I have not been posting often because the flesh-world is getting in the way. I’ve been promoted at the Census, which means way more work for me. So if I haven’t responded to a comment, it’s not that I’m ignoring you or don’t want to address your post, it’s that in-depth responses are on hold.
I do want to make a quick mention that I’m getting really sick of people just rolling their eyes and saying “That’s government for you” when we have to fill out tons of paperwork, or the people who we’re enumerating saying that this is really inefficient for us to go door-to-door (then you should have turned in your Census form the first time around). The more and more that I see of this operation, the more I’m amazed it can get off the ground in the first place. It really is operating like a well-running machine. Of course, a well-running machine is the epitome of organized chaos- the fuel is squeezed together, explodes in a mostly directed area but out into all directions, and for the most part there is no errors in the running. The same is true of the Census- we’re trained, we’re directed where to go but we’re all going in slightly different directions.
We’re counting over 300,000 million people who don’t all want to stay in one place. The fact that we get it done in a very brief amount of time is pretty amazing in my mind.