If you've never been to 625 Fulton St in downtown Brooklyn, I really recommend a visit as it's a pretty amazing monument to bureaucratic madness. It houses the Brooklyn offices of the Social Security Administration, the IRS, a branch of the Department of Labor, and the census to name a few. I had actually been there a few months ago to order a new social security card for the dual purposes of getting a NYS driver's license and getting my merchant mariner documentation (guess which one I've followed up on.) At the time I felt the potential for madness, but it hadn't yet become the kinetic force I encountered on Thursday.
When I arrived, there were two signs outside directing you to one door for the IRS and one door for Social Security. The SSA line wasn't quite out the door yet, so I decided to try my luck over there first. I asked the security guard where to go for the census, and he told me to go talk to the security guard next door. I talked to the security guard next door, and she grouped me with a bunch of people also waiting to go up to the census office. She said that someone was on their way down for us. I waited for about twenty minutes as people going to various other offices were shuttled through the metal detectors and into the elevators. When someone finally came down, she seemed to have absolutely no idea why so many people were waiting for her. She eventually figured out that there were three of us (including myself) who were waiting for our appointments to get our paperwork filled out, and we were brought upstairs. Sadly, my box of razor blades which I happened to have in my backpack was confiscated.
As you may expect, filling out the paperwork wasn't too exciting, except for the beginning where we were each handed folders with our names on them and the information for each of our training sites. It felt like I was receiving my dossier for my next secret agent mission, of which I have many. After everything was filled out, we had to get fingerprinted. One of the ladies who was there with me mentioned that she didn't have to get fingerprinted when she did the census ten years ago, and the fingerprinter said that it's new homeland security regulations. This brought up two things: 1)creepy feelings that now that I'm employed (albeit temporarily) by the federal government and homeland security has my fingerprints, I'm forever traceable. Even though I almost certainly already was, this pretty much cements it. And 2)what does the lady who worked for the census ten years ago do in the intervening decades between censuses? While I'm sure that similarly to myself, she just needed work both times and the census pays really well, I like to think that maybe she is fabulously wealthy with no need to work, but feels so passionately about the census that she signs up to do it every ten years. That would be fun, right?
The fingerprinting was a little trickier than one might have thought. I had to get two sets taken, and my second set kept smudging and I was scolded by the woman doing it for not relaxing my arm and wrist so she could apply the proper amount of pressure. She was nice enough about it, but I couldn't help flashing back to my little league coach yelling at me from the dugout to just relax while I was standing in the batter's box. If anyone reading this does or ever plans to coach little league, here's a tip: yelling at a ten year old to loosen up in front of a crowd of parents and other kids doesn't produce the desired effect. I think at one point I actually turned to him and yelled something along the lines of, "I am relaxed, this is just how my shoulders are!" I wasn't planning on writing about that at all, but it just came out. I guess that must have been more traumatic than I realized. Dang.
Training starts on Monday, so I will soon know exactly what I'm going to be doing, and I will certainly share that information, don't you worry. Also, my most recent career epiphany was that I should be a doctor. Too bad I haven't taken a science class since I was 16, and that was marine biology.
xo,
mj
ps Did you hear about the new biopic coming out about the world's foremost criminal fingerptiner?
It's called Robin Hood: Prints of Thieves
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