Tuesday

Well, we are back to 8 hour shifts again at the Census Bureau.  Yay!  Of course, they told us about this after we went to work.  "Can you stay late this evening?"  I had a feeling we might go back to 8 hour shifts, so I wasn't surprised.  And I wasn't surprised that they didn't let anyone know ahead of time, either.

We're getting ready for the next phase, which will involve fewer enumerators.  The object now is to extend employment for all the enumerators that will work the next phase.  About half of those enumerators have been identified.  They want to make sure that they have sufficient enumerators in each of 8 FOS districts to do the job.  Everyone agreed that it would be a good idea to have a list of all the enumerators and their addresses to see how many they need to add to each district.  I volunteered to do the job.  The AMFO showed me where the list of field supervisors was located.  I then let him know that it was time for me to go to lunch, but that I would start as soon as I got back.  Thirty minutes later, I sat down at a computer, thoroughly happy.  I had a spreadsheet to do!  But when I looked for the list of field supervisors, it was gone.  I asked the AMFO where it was, and he told me that the LCOM (who trumps the AMFO) had given the job to someone else.  He then gave me another task, to verify 1172's.

1172's are lists of questionnaires that are categorized as incomplete.  There are about 5,000 of these.  Some of them have been completed and shipped to the processing center, but for some reason, their status didn't change to completed and shipped.  No one in our office knows why, or if it is still happening. 

The first step in this process was to search the shipping records, one at a time, for the questionnaires.  If the questionnaire had been completed and shipped, we noted the box number and the date shipped.  This took care of some (less than half) of the 5,000.  The second step involves finding the binders for each of the remaining questionnaries.  Inside each binder is a listing of the questionnaires.  The list is anywhere from 3 to 20 pages long.  Once the correct binder is located, you check the list for each questionnaire.  Of course, the questionnaires are not in numerical number, so you search until you find each 16 digit number, and check  to see what, if any, was the disposition for a particular questionnaire.  We have completed the first step, so I went off into the freezer. (It's actually the training room, now converted into the binder room.  It's always very cold in there.) 

The binders are stacked up around the walls of the room by FOS district.  There are about 40 binders for each district.  Every binder has a number written on the side, but you can't tell by looking at the number to which FOS district it belongs.  There is a handwritten list of binders about each stack to help you put the binders back in the correct stack.  There is no order to the individual stacks of binders.  Every other one is facing the opposite direction, so at any one time, you can see only half of the binder numbers.  There are no spaces between binder stacks, so you have to move each stack in order to see the other half.  There isn't a lot of free space in the room, so you have to be careful when you pick a spot to move one set of binders.  You also have to carefully stack when you move binders so that they don't go sliding off into another FOS district. And there are two stacks of binders for every district, so it's double the fun.  . 

And you get to do this in the company of the twins.  They are two young guys who act like they are in junior high.  They are loud, obnoxious and vulgar. 

I was so angry.  Fortunately, I was rescued after about an hour and put on another job. 

I talked to Jeremy yesterday about my dx.  It is schizoid personality disorder.  More about our discussion tomorrow.