Wednesday

Okay, more on my visit with Jeremy on Monday.  My dx is schizoid personality disorder, not schizotypal.  I asked him for his take on the disorder.  He did not think that it was a debilitating disorder, that it was more of a case of extreme introversion. 

Switching gears to life at the Decennial Census Office...  We are trying to close out NRFU, non-response follow up.  There were over 5,000 cases shown as incomplete in the system.  Some of them had been completed and shipped to the processing center.  Others are shown as complete in the enumerators' binders, but we don't have a clue what happened to the questionnaires.  But almost all of the cases have an indication that they were done.

We have stacked more than 10,000 binders in a room.  The stacks are precarious, and it is not uncommon for one stack to go sliding off into other stacks.  All of the binders look alike, with the exception of the AA number on the spine of the binder.  It is impossible to tell which stack a binder belongs to by looking at the binder.  It is necessary to open the binder and look inside to see which crew leader district it belongs to.  So, when gravity takes over, and a stack goes sliding, it is necessary to open each binder to make sure it is returned to the correct stack. 

We have been tasked with locating each binder.  I printed a sheet for each crew leader district showing the binders that are supposed to be in each stack. (By the way, when I write about a stack, I actually mean two or more stacks.  The stacks begin at the wall and come forward toward the center of the room for each crew leader district.  There are no spaces between the stacks.  One crew leader district is stacked right next to the next.  You have to move the first stack to get to the next stack for each district.  With one district right against the next, you never know when moving one stack creates an avalanche in another.)  

The lists that I printed agree with the crew leader district that is written in each binder, so it should represent our best chance of finally documenting what we have and what we are missing.  But with the Census, there's always a catch.  The original plan was to only turn in completed binders.  But there was a big push to get info in as soon as possible, so the directive was to turn in questionnaires as soon as they were completed.  So, questionnaires were turned in without the binders.  There were no checks and balances to see what was complete and what was still open.  There was a mad push to get questionnaires entered and shipped for processing, but with the computer problems that existed at the time, an enormous backlog of questionnaires sat waiting for entry.  Eventually, these were entered and shipped. 

Now, while all this was going on, people were being terminated, and binders were being given to other enumerators for completion.  There is a form to be filled out for changing the enumerator, but, at the time, the push was to get as many questionnaires in as possible, and this form was largely ignored.  Entering the questionnaires into the system is done by enumerator, but there is a provision for changing the assigned enumerator as you enter questionnaires.  So, when binders were reassigned, it was as easy process to enter the questionnaires under the new enumerator.  At some point, however, Dallas called for the forms to change the assigned enumerators to be entered, so that was done.  When that happened, even if the questionnaires for that AA had been entered, the computer program changed the status for that AA to incomplete.  That's how we came to the position of tracking down over 5,000 questionnaires.

And that's how we are now tasked with locating more than 10,000 binders.  So, we have our list of binders for each crew leader district.  The problem is this - as only can happen in government operation.  When the forms were entered to change the enumerator, sometimes the AA (and it's binder) were changed to a different crew leader district in the computer system.  The crew leader district as shown inside the binders did not change; just the computer system.  And Dallas wants us to use the computer system's list to track down more than 10,000 binders, not the original list.  I guess the assumption is that the computer system's list of where the binders are assigned is correct, and that it will assist us in tracking down missing binders. 

If this story has been convoluted, it is nothing compared to this census.