Dear Census People: I’ve Had It

March 16, 2010

This is a very old house. It’s been through a lot of changes in its long life. At some point, it was carved into two apartments, and two families lived here. At some point after that, it was turned back into a single house. It was a single house in 2000, and it’s still a single house. But we can’t stop the Census folks from mailing us two forms. When they came yesterday, I was (predictably) annoyed. Which one do I fill out? Do I ignore the other one? Tear it up? Mark NO APARTMENT 2 IN THIS HOUSE and send it back? Or what?

Ah, no problem. The Census has a website. It’s at http://2010.census.gov. Don’t go there unless you’re prepared to waste a lot of time seeing how much of your hard-earned money can be wasted. It’s very elegant–kind of red, white, and blue but in a dignified way. It’s loaded with little Flash movies, and you can read it in about 50 different languages. You can follow them on Facebook, tweet with them on Twitter, read the Director’s Blog, watch multimedia presentations, or view their current ads. You can watch them on YouTube, and they have a Flickr account as well. Oh, and they’re sponsoring a NASCAR driver. Here’s what you can’t do on the site: Get help if there’s a problem with your form.

Oh, there’s a search box. Into it, I entered “trouble with form.” It regurgitated one suggested link–to a 500 plus K, 132 page PDF file, which I downloaded. There, in Chapter 13, on page 65 or so, I found two kind of, sort of, answers to my question. Neither fits. There’s a phone number. Maybe I’ll call it. Or maybe I’m just ticked off enough that I’ll wait for the census person to stop by.

So, today I’m awarding a gigantic onion to the Census people. A little less fluff, a little more substance, and you could have gotten this job done at a fraction of the cost. Shame on you!

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2 Responses to Dear Census People: I’ve Had It

  1. Fr. Orear on March 16, 2010 at 8:17 am

    Or you could pretend that Apt. 2 still exists and invent a resident. Maybe someone who lives every secret desire you’ve ever had, who does all manner of thing with all manner of people. Create a whole family of n’er do wells Make them a desperate band of illegal immigrants, last name El-Sayed, and see how quickly the government replies for THAT.

  2. Anne on March 16, 2010 at 4:43 pm

    Now there’s an intriguing possibility. The Good Old Madisons in Apartment 1, the El-Sayed Family in Apartment 2.

    Apparently the solution is to send both forms back without filling them in, noting something like NO APARTMENT 1 and NO APARTMENT 2. That brings a census person to the door, hopefully to clean up the mess.

    Now if you will excuse me, I have a secret rendezvous in Apartment 2…