A Pedestrian's History of Everything

I started a new one of these to keep track of all the stupid shit I make up, usually when I’m...

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 11:01:08 -0800

I started a new one of these to keep track of all the stupid shit I make up, usually when I’m groggy.

http://imaginarybullshit.tumblr.com/

Real True Stories of Stultifying Actualness

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 13:47:00 -0700

So it’s been a tumultuous couple of weeks working for the old census. My crew leader got demoted to a mere assistant crew leader, which I thought was dumb because she was obviously the nicest person working there. Nicer even than Nice Guy perhaps. I knew for sure that I liked her forever when I was at a meeting and Awful Woman was wheedling away about some kind of nonsense that upset her and my crew leader looked over at me with a sort of “oh-god-there-she-goes-again” look. The enemy of mine enemy is my sort of friend and sort of boss.

Crew leader’s boss, the Field Operations Supervisor, or FOS also got canned. This was the guy who was super full of himself. I imagine visions of himself karate kicking bad guys run through his head roughly 90% of the time his brain is active. Apparently he was doing a crappy job of organizing things. This may explain why two of my paychecks were significantly shorter than they should have been. Turns out someone above me handed in my time sheets too late so I didn’t get the money until two weeks later. I only found this out after calling a gajillion people, asking the new crew leader and being told to fill out a paper basically stating “Bitch, where my money?” The government is a bloated, lurching behemoth from which I will gladly accept money.

So we had to have a meeting to meet the new FOS and have her yell at us about not doing our jobs in ways we were never told to do them. She said that our meetings always ran too long and then that exact meeting ran wayyyy too long. People continued to bitch and moan about all kinds of things like “I go to houses and sometimes no one is home.” Honestly. Then something truly amazing happened. I’ve had a habit of twisting my hair since I was five years old. It’s something I do without realizing it, usually when I’m concentrating on something. Well apparently this was really ruining the life of motherfucking Blonde Leonard Nimoy. I’ll share this exchange with you:

BLN: Sweetheart, do you have any idea how goofy you look when you do that?

Me: I don’t really care.

BLN: Have you tried getting a ponytail?

Me: Getting? You mean like wearing my hair up?

BLN: Yeah, so you don’t do that.

Me: I’d still do it. I’ve done it since I was five.

BLN: Oh.

And then I pretty much just walked away from her. I later looked over at her and realized what I should have said was “I look goofy? You’re the one wearing Mr. Spock’s face under a straw hat wrapped in motherfucking crystals. Not to mention your all denim ensemble with fake “southwestern” bullshit embroidered all over it. You look like Leonard Nimoy trying to go incognito to the county kitchen rodeo by dressing in drag. Looking at you is basically causing different parts of my brain to barf on each other after what you just said to me. I am probably going to have a stroke from the strain of trying to explain to you exactly how far beyond goofy you look.”

But joy of joys, that horrible woman got transferred out of my group and I never have to see her again. Awful woman remains though. There is much more to tell but I’ll save it for another update.

Ahhhhhh!

Wed, 26 May 2010 17:39:48 -0700

I work two jobs now and it is really, really hard to want to sit down and use what little free time I have to blog. But at some point I will. This is not that point. This is the point where I say I haven’t abandoned the blog but actually I have to leave right now and go do some more censussing so I can have all the dollars.

Return of the Blog

Mon, 10 May 2010 10:47:00 -0700

Heyyyyy, look at me. I’m blogging. I assure you I haven’t neglected this thing for any reason other than being too ding dang busy. I’m trying to get a second job that will actually last more than two months. The whole process involves a lot of ferrying paperwork across town and getting tested for TB and carpal tunnel and such. Turns out, I totally don’t even have any Tuberculosis.

So last I wrote I was still in training. I’m all done with that now and have even had a full week as real and true censusser. Training proceeded much in the same way that it began, with so many people in my group constantly bitching and slowing everything to a crawl by having very low reading comprehension skills. I took a few notes, a lot of them dealing with the cringe inducing antics of a woman I call Awful Woman, for obvious reasons. This is the same woman who was so concerned with how this job that she had agreed to do would inconvenience her. Awful Woman thinks she is very enlightened but actually is just one of those people who love to tell other people how wrong they are. You know, she’s an expert on everything, just turns out she’s wrong all the time. She suggested that if upon viewing a human, we assumed them to be Hispanic, we should just hand them the Spanish information sheet before even speaking to them. I assume this is because she is so wise that she just knows if a person is one of those Hispanics when she sees them. She expressed disdain for those who live in mobile homes and thought it would be prudent to disagree with people about their race and heritage. Oh yeah, she also asked what she should do if she arrives at a house and all the occupant can say is “No speaky.” I pretty much loathe her. No, wait. I totally loathe her. She is fucking awful.

There’s another lady I call Blonde Leonard Nimoy because that is what she looks like. It’s pretty creepy. She is the one who thinks that this job is just the most awful thing that anyone could have to endure. She has to be at least 60 years old but it seems like this is her first job ever. Or maybe she worked her whole life as a pillows and pleasant scents tester. Every time I see her she has some incredibly minor thing to complain about as if it were killing her, like the tri-fold forms we have to fill out. Oh woe upon woe! I have to flip paper over and fold it back. Who could withstand under such inhuman pressures?

Partway through our training our territory got changed from what was apparently a neighborhood full of wealthy old people to “the bad side of town.” I was initially slightly nervous given that everyone in my group freaked out when this happened. Now that I have actually gone out and worked in this neighborhood I could just laugh and laugh for days on end at the stink they raised about our safety in this neighborhood. It is full of beautiful new homes and a lot of young families just starting out. It turns out that what people meant when they said “bad side of town” was “area where there are some Mexicans.” I really just cannot even believe people sometimes.

We had our last day of training on a Saturday and things got off to a totally ridiculous start for me. The day had not even begun and I was walking to the bathroom when I ran into a guy who turned out to be an upper-level supervisor there to finish the training with us. I got yelled at for not wearing my badge on my way to the bathroom. I was unaware that I had to make the public aware of my official census status while taking a piss, but rest assured everyone, my pee will be 100% census certified from now on.

Big boss man turned out to be an old hippy who thought he was a badass and was so in love with himself it was hilarious. Things he let slip during the course of the day: rides a motorcycle, used to race for 25 years, has 5 kids, was married a long time and can still get dates, can look like “Mr. Government” because he is 6’2”, and once kicked a pitbull in the mouth despite having no martial arts training. He also complained of “a lot of uptightness going around.” It was an amusing day.

Later that day we went out to our first houses. I was slightly nervous, due to everyone being sketched out about this neighborhood but I quickly got over that. I went to two houses, one where no one was home and one where I completed the interview. I felt like a damn champ. Since then I have been to so many houses. People have been generally accommodating and pleasant. I’ve only had one person refuse to talk to me outright. One of the most hilarious things that has happened has been the exercise house. Without fail, whenever I approached this house there was some group aerobics going on inside for what seemed like hours. I did finally get to talk to the people there in a rare moment of repose, so no more exercise house for me.

The last time I worked I got trapped in a cat lady apartment for over an hour. Her door was open and she even seemed to be expecting me. She tried to get me to have some coffee and talked to me for so very long about I don’t even know what. She asked if pets were counted in the census. She was actually super nice and I got the impression that she was just lonely and bored, but boy did I need to get out of there.

Overall it is a pretty sweet deal. I get to talk to a bunch of people, get more familiar with my town and get money. It’s raining today and I really don’t want to go out, but I must. Maybe someone will take pity on me and give me a cupcake. You never know.

Of magnifying glasses and men

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 11:45:36 -0700

Last night’s training was largely uneventful. The most extraordinary thing that happened was that I managed to somehow drive the wrong direction on the freeway for a good fifteen minutes before realizing what I’d done. There was terrible traffic on the way back and I had a million tiny freak-outs and showed up twenty minutes late. As far as I can tell I didn’t miss anything that anyone who has successfully completed third grade and made it to adulthood without accidentally walking off cliff would need to know. Yep, the main new information we got last night was how to read census maps. Of course someone had to find something to be miserable about with this as well. The maps we were looking at were obviously shitty photocopies made just as examples for our workbooks. Yet once again in that horrible tone of voice that I fear will persist throughout training a woman loudly complained that the maps were too small. “What am I supposed to do, carry a magnifying glass around with me?” she bitched bitchfully. Then something awesome happened. The older lady from my running crew said in a jovial way “That’s what I plan to do,” and effectively shut the other woman right up. I think I love her. The rest of the evening was set aside for fingerprinting and having already done that I got to leave. I even managed to drive home without incident or stupid incorrect takings of exits and ramps.

I think I’m going to come up with code names for the members of the running crew so I don’t have to keep referring to them as Older Lady and Young Guy. Older Lady shall henceforth be known as the librarian. For all I know she has never even come remotely close to being employed by a library. She just has a librarian-y feel to her. Not in that stern, scold-you-for-not-whispering-quietly-enough kind of way. I just have a feeling that if a young person were reading literature of quality she would be psyched on it. The young guy I’m just going to call nice guy because he is really just tremendously nice. The older gentleman shall be referred to as the polyglot due to his tremendous linguistic abilities. That’s really all I have for today. My main goals for tonight’s training are to not show up late like a jackass and to not get lost on the way home.

I drew this and I am proud of it.

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:07:57 -0700

I drew this and I am proud of it.

Everything is ridiculous forever

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 10:55:47 -0700

So yesterday was the first “real” day of training. It was largely uneventful. I had to drive on the highway to get there which super stressed me out seeing as for about the past eight years I’ve only had to drive when I’m at home visiting my parents. Until recently I probably hadn’t driven since some time in 2006. Despite ridiculously unclear highway signage I managed to find the training place and not die on the way.

I met my supervisor for the first time. She was really sweet and patient with the whole silly process. Not everyone in my group went to the earlier training so this session consisted of a lot of repetition for me and most of the rest of the group. I was seated at a table in between a young-ish dude and an older guy. To the left of young dude was an older lady. I have decided that these people are my census running crew because we all got along really well and had super sweet conversation about all kinds of things during the breaks. The fact that these people were all cool was a giant relief because the main thing I have to say about this training session is that people are a bunch of entitled, whiny brats.

To start there was a woman behind me who kept complaining about how boring the training was. Loudly. While our supervisor was trying to talk. She kept talking over the supervisor throughout the entire meeting. This woman had to be fifty or older. Are you some kind of child? Do not talk over people. And bear in mind that this woman is getting paid $20 an hour to sit on her butt and complain. But she’s boooored. Boo fucking hoo, lady. The training was only four hours and we even got out early. You are awful.

Then another woman in the back kept asking in this miserable, put-upon tone about “HOW AM I GOING TO BE COMPENSATED???” for various bullshit that she should have known about when she signed up for this weird job. I am going to try to remember what she said more or less verbatim. Something like, “What if I’m INTERRUPTED during my dinner, or if I’m woken from sleep when I’ve decided that my work day is done and I’m on MY TIME by someone calling me. HOW WILL I BE COMPENSATED???” I think there’s something very telling about how she put this. With this job, you get to decide when your work day is over, for fuck’s sake. Yeah, it would suck if you were sleeping and you got woken up by a work phone call. But in the grand motherhumping scheme of things, is it really worth getting all nasty at someone who is being very nice to you over a rather minor inconvenience that you would obviously be paid for? We fill out time sheets to get paid, so if you are working, you enter that time on the form. Unbelievably simple really. This same woman later, in the same accusatory tone, asked to be paid for any time she spent reading the employee handbook at home. When in the history of working at jobs has anyone ever had that privilege? I used to work at a fancy soap store and I would spend hours studying the ingredients of every product so I could tell people what was in them and what they did for their skin or whatever. You know, so I could be good at my job where I was paid less than half of what the census pays. And the census is also the only job I have ever heard of where your hourly pay includes the time you spend commuting AND pays you a stipend for every mile you travel. I guess I’m just incredibly grateful after being more desperately broke than dirt for months and months to have gotten this job that is paying me this much. That aside I still think this woman was acting like a ungrateful, entitled jerk and I hope she shuts up forever. Somehow I doubt that is going to happen.

The only thing that was really different about this training was that we talked about the importance of protecting confidentiality of the census records which (don’t worry, The Man) will be respected as I write this. Then we got our official census swag. I have government issue pens, which is particularly hilarious to me. Yeah, we all got a little plastic bag of pens, pencils, erasers and paper clips. Official census paper supplies.

I left carrying my bag o’ swag and despairing over human greed to take the worst drive home I have ever experienced. To start, as I was about to get on the freeway, a possum crawled in front of my car. It proceeded to shuffle at the slowest pace possible without actually ceasing to move. I think it was either extremely elderly or infirm. I realized that the cars behind me couldn’t see the possum and probably assumed I was having a heart attack or was an idiot. Stressful. Then on the freeway a few miles down I suddenly found myself in the middle of what looked like the aftermath of an explosion of lumber. There were huge chunks of broken wood strewn over all four lanes for a substantial distance. I think I even instinctively yelled “Why is this happening to me?” in my terror. The tires on my car are really not the best and my head was filled with visions of terrible wooden death. Then I managed to get lost. I still don’t understand what I did wrong. After finally getting back on track a police car swerved erratically out to the left then started following me. Mega stressful. Thankfully nothing came of it and I finally made it home. And tonight I get to do it all over again.

Un Trabajo Que Cuenta!

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 10:38:00 -0700

After nearly two months of unemployment, days upon days of not getting in the shower as early as I had planned, I am mostly working again. Not that I’ve done any actual work yet. I’m employed by the 2010 census, a job that should last about two months. Friday was my first day of training. Really all I was trained in was how many hours to work and how to get paid. The latter is obviously particularly interesting to me. The day was surreal and felt a bit like the first day of school if I had gone to school with a pool of the desperate for work of all ages. I spent a lot of time desperately trying to make mental notes because I’d planned to keep track of this whole experience. I figure working for the census has to good for at least a couple of anecdotes of the “Yep, humans sure are weird little beasts” type. The real training sessions begin tonight and I’m definitely bringing a journal to make notes in seeing as the mental notes were really stacking up last time.

Luckily for me the training was being held at the big Catholic church down the street from my house. It was a beautiful morning and the walk to the church took less than ten minutes. There was no clear indication anywhere that I could see of where the training was being held. An older woman with large swatches of pink in her hair was asking a man who seemed to be the groundskeeper about the census so I followed her past the Catholic school behind the church into some kind of gymnasium/auditorium kind of building. The school kids were all outside listening to what I can only assume were morning announcements over a loudspeaker. We found the room where the training was being held, got our packets of forms (so many forms), and took a seat. There were probably about fifty people there, maybe more. Most people seemed older than me. There were maybe two other girls about my age and maybe five younger guys. I imagine that in these troubled economic times I’ll be working with a pretty good cross-section of society on a job like this.

We spent most of the morning being told how to fill out our stack of forms. The weirdest moment was when we had to all stand, raise our right hands and take an oath to uphold the constitution and a bunch of other government-y things. How appropriate that we were in a Catholic church building repeating an oath in unison. Someone outside would probably have no idea if we were swearing allegiance to the federal government or reciting the Apostles Creed.

During a fifteen minute break an older gentleman with a white mustache struck up a conversation with me. Topics covered included the fact that I am neither in high school nor college any longer, how I moved here from Boston, time he spent in Boston, that one time he almost lost his dog who had no collar only a bandana in Cambridge, how humid Boston is in the summer much like Vietnam, how he cannot watch movies about Vietnam because it is too painful but Platoon is a good movie, how he thought the southern guys he was with in Vietnam were “retarded” and he had to ask them to turn off that dang country music, and my experience living in Japan. I felt like I had a surprisingly complete picture of who he is after fifteen minutes of talking. Finding the people in a particular geographic location to be mentally retarded aside, he seemed like alright dude.

Another person who seemed eager to buddy up with me was a middle-aged lady who is totally named after an elven princess from Lord of the Rings. Yikes. I tried to respectfully maintain distance from her because she kept making fun of people who were confused about the instructions, seemed generally awful and was just never shutting up. She did however say that she was going to “go suss it out” at one point which made me giggle because my nerd brain had already internally made “cen-suss it out” jokes.

At some point in the proceedings we were informed that, whoops, actually we can’t stay in this church anymore and have to move our training to a different church on the other side of town. This super sucked for me because, assuming that all I would have to do would be to walk down the street today Mr. Boyfriend had the car. So I had to approach the dudes and ladies of training and ask for a ride. I felt like the least together person because I had also been the only jackass who hadn’t thought to bring their own pen and had to borrow one from a man wearing a suit with a vest. The main training guy agreed to give me a ride and I somewhat dolefully ate the meager sandwich I had prepared under a tree outside while they packed up the training materials.

The guy giving me a ride turned out to not be from the area and didn’t actually know how to get to church number two. Yikes. To my relief he was easy to talk to and even turned out to be from New York City. After that he kept saying “us east coasters.” Ah, the unifying power of having lived in sort of the same area. I found out that he moved around a lot because he was in the air force. You find out a ton about strangers when you are forced into contact with them for several hours.

Church number two was in a part of town I’d never really been to before. There were a lot of newish prefab condos and sterile buildings like that. By the church was this massive lawn that seemed to be used for absolutely nothing. We were early so I stretched out on it to read. The grass was way too green, the flowers too yellow or orange. It was too quiet and too still. I had the feeling of being transported to a fake universe created strictly for the purpose of weirding me out.

All that remained to be done here was take our finger prints but this took forever. I didn’t rush to get in line though because I didn’t have shit to do that day so why not get paid for more hours. I sat around crocheting and reading and trying not to make too much eye contact with elf lady. I was there long enough for Mr. Boyfriend to get out of work and come pick me up. Unfortunately he had to wait because apparently I am just the worst at giving my fingerprints. It took maybe an hour just for them to be satisfied with my fingerprint quality. We had to get two sets of all our fingerprints, each set taken by a different person. The first lady was sort of mean and kept accusing me of willfully fucking up my fingerprints. I couldn’t tell what was wrong with all the ones they rejected. They looked exactly like fingerprints to me. The second lady was a lot nicer and more patient but still perpetually dissatisfied with my prints. Finally I was done, but I was so frazzled that I filled out my time sheet wrong and had to do that again too. With that handed in I finally got to the part of my day where I didn’t have to be in a church.

So working for the census is already decidedly weird. We’ll see how tonight’s training holds up in comparison. It’s not even in a church.