You Count

Last year I worked as an Enumerator for the U.S. Census Bureau.  (If you're interested, you can read about my adventures HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.  I'll wait.)

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that every 10 years (including 2010), the Census Bureau tries to count every person in the country.  If you live in the U.S., in late March or early April you received a form in the mail, with instructions to fill it out and send it back in.  Most people followed the directions (75% of them in St. Louis County) and returned the form.  However, that leaves quite a few who didn't; starting May 1st, they'll get a friendly Enumerator knocking on their door.

Back in March the local Census Bureau office left a message on my answering machine asking if I was interested in working again this year.  The message indicated I needed to call them if I was available; if I didn't call they'd assume I wasn't.  I was pretty sure the work would interfere with my teacher assistant job, so I didn't return the call.

However, a few weeks ago I had not one, but two messages on my phone informing me about job openings when I got home from work one day.  Evidently they hadn't taken my name off their list.  After giving it a bit of thought, I decided that even though it would make me very busy to do both jobs, it was for a limited amount of time, and I could handle it. 

So every day this week after I finish my "day job" I'll have a bit of time to kill before I attend Census worker training for five hours.  After that I'll be working afternoons and evenings talking with people who didn't turn in their census forms. I suspect I won't have a lot of free time for the next month or so!