The Census Takers
This is a fictional story based on the fact that my wife is one of the Enumerators doing the Census in our area. Most of the statements regarding the Census are accurate as best I could gleam as I didn't want to question her too closely to make her curious as to why I was asking. It's just something to entertain you and amuse my for the putting it together. Have a great day, wear a mask when you are out and be safe. To the story...
The Census...it made my life a living hell...for a while anyway. And in reality it wasn't really the Census, it was the fact that Genevieve (Genni or Vieve) decided she wanted to work to put some extra money in our checking account. She was always looking for part-time jobs since she had retired from full-time retail store management. She is 66 headed toward 67 but doesn't look her age. Her face has 'smile lines' at the corners of her eyes but otherwise she doesn't have lines. She's put on a few pounds since retirement but she still has a figure with a small waist on her just over 5' frame and her hips flare nicely. What draws men's attention is her 36D chest. She doesn't dress flamboyantly, she's actually rather conservative in her daily dress. Having retired she spends a lot of time in sweats both shirts and pants. This was also true whenever she wasn't working prior to retirement.
My name is Greg and I'm Genni's husband and friend for the last 47 years. I'm a couple years older than Genni who I met in college. We dated off and on, mostly on throughout her four years of college. After she graduated we married that summer, had a couple kids within the first 6 years and went through ups and downs and we got to her retirement. And we had to re-adjust to being empty-nesters and spending loads more time together. It was a little touchy in the first 5 or 6 months but we settled into a comfortable routine.
Genni had applied in February but the pandemic hit and she didn't hear anything until August. Before the stay-at-home order came down she had an interview then she'd been photographed and finger-printed for her background check. Then she didn't hear anything. At that point in August she got 3 calls in 4 days and she started training which had morphed into virtual with videos and computer-based tests. There were a couple conference calls, one lasting 3 hours. She was paid through all of this.
Around August 21
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she got all her supplies of paperwork ID badge, Census shoulder bag and the smartphone. She then had to go through some formatting of the phone and whatever. I stayed clear as she gets annoyed if I hang around while she's doing stuff for work.
By the end of August she was going out and working each day. The days were p to her as far as hours and Genni seemed to be happy each day. She related some of the people's she had talked with. During the early part of the second week of September she mentioned she had met a few enumerators working the same area she had been assigned.
Each enumerator got a list of addresses each morning and they'd go to those addresses to find out what the situation was there. Genni had found several abandoned houses with notices from the post office. She had found an address without a house which she marked as 'does not exist'.
The enumerators, one woman and two guys, Vieve met were from another county about 3 hours away. She said they had told her they were staying at the Best Western downtown and the Census was paying for the rooms & meals as well as their work time. We live near a city, not too large about 150,000 people with surrounding suburbs. We live a couple miles from the city center and I have walked into town to meet Genni when she was working. We'd met and gone to dinner a couple times before we came home.
Each evening Genni would post her availability for the following day. She was taking Wednesdays and Sundays off to break up the week. She was posting available time as 10 to 7:30 but had to get OT approved each time she went over 8 hours per day. As far as I knew she had never been denied the OT. I was packing her snacks and a travel mug of water for her each day and she was coming home for 'lunch' which was around 2 each afternoon. She'd spend around 45 minutes home then go back to work. Her assigned addresses were getting further away from home and by Friday of the second week she expressed doubts about coming home for lunch. Saturday she only spent 33 minutes home before she had to start back for her assignment.
Sunday morning was a very nice start to the day. She told me to take half a Sildenafil around 6 in the morning and we cuddled and played for the better part of an hour. We had breakfast then did some errands including grocery shopping. We spent time talking and playing some cards. We caught up with both kids and their children, our grandkids. In the evening we cuddled some more then I left her to watch shows she had on the DVR.
Monday morning I was up at 5:15 and wandering the internet. Genni had asked me to make sure she was up by 7:30 so she could do all her stuff and be ready to leave at 10:01. She backed out of the garage at 10 on the dot and put the car in park to enter her 1
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address. She said she was headed out about 7 miles away. She said she was going to be working out that direction, the western part of the county and she wasn't coming home for lunch. I wasn't to expect her before 7 and it might go to 7:30.