I worked the 2010 census. A few thoughts on the subject:
1. Overall, I thought it was a great side gig and I enjoyed supporting the important public service of counting the country so the government can better plan things for the future. There was solid training on how to do the job properly, and I found it to be enjoyable work.
2. The job is has a built-in factor of diminishing returns. You have to visit the same properties a set number of times if the first visit doesn't work, so what ends up happening is that the first time you run a route, most of the people you catch are nice and happy to see you. On subsequent returns you eventually catch the really busy people who are on average less than happy to see you, as well as figure out which properties might be unoccupied/avoiding you.
3. The tone of the job is set by the type of neighborhood you are assigned. Generally, they will try to assign you routes as close to where you live as possible, the theory being that if you are from a given area, you are likely to be more successful as an Census enumerator there because you can find the addresses easily, have a sense of how to safely conduct yourself in that place, and possibly speak other languages if those are common where you live.
4. If you have any apartment buildings in your zone, they can be a pain in the ass. Sometimes the post office or building staff mistakenly put one person's census form in a different person's mailbox, and that can mess up the tracking of who's already filled their form in. Also, you may have issues with building security. Things go smoothest in single family home areas.
5. There are a lot of forms to manage (just the nature of the job). Not sure if things will change for this round, but my favorite one when I worked the Census was a sheet saying "I am a Census taker, blah, blah, blah..." in about 40 different languages, so that you could show that to someone if they answer the door and don't speak the same language as you. There are steps you can take to arrange for a translator if needed. That form made me feel strangely patriotic. America as "melting pot" and all that jazz. I barely had to use that form at all, but I felt it showed that the Census administrators had put forth good effort into planning for all possible situations.