Well, the U.S. Census of 2010 is underway.
Temporary workers are knocking on doors across America, and Oaklanders who haven’t sent back their forms are getting targeted for visits. It’s a marvel of old-fashioned organization, with people and all their sweat equity aimed at counting us.
Lately, we have been stumbling across Census workers in the Village. Try hanging out at a coffee shop for a half hour, and a few will magically appear. During the past week alone, we have spotted a boss holding court with numerous workers, as well as multiple meet-ups between two workers swapping war stories.
These workers do need to meet somewhere and the coffee shops make sense. There’s plenty of paperwork exchanging hands, along with schedules getting hammered out. We bet the per-store sales of coffee and cakes will go up this month.
A decade ago, we wonder where the Census workers gathered. Did Uncle Sam arrange for temporary space? Were the libraries used instead? Dunno, but workers are in full view this go-around.
Today in Montclair, 94611 
Here’s “the rest of the story”: Every day we have to meet with our crew leaders to hand off the daily timesheet from the day before, as well as any census forms we’ve completed. Crew leaders generally hold “office hours” at these coffee shops for a few scheduled hours a day, where we census workers stop in when our schedule allows.
Only part of our work happens at the door, for the interview. There’s more we have to do to complete the form after the interview, to make phone calls, to complete timesheets, to organize our work and plan next steps for contact. There is a lot of paperwork. Most of this stuff can, and does, get done in public places like coffee shops. It’s one of the perks of this job that we have such great, flexible working conditions.
Best summer job ever!