The Government Hired Me

It all started a few months ago.

Jen, the daughter, told me that she was taking the test to qualify for the position of US Census worker.

She’s the one that I’m going to blame for this predicament I’m in now because back then, she casually suggested that I might as well take the test along with her. 

It’s supposed to be a part-time work, make your own hours kind of job so that would work for me.  It pays really well too, so that’s going to be a plus. 

She gave me the phone number to call for registration and basically forced me to call.  Yeah, she forced me to call.

I haven’t taken a test in years though, so I was worried.  My math skills were based on how well I could hit the correct keys on the calculator.  My brain hadn’t processed long division in quite some time, so I was a tad bit concerned with rustiness.

“It’ll be fun!” she said.

Ok, so I went and took the test, but Jen lied.  It wasn’t fun.   Especially when one of the test questions required me to multiply 9 x 7 along with a whole lot of other numbers.  All the other numbers didn’t give me a problem, but 9 times 7, at least in my brain, equals 54.

Once I finally figured out that  9 x 7 equals 63,not 54, the rest of the test was clear sailing for me but left me frazzled. 

I ended up getting 3 of the questions wrong.  I think Jen had a perfect score or wait, maybe she missed one, it doesn’t matter because naturally, she gloated because she did better than her mom on the test.

Sure, it was lots of fun taking that test.  Thanks Jen.

The really funny thing about this is that ….

I got the call to become a US Census worker and she didn’t.

Lord help us all if they think that hiring someone that missed 3 on the test is better than hiring someone that missed ONE.

Anyway, yes, I’m now a Census worker.  I was sworn in as a government employee.  Last week, I trained to become a professional fingerprinter. 

Indeed, if anyone needs their fingerprints taken, for any reason, I’m the one to call.  Keep that in mind.

This week, I’m going through the training to be an enumerator.

Yesterday, I had to fingerprint 20 people and let me tell you, I never want to look at anyone’s fingers ever again.

So I’m probably going to be pretty quiet the rest of this week in blogland because the training will be for the rest of the week and then the job will start over the weekend.  There’s not a whole lot of leftover time to work on that Clay Pot Pansy pattern or to get started on the Strawberry candle mat.

I’m finding out that this is not a “part-time, make your own hours” kind of job that they advertise.  They want up to 40 hours a week, working every night and every weekend until the job is done.

Already it’s a lot more than I ever expected.  But the people that I work with are terrific and it doesn’t seem like it will be difficult work  … and now that I know for sure that 9 x 7 =63, the math that might be involved will come easy.

Thank you Jen for forcing me to take that test.  :)

I’m not sure if that was a sarcastic thank you or not.  I’ll let you all know next week.

Happy Birthday Jennifer Michelle. She’s 28 years old today which means that 28 years ago, right now, as I type, I was in pure, painful, agony for hours and hours and hours until those blessed forceps grabbed her head and pulled. 

Let’s all take some time right now to thank the inventor of forceps. :)

Happy Day everyone!