Blue Hill Ave Fun Times!!

I apologize for neglecting my blog for over a week! In addition to having some extra-curricular distractions last week, I had absolutely no desire to go out to enumerate. I felt somewhat depressed at the thought of knocking on doors so I just completely blew it off. Knowing that I was waaay below where I needed to be in terms of hours and completed work, I jumped at the chance to work over the weekend. Our Crew Leader, Ron, had the idea that we go out as a group with a few binders that hadn't been touched yet, and bang out a bunch of EQs. Cool! I'm in! We met at Forest Hills at 10:45am on Saturday to take the bus over to... Blue Hill Avenue. If you're not familiar with that part of Boston... well, you're probably better off. It has the reputation of being one of the worst areas of Boston. We were counting right where Mattapan and Roxbury meet. As soon as we got off the bus at Blue Hill Ave and Morton Street, we all noticed how much trash there was all over the place. We walked past a group of teenage girls on the sidewalk, and one of them had just bought some make-up- she was opening up the packaging and was casually letting the plastic and cardboard fall to the ground. I was tempted to stop and say something, but I had the good sense to just keep walking.

It was a beautiful day, and we really lucked out there. We split up a bunch of the assignments, and I set off with Sarah- a high school senior who had gone through training with me. So, I don't know if I would call it a revelation, but as bad as this neighborhood was, we still found really nice people who were welcoming and helpful- after the initial "WHO DAT?" when we'd knock on the door. I found that people there were much more defensive when they'd first come to the door- often demanding an introduction before they would open the door. Only about three quarters of the occupants who opened their doors knew what the census was, so I got really good really fast at the super short description of what the census is and why it's important. "We need to count all of the people in the country so we know how many schools we need and other things like that." That worked really well.

The other amazing thing about this neighborhood was how crammed in people were. We'd visit an apartment building with units that I would think could hold 4-6 people comfortably, but we'd consistently find out that there are 8 or 10 or even 14 people living in one apartment! There would always be lots of cousins, and cousins' kids and cousins' girlfriends. Frequently, the respondents wouldn't know the first and last names of everyone that was living there!

We went into one apartment building in which we found dried blood and cigarette ash all over the stairwell. Surprisingly, that particular apartment building housed some of the nicest people we met all day. I was invited into a couple of apartments (by women), and I felt completely safe to do so. I met a lot of kids that day, too, and I gave them all animal stickers.

We decided to go back to the same neighborhood on Sunday- again the weather was really nice, but as I was leaving the house Sunday afternoon, I really really didn't want to go back. I forced myself to because I knew that I would feel awful if I didn't get up and go. There was no excuse for me not to. We waited until the afternoon on Sunday because we knew lots of people would be out at church in the morning, but man did we pick the wrong time to go over there... it was Haitian-American Day, and there was a big parade down Blue Hill Avenue! It was really cool to see everyone out, waving flags, playing loud music, etc, but it made our job impossible because most people were out of the house. We only worked for about 90 minutes before giving up to watch the parade.

I managed to get out again tonight... in the rain. I'm trying to get my last few down so I can grab another set of assignments from Ron- hopefully I can grab those by Thursday or Friday of this week. Then, all I have to do is get those finished and that should be it for the census gig.

Dookie and Cox?

Well, that was definitely the most entertaining daily meeting I've been to yet!

I don't know if I've described our daily meetings yet, but we meet our crew leader, Ron, daily in a park in our neighborhood to turn in timesheets and completed EQs. It's a really nice spot, and I love my commute because I get to cut through the wooded section of the Forest Hills Cemetery to get there. Perfect! Well today, we were joined by another enumerator I hadn't met yet. He's got a block over off of Blue Hill Avenue.

When he pulled out his timesheets and completed EQs, I could tell instantly that they were all jacked up. Check marks instead of Xs, horrible lowercase handwriting (we're supposed to write in very specific uppercase lettering), and lots and lots of missing information. Ron handed off his pile of EQs to the crew leader assistant to check, and yes... there were more mistakes than correct entries. Boxes not checked, whole sections skipped, Male and Female options BOTH checked for EVERY member of one household... you name it, it was wrong.

Meanwhile, while his EQs were being reviewed, Ron was going over his timesheets. Again, everything about them was totally jacked. "So I see here that you worked 8 hours yesterday, and you're claiming 23 miles for mileage??" Reply, "Yeah, people don't want to answer their doors so I just circle around the block a whole lot." What? This guy was apparently just circling the block over and over again- and mind you- it's not a big block at all. From what I could tell, he was averaging .5 questionnaires per hour (we're supposed to average 1.2 or greater). When asked about entire sections being skipped, he said that he skipped them because the interview was taking so long! Really, everything about everything here was simply comical.

I kept glancing at Ron to see how he was reacting, but he was keeping as cool as a cucumber. I had a really hard time getting a read on him while he was having this conversation. As they came to the end of the conversation (which took almost an hour), Ron told him to leave his binder and all of his EQs with him until Sunday. Aha! You're finished, d-bag. After the guy left, the first thing that Ron said was, "W...T...F." We all started laughing at the absurdity we had just witnessed.

Ron will have to take this situation to his boss, and I hope he doesn't catch any shit for this. That guy had been running around for almost a week doing this bullshit so they could possibly come down on Ron for letting him run free like that for that long. Also, Ron hadn't conducted his observation on him, and he really should have within the first few days of field work. I'm going to keep my fingers crossed for him.

Just as I was getting ready to leave, Ron said, "It's as if he just made up all of the information he put on those forms!" As he said that, I glanced at one of them and pointed out, "Well, look at that... the last names of the people of this household are Dookie and Cox! What do you think?" ...and we all ROFLed".

Wicked good evening

I had a ton of luck enumerating tonight. It was a perfect evening, so I met a bunch of people outside of their homes doing yard work, etc. I'm finding people to be really friendly so that's nice. There used to be the sweetest elderly man on the street, and everyone on Tower Street knew who he was because he was so friendly, and he used to shuffle up and down the street soooooo slowly. He would always stop, though, and say hello or comment on the weather. I was worried about him because I hadn't seen him in an awfully long time. I interviewed one of his immediate neighbors tonight who informed me that his daughter had taken him away. Place an X in Vacant. Sad face.

More LCO Bull

Someone from the local office called this morning at 10:45am to ask me to come to the office before noon to fill out a new hire form that they said I never completed. However, as soon as I saw it, I remembered that not only had I filled one out the first day of training, I ALSO filled one out the evening of my original application testing! I asked the HR lady to check my file to MAKE SURE there was nothing else that was missing. It sounded like they wouldn't be able to pay me on the current payroll if I didn't sign that form by noon.

This was the second time they called me in to the office to fix something that I was not at fault for. Thank goodness I have an understanding and flexible boss! These two snafus took three hours of my time at the conservatory during the busiest time of the year. If I don't get paid or if they call me again for another reason, I will not be a happy camper.

First night out!

I apologize for leaving you hanging for a couple of days. It's super busy jury time at my regular job. I have barely had a chance to get to the bathroom let alone spend time blogging! After today or tomorrow, action at the conservatory is going to completely die down. Then, it's almost 4 months of complete nothingness!!

I decided not to work Sunday. The weather was really nice so I spent the day with friends. Unfortunately, not working Sunday means that I will have to really work hard to get my 18-20 hours in by Saturday. I pulled out my Tower Street assignments, and I hit the pavement last night! I'm finding that you really have to have a good system for juggling all of the materials. I spent a decent amount of time organizing myself before heading out. I grabbed a big subdivided file folder to help keep things separated.

I was pretty dismayed at the number of apartments that no one answered at. I left at lot of "NVs" (Notice of Visits) taped to doors. I finally got to conduct first my first REAL interview right at the end of the evening. Hooray! It was quite the pleasant evening, too. I met a couple of neighbors I hadn't met before, and I ran into all sorts of friends as I conducted my work.

I'm going to my first district meeting tonight in the park on Wachusett. Those meetings will be occurring daily going forward. Weather may be a factor tonight for work- there is a hefty line of thunderstorms coming in from Western Mass right now. Yikes! I had better not get those EQs wet!

It Is What It Is. *sigh*

Where to begin for today. Our training ended the same way it started: being yelled at by angry women. Before I explain that, let me back up to address another issue which defined our training. Basically, all of the information we received having to do with our actual field work was pretty straight forward. Follow the script, follow the process exactly, most answers to complex issues can be found in your manual, bring special circumstances to your crew leader. Fine. The BIG problems had to do with clerical admin issues- especially how to fill out our timesheets. Also, the plan for training (location, length, order of modules, etc) changed on a daily basis- if not hourly. That, I totally get. Our trainers actually did an excellent job thinking on their feet. For basically "winging it", they were awesome.

I GET that this is new territory for everyone. I GET that it's been 10 years since the last census. It's all good! I don't expect it to go totally smoothly, but for crying out loud... SOMEONE PLEASE TAKE CONTROL OF THE LOCAL OFFICE!!! It's a complete shit show over there, and I've had that impression from the get-go. How this effected all of us is this: every single day, we were given different instructions for how to fill out our timesheets. Every person gave a different set of instructions, and when we said that someone told us to do something else, they would usually reply, "Forget that... do it this way." Okay, we're flexible. We'll do it your way. The problem was that it kept happening! Even today a whole bunch of us (including me) received rejected timesheets back because we had followed the instructions given to us on that particular day, but someone in the mean time decided they wanted timesheets a different way! We were understandably frustrated by this process by today- especially when these people started to tell us that we could be written up for incorrectly filling out timesheets!! THEN they said that every FOS (Field Operation Supervisor) wanted the people under them to fill out timesheets their own way, and we should ask our crew leaders how we should do it within our own district! Are you kidding me? It seems to me that one simple thing could have solved this whole issue: whoever is the fancy pants operations supervisor for our local office, Boston South, should have given out a specific set of instructions to the people under them, and so on and so on until it we down on the bottom got the same message. It seems ludicrous to me that different enumerators within the same local area would fill out timesheets differently, because the same folks over at the LCO are entering in our pay.

AGAIN... if only I ruled the world.

I haven't even mentioned that these timesheets are not complex in any way shape or form. While not every person in that training class was the sharpest crayon in the box, if we had only been given one set of instructions on day one that didn't change, there would be no problems by now!!

Okay. Back to this afternoon. Now, I have to be careful about what I say on this particular topic because the person that this concerns literally threatened us. Yes. She threatened that if we reported her for what she told us, she would find out who we are and "find us". She would find us in the database and "hunt us down". Yes, these were her words. She said this after giving us some legally-questionable advice regarding how to log time on our timesheets... the details aren't too important. She basically stood up in front of all us, told us how to fraudulently fill out our timesheets and then threatened us if we tell on her. This was AFTER she spent 20 minutes of our time (on the clock) yelling at us like we were children, "instructing" us how to appropriately fill out our timesheets. I. Was. Livid. You should have been there to get the full effect. It was incredibly offensive- the way she spoke to us. She was trying to address a particular question, and instead of answering it in an effective way, she spent 20 minutes telling to make sure we include our middle initial in the middle initial box... make sure you spell out your whole name, crap like that! It was the LEAST PROFESSIONAL behavior I witnessed all week. I did the math: Assuming there were 60 people in the room, that we each earn $22.75/hour, and that this particular lecture took 20 minutes: this jerk face wasted $450.50 of YOUR tax money. All of this, again, was before she threatened us.

The other crappy part of this story is that the other guy leading this particular session today originally said that we would spend the time she hijacked going over some admin policy issues and the certification test we took. We didn't get to do any of that. Tempers really started to flare today while all of this was going on. One of the highlights was when crazy sweatpants lady raised her hand, and in front of everyone went on a HUGE tirade about this whole process. "I AM APPALLED AT OUR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT" she started. She went off- it was great. "WHAT ABOUT ALL THE VIRGIN FORESTS??? IS THIS RECYCLED PAPER???" Totally the best part of the day.

Sigh. Arlene (one of the great training presenters) said it best, "The unofficial motto at the Census is It Is What It Is!" So true, Arlene. So true.

The rest of the day went much more smoothly. After the debacle that was our last day of training, our district crew went out to work the field in a group. We went to several houses on Tower Street, Weld Hill and Hyde Park Ave. I was the only one out of the four of us who did not have a chance to conduct an interview. I'm sure I will tomorrow, though. I have 33 assignments to work on so I plan to jump right in tomorrow. Again, I'm pretty psyched about our district. Our crew leader and crew leader assistant are cool, and I adore the three other enumerators I've met. I really couldn't be happier with the people I will interface with daily. In that, I really lucked out.

Okay... more to talk about later. I really don't mean to be so down on our local area office. I understand the challenges here. I am flexible, and I'm happy to go with the flow. I suppose it all makes for a good story, so that's what I'm trying to tell here. At the end of the day, it's just the census. No one is going to die (well... maybe... if they redraw congressional districts and then the congressmen then pass legislation... haha jk).

But seriously... whatever. It is what it is.