first day on the job (lyn)

I wake up on this rainy Saturday, and prepare for my first day alone as an enumerator.  The weather is sufficiently frightening that while I’m on the phone with M, a flash of lightening cuts through the phone line and we immediately hang up.  I don’t want to take a lunch break (we don’t get paid for that), so I make a breakfast of coffee, lox, and cream cheese on a 100-calorie bagel.

By 10:30, the rain has been reduced to a light drizzle and the sun is peeking out.  I don my non-jeans outfit (“wear business casual, please, no jeans and no sandals”), official census ID-necklace, black census bag, and I’m off, still amazed that this is what I am now doing.

I plan to work from 10:30 to 4:30.  The ever-disorganized census organization has assigned us only nine names to call on.  I knock on nine doors, all on the same block.  Only two are home.  Very nice people.  Done by noon.

I’m told we are getting more names.  Meet with my crew leader who is the nicest, most reasonable, most (dare I say) normal of the people I’ve met.  I’m home by 12:45, done for the day.

I think the concept, more than the activity, exhausts me.  Fall asleep (something I never ever do during the day) around four.  Wake up around six, make some calls, order in sushi, and stay home.