In 1980, I was out of work and needed a job. One that wouldn't be a problem for my back. I heard about the Federal government hiring to take the 1980 Census, so I applied. I was initially hired as an enumerator, who was one that went out into the field, but things quickly changed. The man in charge was a friend of my brother's, so I got a job as the assistant in the Special Places Department. Our offices were on the 7th floor of the Strom Thurmond Federal Building. I say "offices", but it was really one giant room with a bunch of files and a lot of desks.
On my first day, I had to take an oath to protect the country from people without and within. I asked who those people were, and they told me bad people. I think the oath now replaces without and within with enemies foreign and domestic. That makes more sense. Without and within what? That bothered me.
Special Places were those places were people lived that wasn't permanent. Schools, Hospitals, Homeless, Lodging, and other places. The goal was to count everyone, wherever they were, on one date. I was in charge of supervising enumerators who went to the colleges. We had a five-county area that we were in charge of. There were a lot of students to count. The enumerators were paid on the number of forms they gave out. I had one guy who went into a dorm and just dropped the forms on the floor. He came back and said he had delivered them to the students. A dorm counselor called me to complain that the census forms were all over the floor in the lobby. We fired that guy.
Another one of my jobs was to call every motel and hotel in the five-county area to ask what they charged for a night. The amount was important, because it depended on how the place was classified. I called one motel in Columbia, and they asked me if I wanted the hourly rate or the nightly rate. I told her nightly, and she said to take the hourly rate and multiply it by 8. Classy place. I also had the ability to send out US Marshals to a place that didn't comply with my questions. I called one motel, and the woman on the other end refused to give me the information. I told her that I would send the Marshals to her motel, and she said that I should go ahead an send them. So, I did. About an hour later, she called me back and told me that she thought I was kidding, and she gladly gave me the information I needed. Force works.
I also had the job of finding out why people had not paid their taxes in 7 years or more. Most of these people lived in rural areas. I learned how to find people. This was before the internet, so I had to get good at finding people. In the smaller towns, one could find names of people close to the name that I was looking for. Most of them were related to one another, or they knew them. I called one number and got hold of a woman. I asked her if her husband was home, and she told me that he had gone. I asked her when he would be back, and then she started crying. She yelled out that he was dead and hung up the phone. I didn't know that "gone" meant "dead". I do now.
Federal government work was fun but also hard. We only got thirty minutes for lunch, which was almost impossible to handle. Restaurants were few and far between. One of our workers was named Margaret. She had a convertible. She and I went to a restaurant across town and were back within 30 minutes. She ran all of the lights. Another guy I worked with was named Billy. He made things light with his jokes. Our job was high-pressure, so the lighter you made it the better.
Toward the end of the counting, we had cities and towns in the area go over our numbers. There was a formula that each person counted would go toward how much federal dollars they would get. It was something like $1500/person. Most areas agreed with our counting, but the city of Columbia didn't. They went over our figures and found discrepancies, so I had to go back over the numbers and our maps to determine what was correct. One place that the city claimed was a house was actually a dugout at a softball field. It got rather contentious. Going back and forth with them. We finally settled on a figure that was about 2000 more people than originally.
My responsibilities involved dealing with some very sensitive information. It was high-security. After working there 8 months, my boss called me into his office and asked me if I had filled out a security checklist. I had not, so they ran a security check on me. Fingerprints. The works. About a week later, he called me back into his office and told me that I was being let go. I failed the security check. Why? Because of my FBI file in Washington about my anti-war activities some 9 years earlier. So, for 8 months, I had been around very sensitive material. Now, I couldn't. I was told to shred all of my documents before leaving, but then Columbia tried to sue for more people. All of my notes were gone. Sorry, Columbia.
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