All Done

Today I finished enumerating for the Census Bureau.

Even though we were authorized to work through the end of June, all the units in our Crew Leader's District have been completed. I think we finished so quickly for a couple of reasons.  First, if the areas I was assigned to were any indication, there weren't many people to contact. One of my AAs had a census form return rate of 90%, far higher than the metropolitan area's average.  Second, some of the workers were taking the job very seriously.  I never met all the people in my crew (because I was trained at a different place then most of them), but a couple I talked to were in between jobs and were working full-time hours.

Just because our neighborhoods are finished, it doesn't mean the whole region is.  There's still Census work to be done.  I had the option to work in the city of St. Louis or Jefferson County (which is directly south of St. Louis County), but I decided the additional driving would complicate things too much for my schedule.  I decided to leave the work to the people with more dedication to the job

Before I could be finished, thought, I had to take care of all my assigned questionnaires. Despite my best efforts, I had a couple of people I never talked to directly, but following Census procedure I'd found a neighbor who was able to tell me what they knew about the people who lived in those houses. Last night I cleaned the census detritus off the kitchen island and out of my car and got it ready to return.  It was amazing how quickly it had spread out.

Today I turned in the last of my completed questionnaires, the two notebooks, and all my supplies and forms.  The last thing the crew leader took was my Census Bureau badge.  I walked out of the library unencumbered for the first time in several weeks. My relationship isn't quite finished, though.  Because of the normal payroll time delay, I'll still get two more pay checks, which I'm looking forward to.