Census

A man driving a huge big Jeep banged on my door on Sunday evening. He was my Census Enumerator (sounds like a rubbish superhero, doesn't it?). He handed me the census form and told me that I should use a black pen when filling it in and to mark the boxes with a horizontal line. He then moved his finger on the paper from left to right, to demonstrate the concept of a horizontal line. I'm glad the instructions are clear, could you imagine the horror at the CSO when they find that people have been using vertical lines or, worse yet *gasp* a cross!! 

Comedy gold

This man must've been a comedian in the making, when, after me spelling my unmistakeably non-irish first and last names to him, he asked me if I preferred the Irish or the English language version of the form. Everyone's a bloody joker around here. I did ask him for a Finnish one, which he didn't have but he did tell me that by filling in my form correctly (I can only imagine this meant using horizontal lines drawn with a black pen) I would be providing valuable information, and who knows, come next census, there may be a Finnish language form available. Yup. I'm on the edge of my seat here, waiting for that to happen.

My Census Enumerator shall return in a couple of week's time to collect the form. In the meantime, I'm left wondering whether or not he gave me the piss-take version of the form seeing as some of the questions and the answer options are pure comedy gold. Under "Marital status" you can be "separated (including deserted)". What an odd turn of phrase. Surely if you're alone, separated, recovering from a break-up, you don't need people at the CSO wondering whether or not you kicked the useless partner you had to the curb, or maybe they just told you they were going out for some fags and a lotto ticket and never returned.

Fail

When they're asking "How well do you speak English?" one of your answer options is, indeed "Not at all". Surely if I mark that option (with a horizontal, black line of course) I'm indicating that I have not understood the question, in which case the whole form would prove null and void. Yes? I'm disappointed that the question "How do you usually travel to work, school or college?" doesn't offer "On horseback" as an answer option, seeing as the petrol prices around here are making me seriously considering going the Rubberbandits way of transport.

These kind of oversights are unforgivable, especially when they've though to add that the question "How many children have you given birth to?" is "for women only".


And I'm supposed to take this thing seriously...