I was at Census training this week (except Wednesday, when I was at work). I learned a few things. Okay, some things I learned were actually true and other things I learned were actually things that people should know, but forget until the situation arises.
- Tea Partiers: They are likely to shoot any Census worker (or government employee for that matter) as to look at them. You will be lucky to leave with only a couple of scratches if you have to interview one of THOSE people. They will be hostile because they hate government and want to have anarchy.
No, this wasn't taught by the Census Bureau or any of it's Supervisors or Crew Leaders. This was common knowledge amongst the students. Out of 17 students, the only people that had a different opinion were myself and a farmer (as far as I could tell, I didn't really stick my neck out on this) Also, I couldn't tell about a couple of the college kids - but everyone older than 25 (besides myself and the farmer) were very addament that Tea Partiers were basically the lunatic fringe and dangerous.
- Know-it-alls stick together and have side conversations thru the class, which dirupts the rest of the classroom learning. I'm not saying these people (about 6 of them) didn't really know it all as they had worked on a previous portion of the current Census. They were very talkative amongst themselves, and the building echoed badly, so they made hearing anything very difficult.
- Anyone who lambasts the "younger generation" as rude needs to do more than just generalize. I found the rudest people to be those in their 30's and 40's. The college kids were not diruptive and they came to class on time (unlike some other people in the class).
- Anyone that has a "rebel" or "Don't Tread on Me" flag is going to be dangerous to interview. This is again common knowledge amongst the class (those 25 or older) and may be related to Tea Partiers.
- The government is very inefficient (duh!). The first class I went to, was given even though there would be no work for us. In fact, we couldn't even do the whole training because there was no way to give us live exercises. The Boston regional office had insisted that the class be given even though the NH people told them there was no need. I thought I would get work out of this second class, but now I am not so sure. I was supposed to do a training / observational live exercise with my crew leader today, but that was cancelled as we have no work (and we don't know when it will show up). For having 10 years to organze this thing, it is sure disorganized and inefficient.
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