Marking the day.

[hannah]

Having been offered the option to partake in a facial recognition study, I'm sticking with US census work. It's not that much money per hour, really, and one's already in my neighborhood. This is in addition to any concerns over privacy issues and the use of personal data, of which my current job is at least making a stab at using for genuine public benefit.

The part of it I find most disappointing and tiring is, astonishingly, the set-up. More than knocking on doors and being told to come back with a subpoena, more than finding places don't exist, more than exasperating doormen. Generally, one good kick to an outer metal door to a basement apartment cures most of those ills. The set-up is that every morning I'm assigned to work, I get a given number of cases, and these aren't sorted. I'll have to check units in buildings next door to each other - 314, 312, 310, 308, and so on - but the buildings aren't sorted geographically or numerically, and neither are the cases. Sometimes they're not bundled together for being in the same building. There's no particular reason for this.

It's the wanting the reason that makes it even more tiring.

Comments

[pwcorgigirl]

Oh, honey. Never try to apply logic to government work. That thought has kept me sane many a time working for the university. (((HUGS)))

[yourlibrarian]

I guess they figure that the workers will end up doing it themselves to save time and gas, but you'd think a program could easily be devised to sort these.

[deelaundry]

Hey Hannah, did I tell you I (was doing) Census work as well? The lack of possibility of sorting in the system drove me nuts. Also, when you go to locate a proxy and the system doesn't bother telling you which close-by addresses are cases in and of themselves.

(Best case: Guy agreed to answer the questions, and we were 75% through when he said "So, you're from my dentist's office?")