So today I thought I was going to plunge into my favorite work duty this time of year, double checking standard costs for next year.  But no.  I walk past my mailbox, see an envelope and someone from Corporate has sent me a census form.  

I have no one but myself to blame for my doing these.  Not just for my plant, but for the platform I work in.  You see back in 2011 or so the bosses said to me:  hey, would you mind taking the census reports from grumpy tax accountant and getting them taken care of.  The reports at that time were as the bosses thought 2 years behind.  I had news for them.  there was another year lurking in the binder that hadn't been filed.  And I have this naggy thing in my career where if I have to wade in and 'fix' something, I tend not to give the things I fixed back unless forced.  So the census reporting migrated to my office where it has stayed.  

This year we drew the short straw for capacity utilization reporting.  I have NO clue what they do with this stuff.  And to be honest, we rather ball parked the thing because we don't really track cap utilization that closely.  A couple of years ago I had a quarterly census something or other that wanted to know a random sampling of shipments from a specific week and details on where they went including freight details (which was a joy since some things shipped international and they wanted details on when things crossed the border int Canada).   Today's interruption didn't take me that long, it was the mere annoyance of one of 'those' reports added onto a long to do list.  

Now I know what you are thinking.  it's just the census bureau.  It doesn't really matter.  uhhhh, in the business world, yes it does.  One of my bosses had worked at a different company were the US Census Bureau held up an acquisition or sale of part of the company because the reports were not up  to date.  So not doing them in the end is not an option.  And I make more sense doing it than grumpy tax accountant.  Although I do make the point whenever possible that someone at my divisions HQ really should do this reporting.  I know it's going nowhere.