The Test

There has been a request for me to tell the story of the census job test.

All one has to do to be a census enumerator is call a number, then take a test.  And pass the test, I assume.  My test was at the Ocean Beach Recreation Center.

I walked in to the room and saw the dregs of society.  I prejudged them, and decided they were all scum bags.  Then, I felt bad, and decided that maybe they were all just in a tough time like me, and they just needed any kind of job to get by until something real comes along.  So, I gave them a chance. 

The man in charge gave us a form to fill out, with our name, address, availability, and a spot for us to write in any crimes we have been convicted of.  It took us two hours to fill out this form.  He went down the list of things to fill out, one by one, making sure everyone understood what they were supposed to write.  It would have taken me maybe two minutes to fill this form out unsupervised.

As soon as we got to the part about confessing to our crimes, everyone starts asking the man in charge if their specific convictions count as something they need to put down.  Everyone but me, of course.  He said, yes, every conviction needs to be written down or else they'll find it on the background check and think you were hiding it.  Everyone still wanted to explain their situation and see if it had to be confessed.  It was excruciating.

This was the point where I gave up on this lot, and decided my original prejudging was correct.

Test time!  We had 30 minutes to answer about 25 questions.  These questions require the reading, math, and analytical skills of maybe a third grader.  An American third grader.  I finished in about 15 minutes, but we weren't allowed to leave when we were done so I just had to sit there.

Only one other person finished the test. 

When the 30 minutes was up, the man in charge collected our tests and said that he needed to talk to some of us because we didn't fill out our forms (the ones with our names, addresses, and convictions) correctly.  "Some of us" turned out to be everyone but two people.  Every single person (there were about 20 of us) couldn't fill out this cinchy form correctly, except for me and one other older woman. 

We were finally excused.  I was so depressed.  Where had I gone wrong?  What decision was the one that led me to this point - to be in this room with these people?  How can so many people be so stupid?  They can't finish a test that a third grader would breeze through, how can I live in a society where it is acceptable for people to be walking around that dumb?  Why are people content to be dumb, it doesn't take that much effort to understand simple concepts?


You can look at a practice test, which is almost the exact same as the real test, on the census website.  Just Google it if you're interested to see if I am exaggerating.  I assure you, I'm not.