionnaires were listed under 'Fayetteville' addresses, and . . . doesn’t know how Fayetteville made it onto the Springdale forms. 'It would be very unprofessional for me to speculate on that.'”

So, it looks like we now have federal employees whose "profession" is "Census Expert."

Bar-codes being bar-codes, and Springdale's mayor aside, there is little likelihood that Fayetteville will be glomming onto a bunch of Springdale's "federal funding" because the zip code will be the ultimate arbiter. But, there is something else that troubles me a little bit more -- at least one lady in Springdale received two incorrectly addressed sets of forms and she sent them both in, appending a note to the second form notifying the Census Professionals that she received 2 forms, filled out 2 forms, and mailed in 2 forms. She said the whole experience left her "less than confident in the process."

You gotta love understatement!

And there's more!

The above photos depict the source of my "less than confidence" in the Census process.

Down here in post-Katrina New Orleans, we have experienced what has come to be known as "diaspora" -- lots of our population remains scattered to the winds after The Thing in 2005, and lots are living in less than upscale (think: deplorably inhuman) conditions, some without official "mailing addresses." So, to try to get the very best nose-count of folks living in our fair metropolitan area, the Census Professionals hired oodles of folks to stump around the area not only to verify addresses, but also to do a little one-on-one face-time with everyone who would answer the knock at the door to explain how very important the Census numbers are. I expect that many of the Face-Time Census Professionals are bi-lingual.

Perhaps a good idea, probably poor execution.

The Face-Time Census Professionals' marching orders included instructions to leave the Census forms hooked on the doorknob in a nicely labeled plastic sack (think: personalized car wash trash bag) if no one answered the door. There are some problems with that process, to-wit:

No one can get access to our doorknobs without our fore-knowledge because we leave the wrought iron gates locked to keep dogs in and undesirables out. Accordingly, our neighborhood Face-Time Census Professionals left our car wash trash bags hooked onto the gates for both street numbers assigned to our house (we're zoned for an apartment in one part of the house that we now use as guest quarters).

Note that the Face-Time Census Professionals hooked the all-important Census car wash trash bags on the inside of the fence where Bouie probably would've had a shred-fest field day if he had gotten to the bags before I did!

Now think about the Face-Time Census Professionals leaving the bags on our gates shortly before a whopper of a cold front moved through the state. And think about them attempting the same for several neighbors whose doorknobs aren't quite as long as the posts on our gates.

You guessed it -- I can't tell you how many personalized car wash trash bags I saw blowing down the streets of Uptown New Orleans. It looked kind of like a kite-flying festival. A very expensive, taxpayer-funded kite festival.

So, let's review -- the Census Professionals' office:

(1) sent out paid canvassers and used satellite GPS to verify addresses all last year;

(2) mailed first-class-postage letters to all of us letting us know our Census forms were on the way to generate excitement and anticipation (cue Carly Simon);

(3) mailed first-class-postage forms to most of the country, sometimes twice, addressed to the wrong city, and containing yet more postage-paid return envelopes (cue The Box Tops to open with "The Letter");

(4) ordered and purchased a substantial number of personalized car wash trash bags;

(5) sent out paid Face-Time Census Professionals in southeast Louisiana to tutor about and/or leave the forms, many of which weren't adequately secured to withstand weather conditions, thus leaving many postage-paid envelopes blowing in the wind (cue Peter, Paul, and Mary); and

(6) will send out more face-time Census Professionals to try to locate folks whose bar-coded forms aren't returned in some April-ish time-frame (cue Dr. John to belt out "Right Place, Wrong Time").

(7) See below.

Whew. Once again, I assert that you can't make this stuff up.

Or pay for it.

Cha-ching!!! Warm up the currency printing presses.

UPDATE: I need to add a #7 up there. Today's mail brought 2 thoughtful postcards (one for the house, one for the apartment) letting us know that the Census Professionals have yet to receive our Census forms. There's another little gazillion dollar expenditure to add to the tally.

I'm still debating whether to check the box on the "race" question as "Other," and fill in "Human." We'll get 'em postmarked by April 1st somehow, I reckon. Kinda like we get that 1040 Extension postmarked by April 15th. April promises to be a busy month for the Postal Service.