BullionVince
12th May 2010, 11:07 PM
I said I would start a thread giving you the inside look, so here it is.
I was hired a few weeks ago. They called me on a Saturday afternoon and told me it was a take it or leave it deal. They read the job description off and told me it WAS NOT going door to door. It was an office environment working a variety of positions but the position itself was known as an office clerk. I was told it started within 36 hours and I was either in or I was out. I needed the money so I was in.
The first day was super lame. we read verbatim a manual on what was expected of us. The second day we reported to a supervisor upon arrival. When we approached him he asked what we were doing there. We explained we were the new hires. The guy shook his head and laughed while saying, "Shit, we were supposed to get 2 new computers but they hired 20 workers instead. We don't need new people, we need COMPUTERS MOTHER FUCKING COMPUTERS!!!!!!!!!!" He slammed his fist on the table and left.
Later another supervisor walked in and told us to break down boxes full of enumerator bags. These are the bags the door to door census workers carried. Most of the bags contained the standard enumerator manuals but we found some interesting items inside some of them. One person unexpectedly found $4 cash and some granola bars, another found something much more interesting, he yelped out loud and held up a Marijuana pipe that he had found inside one of the pouches.
Finally we were told to break down more boxes that were previously unopened. Inside contained several manuals that were bound by wire spirals like on a notebook. The supervisor told us to rip the metal sprirals out with a pliers and then throw the pages in the trash. After the 500 or so manuals were disposed of another supervisor walked in a couple of hours later and shrieked. She wanted to know WTF we were doing. The office clerks I was with said we had been breaking down the manuals for the last hour. She told us to stop immediately and put them back together. We all looked at each other in horror. So for the next 6 hours we had to dig through trash cans and piece together the manuals we had just thrown away. We then carefully stapled the pages back together in the right order. We were not supposed to have touched the manuals as they were for later use.
As I mentioned before there was a lot of down time. At one point I had nothing to do and I was extremely agitated with sitting in a chair and staring at a wall for two hours. Another worker told me to head on out to my car and sleep for a few hours, he would come get me if anything arose. I refused and said I would feel "way too guilty doing that."
One of the main things I caught on to, involving government work, was the territorial disputes. People would guard their projects with extreme conviction. It was rare that any actual work was available. So when someone else would come in and ask to help, the person working on the task would have to defend there "job". I watched people literally fight over work so they had something to do. No one wanted to just sit around the whole day. When a task opened up, we would see four or five people race to work on the project. If they weren't first there, they had to walk back over to the backroom and sit down to wait for something to open up.
Promotions were rare but possible. One of the workers that was putting together maps with us squealed to the supervisors. He said we weren't very productive and talked to each other while we should have been working. They patted him on the back and immediately promoted him to administration. Each time I saw him after that it was very briefly and only for a few minutes. He would drop in secretly like the host of the original "survivor" show. He would pop out of the woodwork only briefly and then disappear after that, explaining our daily challenge.
The demographics were typical of a government job. All workers were either retired or fresh out of college. We had no middle aged people except in the administration. Almost every person in administration was either A.) a minority or B.) White, but missing teeth and had deep sores and cuts that looked like scratch marks on their faces , or grossly overweight and stuttered.
I met interesting people while working there. People were shocked and amazed I had a "real job" on the side while I worked there. I was given a huge stack of business cards and phone numbers from the unemployed people, in case any positions at my other job (Pizza Restaurant) opened up. Some of the more intelligent people that worked there formed a small alliance. When supervisors weren't around we would chastise the bull shit work and refer to the Census as "Senseless."
As I mentioned in another post, I made it almost 3 weeks. The money was actually damn good. For the first two weeks, it was literally all the overtime you could handle. If you were lucky enough to get a courier position you were paid mileage at the IRS rate of 50 cent a mile. I scored a "courier run" between my city and one 100 miles away. The trip went quick and only took me 3 hours. I couldn't believe I was actually making $50 an hour while driving.
That's about it. I didn't want to jeopardize my current job so I left once I felt I was overwhelmed. I'll likely never step anywhere near the gov. again. If I had to work any longer than I did, I probably would have taken a spoon and gouged out one of my eyes. It may be worth the money to some of the "dumbed down" people. Anyone with slight intelligence or understanding of the free markets would have committed suicide within one year, guaranteed.
I was hired a few weeks ago. They called me on a Saturday afternoon and told me it was a take it or leave it deal. They read the job description off and told me it WAS NOT going door to door. It was an office environment working a variety of positions but the position itself was known as an office clerk. I was told it started within 36 hours and I was either in or I was out. I needed the money so I was in.
The first day was super lame. we read verbatim a manual on what was expected of us. The second day we reported to a supervisor upon arrival. When we approached him he asked what we were doing there. We explained we were the new hires. The guy shook his head and laughed while saying, "Shit, we were supposed to get 2 new computers but they hired 20 workers instead. We don't need new people, we need COMPUTERS MOTHER FUCKING COMPUTERS!!!!!!!!!!" He slammed his fist on the table and left.
Later another supervisor walked in and told us to break down boxes full of enumerator bags. These are the bags the door to door census workers carried. Most of the bags contained the standard enumerator manuals but we found some interesting items inside some of them. One person unexpectedly found $4 cash and some granola bars, another found something much more interesting, he yelped out loud and held up a Marijuana pipe that he had found inside one of the pouches.
Finally we were told to break down more boxes that were previously unopened. Inside contained several manuals that were bound by wire spirals like on a notebook. The supervisor told us to rip the metal sprirals out with a pliers and then throw the pages in the trash. After the 500 or so manuals were disposed of another supervisor walked in a couple of hours later and shrieked. She wanted to know WTF we were doing. The office clerks I was with said we had been breaking down the manuals for the last hour. She told us to stop immediately and put them back together. We all looked at each other in horror. So for the next 6 hours we had to dig through trash cans and piece together the manuals we had just thrown away. We then carefully stapled the pages back together in the right order. We were not supposed to have touched the manuals as they were for later use.
As I mentioned before there was a lot of down time. At one point I had nothing to do and I was extremely agitated with sitting in a chair and staring at a wall for two hours. Another worker told me to head on out to my car and sleep for a few hours, he would come get me if anything arose. I refused and said I would feel "way too guilty doing that."
One of the main things I caught on to, involving government work, was the territorial disputes. People would guard their projects with extreme conviction. It was rare that any actual work was available. So when someone else would come in and ask to help, the person working on the task would have to defend there "job". I watched people literally fight over work so they had something to do. No one wanted to just sit around the whole day. When a task opened up, we would see four or five people race to work on the project. If they weren't first there, they had to walk back over to the backroom and sit down to wait for something to open up.
Promotions were rare but possible. One of the workers that was putting together maps with us squealed to the supervisors. He said we weren't very productive and talked to each other while we should have been working. They patted him on the back and immediately promoted him to administration. Each time I saw him after that it was very briefly and only for a few minutes. He would drop in secretly like the host of the original "survivor" show. He would pop out of the woodwork only briefly and then disappear after that, explaining our daily challenge.
The demographics were typical of a government job. All workers were either retired or fresh out of college. We had no middle aged people except in the administration. Almost every person in administration was either A.) a minority or B.) White, but missing teeth and had deep sores and cuts that looked like scratch marks on their faces , or grossly overweight and stuttered.
I met interesting people while working there. People were shocked and amazed I had a "real job" on the side while I worked there. I was given a huge stack of business cards and phone numbers from the unemployed people, in case any positions at my other job (Pizza Restaurant) opened up. Some of the more intelligent people that worked there formed a small alliance. When supervisors weren't around we would chastise the bull shit work and refer to the Census as "Senseless."
As I mentioned in another post, I made it almost 3 weeks. The money was actually damn good. For the first two weeks, it was literally all the overtime you could handle. If you were lucky enough to get a courier position you were paid mileage at the IRS rate of 50 cent a mile. I scored a "courier run" between my city and one 100 miles away. The trip went quick and only took me 3 hours. I couldn't believe I was actually making $50 an hour while driving.
That's about it. I didn't want to jeopardize my current job so I left once I felt I was overwhelmed. I'll likely never step anywhere near the gov. again. If I had to work any longer than I did, I probably would have taken a spoon and gouged out one of my eyes. It may be worth the money to some of the "dumbed down" people. Anyone with slight intelligence or understanding of the free markets would have committed suicide within one year, guaranteed.