Forget the massive deployment of manpower, you can't imagine — no, really — the mountains of paperwork required to get Census information from people who, for whatever reason — procrastination, forgetfulness, Tea Party paranoia — have not filled out and mailed back their relatively simple little 2010 forms. 

I spent part of the weekend preparing packets for the next phase of the Census — Non-Response Follow-up or NRFU (pronounced "Norfoo" by Midwesterners, "Nerfoo" by New Englanders — I'm not taking sides on this one) — and I can tell you, if you thought the Census form they sent you in the mail was too much work, or a waste of money, time, and resources, you're going to just love NRFU! 



NRFU is what I thought I'd signed on for when they sent me to Group Quarters (GQE), which coincides with the mail-in phase of the Census.  I went through three days of training and thought I was all set.  Come to find that NRFU requires an additional week of verbatim training*. 

Verbatim training, for the uninitiated, is the extremely painful practice of having a government functionary stand before a group of trainees for three to five days listlessly reading every page of the three-inch thick training manual, after which trainees are considered train wrecks— er, I mean, trained.  It's something akin to the experience of Vogon poetry readings described in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide.

My real job is considerably less painful and pays more, and, as luck would have it, I could not get off for another week of training even if I'd wanted. So, the long and short of it is, if you held off sending your Census form back in the hope that I would come knocking... well, the gay porn fantasy portion of the Census is over — we've counted all the soldiers in their barracks, all the sailors below deck, all the convicts in the jails, all the college jocks in the dorms.

I don't envy the poor sods going door-to-door.  This is the phase of operations you need sensible shoes for, and what's the point of work if you have to wear sensible shoes to it?  Once it comes to that it's time to bow out, for dignity's sake.

But there's still plenty of work.  The Boston South Office was going literally around the clock all weekend to prepare packets for NRFU, each one an inch thick at least.  Inside were special Census forms — thicker than the ones you got in the mail — and all sorts of other forms to make sure the forms get done.  There are also maps and legends.  Secret spells, potions, and juju. A rechargeable taser.  Whatever works.

You will be counted.  Dead or alive.  Count on it.

It was a great opportunity for extra hours over the weekend.  I only worked Sunday, because I heard it was going to rain.  It didn't, but I was out by 3 p.m., and got a good two or three hours in the garden.  Though overtime is strictly forbidden, and there was no differential for weekend work, double shifts were apparently OK.  I don't do double shifts without a differential, but some people do.

One of the young men who was there when I arrived at 7 a.m. had come in at eleven the night before.  By the time we were QCing the packets and shipping them out, it was noon, and he was nodding off every three minutes.  Just the kind of guy you want doing QC.

Not to worry.  There are so many checks along the way, whatever he doesn't catch will only make the enumerator's life a little harder.  It won't stop him counting you.  Nothing can stop him counting you.  Not after the training he's been through.

It'd be easier on everyone if folks just accepted the inevitable.  I mean, why put it off until they have to hunt you down like a dog?  And, you know, it's just going to cost us all that much more with pretty much the same outcome in the end.  The Government Accountability Office estimates that Census scofflaws will cost tax payers 2.7 billion dollars.  That's the budget for NRFU.  But it could go as high as $14.7 billion, if things don't go smoothly.

And it's a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy that they won't.  And then the very same people who caused additional costs through noncompliance will taunt "we told you so!"  when the cost of counting them explodes.  They can't all be Tea Partying Republicans, but it does seem like a convenient coincidence, doesn't it?