Actual Conversations Heard

WHAT I *SHOULD* HAVE SAID TO THE TELEPHONE CENSUS WORKER WHO’S BEEN TELEPHONICALLY HOUNDING OUR HOUSEHOLD FOR THE LAST SEVERAL DAYS WHEN HE FINALLY CAUGHT ME AT HOME YESTERDAY: “I’m sorry, but I’m currently in the throes of some as-yet-undiagnosed anger management issues and am therefore incapable of conducting this call in anything approaching a non-sarcastic tone, at best, and which will in all likelihood grow into naked belligerence and assholitry as the call progresses. And let me be clear that the reason for my anger is due entirely to the realization of how the next half hour of my life is going to be spent–which is to say, talkin’ ta you. Now, I realize it is our civic and legal duty to conduct census interviews, even the inconvenient and time-consuming ones such as your American Community Survey– a census survey, I might add, which asks more pressing and detailed questions about our personal financial data than are even required by the IRS. And given that civic and legal duty, I would normally like to be of assistance, especially since you have now assured me that this is to be our penultimate interview in the seven, count `em, SEVEN, semi-consecutive monthly interviews for this survey. (To your credit, you did take eight months off after the first four.) However, my suspicion that, as in the previous six interviews, the same questions will be repeated on multiple occasions during this interview session (beyond just asking the same questions about me and additionally about my wife, meaning multiples of two) will cause me to become further enraged at having to participate, as will the fact that our answers have essentially remained unchanged throughout our aforementioned six previous monthly interviews. Add to this the fact that the very specific financial information you seek to gather from us is of the sort that can be quite difficult to determine off the top of one’s head if you’re a freelancer as I am (such as the fact that I don’t always know how many hours I spent working on a freelance job if I am not being paid by the hour for it; and even if I was working by the hour, I don’t have that information on my person at all times). I fear therefore that this interview will only further fuel my ire at having to conduct it in the first place. This being the case, it’s probably best for all of us that you call back on another day, preferably one when my wife is home. I’m not saying she won’t be as irritated by your interview as I am, but she is at least able to mask it more skillfully than I am currently able. Thanks so much. Buh bye.”