I Thought A Primo Was a Pasta

I started working on the Board of Revisions for Montreal today (ok, yesterday, as of a few minutes ago). The whole process is a big messy piece of s@#t, since I still don't understand the freaking procedures or what the hell is going on.

In fact, I got there this morning and I still had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. All I knew is that my role was a "PRIMO" and that I was supposed to be able to check that people were on the voter list.

Anyway, for the next week or so, I am stationed in the Hampstead station... somewhere in the middle of Hampstead.... Wherever that is. It took me about 20 minutes to get to work by bus, and 30 minutes to walk home. Freaking bus. Might as well strapped on my rollerblades and just zipped my way there even faster.

The borough is about 5000 people large, and completely residential (especially with the houses and the older people). Thus, there was very little need to cram about 10 people at this station (a 12m * 12 m room) in the middle of a park, with about five or six revisions a day. Heck, there were two primos and two secretaries. Most of the time we were sulking in the room waiting for the next person to come by, especially after the chair told us not to go on the internet or play games on the computers.

The primo waits for people to come by, and they check if prospective voters are on the list. The secretaries do the initial changes in addresses, striking people off the list, or other things. There are three people who sit on the "board" who check through the paperwork of revisions that are then verified in person by the two other revising officers. And then there's the primo again... who sits and waits for people to come by.

Basically, I spent the day sitting or standing waiting for people to come by. The other primo, Mike, knew a lot more about what was going on, since he was there on Tuesday.

The secretaries, Clare and Nora, and one of the board members, Christine, were probably the closest in age to me. The others, Amos (the chair), Beverly (vice chair), the drivers, Dave and Daniel, and the coordinator, Tema, were all older. It was still a relatively lively working environment due to the craziness of many of the people working there.

I'll post more when I'm not as zombied as I am right now. I slept for 3 hours last night working on my last freaking assignment in physics ever.