Many people are interested in the 2010 U.S. Census. Therefore, I thought it might be worth recording what I've seen of it so far.
For the last couple of months, I worked the Saturday 6:30 a.m.-3 p.m. shift for Vangent, one of the data-processing contractors for the Census and the only one (to my knowledge) where I live, in Phoenix, Arizona. I would have worked more hours, but that was all I could get.
(And while you read this account of work in 2010, why not listen to "All of My Days and All of My Days Off" by A.C. Newman? It's a work-song, sort of.)
What Vangent does for the Census: Collects every form returned by mail west of the Rocky Mountains, opens them, scans them for data-processing, and then shreds them.
(Vangent is not the only employer associated with the Census. Another is the Census office itself, and I've been working for it, too. More on that in another post.)
Everybody at Vangent made me feel welcome, doubled down on emphasizing how critical their employees were to the Census and how important confidentiality was, and nobody tried to make us feel like total losers for being so ill-prepared for an economic meltdown that we needed to fall back on paper handling for $13/hr. I even got a $75 bonus for, as far as I can tell, showing up.
The first thing my job-interviewer asked was why it's important to be punctual. The second was how I felt about doing repetitive work. In dreams I tell her it makes me happy to refrain from using any of my higher cognitive functions to abet the global corporate-imperialist hegemony. What I actually said was something alone the lines of, well, if ya gotta, then git 'er done.
She made quite a show of looking for employment options that would make the best use of my vast experience. She scanned my resume, cooing over my supervisory experience. (I used to edit what you might charitably call trade magazines.) "That's a real plus," she said, oblivious to my desire to avoid ever supervising or managing another human being for any purpose whatsoever for the rest of my natural days on this island Earth.
"Hmmm...I'm not seeing anything in data-entry. Those jobs go pretty fast... hmmm ... Oh, here's something. It's called Document Processing. What you do is, you open up the Census forms when they come in, in the envelopes? Unfolding the forms and straightening them out, to get rid of all the bends and creases, so they can go through the scanners? It's boring, but it pays pretty well. Thirteen dollars an hour. It's important because it really brings the entire operation to a halt if bent papers jam up the scanners."
I picture a small room with a chute for an assembly line, like Lucy and Ethel with the chocolates (and the H-bomb, for those who remember that Saturday Night Live skit). Tons of envelopes pour through the slot. I iron them flat, to slot them through another slit. I slow down and fall behind. Gears crunch sickeningly. Some big scary guy like John Goodman comes in to yell at me.
"Hmmm."
"Sounds good?"
"Sure."
They fingerprinted and background-checked me. I wondered if my association with the ACLU, Amnesty International, or Daily Kos would disqualify me. A month later they wanted me in training, from 6:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. They made this sound normal.
When I reported for training, I got my first look inside, beyond the personnel offices. It's a vast cavernous interior, 50-foot ceilings with all the beams showing, fluorescent lights dangling. A bright orange rubber "airlock" door that worked by pneumatic pressure. Thousands of pallets, all empty in these early days. Document Preparation had a factory-like atmosphere, with 20-some tables, each seating eight. "Clock-in" stations waited to scan our IDs. I've never had to do that before; it's kind of interesting.
Classroom sessions emphasized the need for the confidentiality of all Census information. We were told that such information is sacred, that not even the FBI was allowed to see it. We were informed of the vast monetary value of an accurate mailing list to every junk-mail outfit throughout the nation. We were asked to visualize how gleeful our local TV news stations would be if they found even a single Census form in one of our dumpsters to wave in front of their cameras. "Hey, we can't show you whose Census form with all the personal information somehow made it to the garbage where the next Charles Manson could have gotten hold of it -- but this could be your form for all you know!"
Among other things, they showed us the same 1980s-vintage anti-sexual harrassment film that I saw when I worked for the State of Arizona. I may be the only person still alive who has sat through it twice.
We also got a look at the shredder, where Census forms are destroyed after Vangent is finished with them. It's not so much a shredder as a pulverizer; it leaves behind a cobweb-like substance with the consistency of cotton candy.
Then my trainers got serious.
They showed us how to open the envelopes and unfold and flatten the forms. This came in several media: video, booklet, lecture, and PowerPoint. They showed us how to use the deadly but supposedly idiot-proof paper-cutting machine to seperate certain species of form that need a "spinectomy" (Census humor) before they can be scanned. Since I never got the chance to use it, its idiot-proof state remains provisional.
The topic of anthrax came up. Yes, anthrax exposure is a possibility, it turns out. Albeit a very remote one. We were reminded that nobody has died from anthrax terror since 2001. Besides, the envelopes coming into Vangent have already been processed through the U.S. Postal Service. What could be more infallible than that?
Among the protections offered were rubber gloves (non-latex, allergy-free). We were also allowed to wear masks (BYO). "It's a good idea anyway," our avuncular instructor replied, "what with all the paper dust."
Vangent had plans to evacuate any or all of its warehouse-sized chambers if the presence of anthrax was even suspected. They did lock down one section for an hour or so the night I was there for training. They did it again my second Saturday on the job. The shift leader said it was a white powder that turned out to be "nothing," though what it actually was -- detergent? salt? coffee-mate? -- I was too brain-glazed to ask.
My first morning on the job I had a run-in with security. Because the private Census data of the American people was so well-protected (and if you get nothing else from this post, please rest assured that they were absolute fanatics about that), I already knew not to bring a phone, an iPod, a laptop, a flash-drive, a sonic screwdriver, or anything else even vaguely technological.
It hadn't occurred to me that my Leatherman multitool keychain would be in any way objectionable. I really didn't give it even a first thought, let alone a second. The security guards took me aside, let me off with a warning (yes) because it was my first day, told me to take it back to my car, and to never show its red metallic face again. They were perfectly nice about it, but got the sense that if I'd wanted to be summarily fired, I'd found a way.
My first shift began with sitting at a table with 20 or so colleagues. We had absolutely nothing to do for a couple of hours. We weren't allowed food or drink on the table (covered drinks on the floor were OK). We weren't allowed anything to read (just because, I guess). I think if I'd pulled out a notebook I would have set off some kind of alarm, so I didn't try it.
Our blue-vested supervisors said things were slow today because Census forms were just beginning to trickle in. Trickle they did. There was no assembly line, just people rolling in wheeled shelves full of those translucent plastic post-office trays, each full of Census forms that had already been slit open by the Vangent mailroom. All that was left for us to do was to tear the envelope completely open (to make sure we got every last bit of its contents), put the dead envelopes into blue trays to be carted off by authorized trash-handlers, unfold the forms, flatten them, and place them in long cardboard trays which our supervisor would sign off on before having them sent via green wheeled shelf to the scanning department.
It might surprise some people that the Census is that low-tech. In fact, I found myself wondering why the form wasn't available online for anybody who wanted to fill it out that way. Aside from the fact that I would not have even a part-time job, I remembered the staggering success America has had with electronic voting-machines. We may not be ready for an electronic Census.
At this early stage I was alert for any white powdery substance (not worried enough to bring my own mask, though). Additional watchfulness was expended for scrawled threats to the President, the Secretary of Commerce, or possibly the Postmaster General. A few of my companions at the table did find the occasional redundant postage, and once a letter to a public official who still remains unknown to me. Nothing more exciting than that.
We weren't supposed to read the forms, of course. Not that I was tempted; we weren't given a quota or asked to speed up the process much; it was considered more important that we do the job right rather than quickly. But with so many forms passing through our hands, it would have been impossible for anybody to read them without being pretty darned conspicuous. For all I know, I opened and unfolded the Census forms for the casts of my three favorite TV shows, in alpha or billing order, but I sure never noticed.
Anything out of the ordinary did jump out, like the moran who, in the box for "race," wrote "American" in every available space. As the Saturdays rolled by, I saw more and more of that.
Or the respondent who wrote in Twelve-Point Calligraphic Shrill, "I resent the question!!! And why are you counting illegals?!?!? Obama sucks!!"
Or the one who stapled the article from the Constitution of the U.S. to the form, with a little typewritten note informing us that they had fulfilled their obligation by providing only the number of people at their residence.
We had a special yellow bin for such notes. It was labeled "Notes." Somebody used a black magic-marker to draw a musical note on the side. I assume these messages from concerned citizens were delivered to the appropriate recipient.
The pace accelerated over the weeks. The once-empty pallets now burst with forms. The place sounded like millions of kids marching through the autumn leaves in an early Ray Bradbury story.
At the risk of giving too much minutiae, I learned that there's a right way and a wrong way to throw out trash -- recycling, really, thank God, since we go through enough trees here to re-forest Brazil. One weekend I "did trash" for the first half of my shift. It consisted of collecting the empty envelopes placed in blue bins and going through each one before the final toss into the recycling barrel. Nothing else, no other kind of trash or paper, is supposed to go in that barrel. This is to make doubly sure that no Census forms are accidentally thrown away. (Yes, I did find one.) Usually there was nothing, zip, nada. The colleague who said "I thought trash was a promotion!" was probably expressing a degree of disappointment.
I told myself at first that there is surely a $100 bill in here -- people have been known to find money, though maybe not that much. Lack of positive feedback eventually made the task pale. After lunch I was happy to be reassigned to envelope-opening/form-unfolding duty.
Did I mention security was tight? Once, on my way out, the guard asked if he could look inside my lunchpail. Was it routine; did I look guilty; was it because I took off my badge so I wouldn't have to genuflect to open the turnstile? Fortunately, all I'd had for lunch was a few pieces of fruit and a Fry's microwave sweet & sour chow-mein, good stuff, all disposable packaging. So when I opened my lunchbox, there was nothing in it but a plastic fork, rolling around on the bottom like the No. 2 pencil in Norville Barnes' otherwise empty executive desk drawer in The Hudsucker Proxy.
I met some interesting people at Vangent. Like the tattoo artist who works from his house (uh, I think you need a license? But judging from the graphics on his arms, I'd say he's skilled) and told me how he tried to get a gig at a neighborhood parlor, where, he says, they told him to get the hell out, now, and never come back.
Or the young woman who's been in and out of rehab and who voiced the opinion that people need to be talking more about their dreams because maybe there's knowledge we all need to share.
There was an aerospace engineer, who oddly enough made me feel better, since somebody who I'd expect actually had marketable skills was in the same fix as I.
There was the elderly weathered lady from Texas who was finishing her degree in business administration, had to take a lot of electives she didn't think she needed, but was nevertheless surprised how much she enjoyed calculus.
There was the young Latino, a student I think, who kept saying over and over as he opened envelopes, "Easy money ... easy money..."
It struck me that of the 200-some people processing documents at any one time, I was probably not the only one overqualified. Comforting as I find that, it also gives me a new take on the cost of this recession. At the time I left, to work for the U.S. Census itself, Vangent had 3,000 people working at jobs that seemed to require few of those dangerous higher-level cognitive functions. Maybe I should have Norma-Rae'd it, stood up on a table with a bullhorn: "OK, folks, engineering and technical people here; software experts there; accountants, copywriters, PR mavens, and telephone sanitizers over there -- let's fall into groups and see if we can start some good companies."
Failing that, maybe we could have put on a show.
Next: I go to work for the actual, genuine, and official United States Census.
(Cross-posted to Social Capitalism)
Edited a bit to fix some ugly typos, but I'll bet if you really look hard you can find more.