Friday, June 22, 2018

13/ Government Spending (mini version)

Some years ago I was hired by the Census Bureau to administer tests to applicants for census-taker jobs. They said I had to drive about 25 miles every day to pick up my pay. This sounded crazy to me. I told them I was unwilling to spend my time and the price of gasoline doing that. They insisted, and so I said I wouldn't take the job. The end result was that they hired me—and hired a delivery service to drive my pay to me every afternoon.

Granted, this is crazy spending on a small scale. But does this mean large-scale government spending makes more sense? Unlikely.

9 comments:

  1. You have given me yet another reason to go back to bed and pull the covers over my head!

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  2. Who gets paid on a daily basis? And did you have to tip the delivery guy?

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  3. Helen's questions are my questions. Who besides day laborers and teenage babysitters gets paid daily?

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  4. I was producing a show a while ago and got someone who was a recently retired lifelong government employee to stage manage. She immediately started making endless charts and memos and protocols (WTF?) for the various actors/set dressers/costumers etc. I spent ages telling her to dial it back. She just kept saying "this is how we do things in the government." And I kept telling her that no one ever said they wished community theatre could be run more like government. She never gave an inch. What a interesting show that was.

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    Replies
    1. Ha! Again, I hope you write a comedic tragedy about your experiences in the theatre (dah-ling).

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  5. I have NO idea why they insisted on paying me every day. I'm sure I must have asked, but I'm equally sure their response was less than satisfactory. That wasn't the only crazy part of the job. I think I wrote about my experiences during that period, but I don't know where it might be. Quite possibly in the journal I kept on my computer at the time--the one I can't open because I don't have the password. The one that used a weird file extension not viable any longer.

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