Introduction

[celestinenox]

Hi guys. ::waves:: I came here from a link in another community, one about writing, because people were sharing ideas on how to find character names for writing projects. :)

Really why I'm interested in this community though is because I'm a birth certificate clerk at a hospital in Louisiana (U.S.), and names are sort of my business. :)

I don't know what the protocol for new members is, but it seems a little strange to me to just jump in an old thread without introducing myself. So, hi everyone!

Comments

[laminy.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I bet you see all the crazy-ass names then. Welcome :)

[celestinenox]

Yes, and I see all kinds of other things that make me want to cry. I just had to get a birth certificate signed by a minor father who only finished through 7th grade and not only couldn't sign his name in cursive (I hear more and more people can't sign cursive these days), but didn't even know how to spell his full first name.

His name is Christopher.

[velkoria.livejournal.com]

that... is the saddest thing I've read in about... months.

[celestinenox]

This job makes we want to cry every few days or so.

[sarahmarie.livejournal.com]

Ooh, how do you become a birth certificate clerk?

[celestinenox]

Well, the hospital I work at it state-operated, so I had to take the state civil service exam before anything else. It's probably a different process through privately-owned hospitals. In my particular case, the supervisor at the time (thank the gods she's gone now, though this did help me) specifically wanted to hire someone who wasn't already with the state so that if it didn't work out, she could fire me before the probational period was up (through the state, you have to be pretty awful times a hundred to get fired).

Depending on the birth certificate laws where you are, and the volume of births at whatever hospital you'd be working at, it can be a high-stress job. In my experience, it isn't only about birth certificates; you have to know all the related laws by heart or know where to find them, you have to answer questions about them, I've had to help people through the process of adding fathers on birth certificates later, and applying for delayed certificates of birth for people who never had birth certificates to begin with.

The real high-stress comes from enforcing the law. In Louisiana, if the mother is married, her husband is considered legally the father of the child even if another man is biologically the father. Until the mother has been divorced at least 300 days or longer, we have no choice but to put her husband on the birth certificate as the father, or submit an incomplete birth certificate if she refuses to provide his information. This... causes a lot of stress. Of course the women are going to be upset and angry, and few of them have the presence of mind at that moment to understand that it isn't us that's doing this, we're just the messengers. We're only enforcing the law that's already there. I've also had biological fathers (drunk and sober) in my face yelling at me.

So. Yeah. Point being, depending on where you'd be working, it can be a really high-stress job and it's not for everyone.