To the OP the DMV is a special kind of hell. They seem to hire from a selection of trolls that are then apportioned out among the fifty states.
Living in Washington DC I have had people tell me that the prospect of registering their car in DC was a major reason they wouldn’t move from the 'burbs into the city. You see for a city of a half-million souls we have two locations open. It took my wife and I twelve full hours of standing in lines (actuall 11 hours 41 minutes to be exact, and yes I kept track) over five trips to get our car registered.
We also have the bright idea of having ONE inspection station in the entire city. Yes, that is correct there is one place in the city to get your car inspected. It can take just about forever. Some people wait the entire day and have to go home and come back the next day.
The DC DMV would have to win any competition for the worst in the country. I dread getting a new car because I will have to go through all this again.
You have my sympathies, Juniper200. Welcome to PA, the Commonwealth from hell, whose official definition of speed and efficiency makes drying oil-based paint on a humid July afternoon look quick.
Where else can you find 20 miles of traffic cones and concrete barriers, with the speed reduced to 10 MPH just so you can pass thirty PENNDOT workers scraping a dead groundhog off the roadway. (OKAY-three were scraping, in shifts, three supervisors, six sweepers, six sweeper supervisors, eight truck drivers, one cone superintendent, one safety analyst, one district engineer, and an animal sensitivity coordinator/press liason.)
Absolutely excellent rant. My heart bleeds for you. If I’m ever in a situation like that, may the Great Spirit give me the strength not to go completely apeshit and commit a really satisfying felony or two.
Oh, and lest anyone think the New Jersey Bureau of Motor Vehicle Services is a model of twenty-first century efficiency:
I needed registration for a car I bought from my friend’s sister, but when she signed the title over to me, she signed in the wrong place, so it looked like she was buying the car rather than selling it.
She crossed it out and signed it again, so it was obvious what she meant, but the DMV people weren’t having it. They wanted a letter from her stating that she was selling the car to me, and not the person crossed out on the title (herself).
So I had to call her and ask her to write this letter:
To whom it may concern: I am the owner of this vehicle, and I’m selling it to cuauhtemoc. I have no interest in selling it to myself, or purchasing it from myself.
Keep in mind, this is exactly what the DMV asked for, I wasn’t being a smartass or anything. So I went back there, and the hellspawn at the counter said “Oh, we didn’t need this. The title was fine the way it was.” So I took out my Uzi and blew everybody away, then I burned the place down and pissed on the ashes. You might have heard about it on the news.
I feel your pain too, Juniper200. And I hope next time when you go back you are successful at setting Captain Triage on fire…or at least make him smolder a little.
Here’s my own DMV horror story and I’ll give you the short(er) version. Recently, my license expired because well, because I’m an idiot. A very forgetful idiot. I was forced to retake the road test again in order to get my license at age 30. Oh, thinks I, this will be rather simple, after all, I have been driving for about 13 years now. So I brushed up on the basics and made my way down to the local DMV.
I walked in and to my surprise found NO LINES. I took the written test and passed with flying colors. Big surprise. Then, I was ready for the road test. A woman with no smiling muscles was assigned to me and we were on our way. I executed a beautiful 3-point turn, remembered to look over my shoulder when changing lanes, parked up and down a hill, backed up 100 ft in a perfectly straight line, etc. I wasn’t even nervous and after driving through a small neighborhood with about 30 stop signs, I made my way back to the DMV parking lot. I parked the car and gave a big sigh of relief and said, “Boy, I’m glad that’s over with! Sure am embarassed to have to retake the test when I’m 30.”
The driving instructor looked at me with a smug smile (or what I assume was her version of a smile since she apparently didn’t have smiling muscles) and said, “You failed”.
What. the. HELL?? I thought she was kidding and said so. “Nope.” she said. “You failed because you failed to stop properly at stop signs. You were stopping and then pulling up a few feet past the stop signs and stopping again.”
I tried to explain to her that I was doing that because I couldn’t see around the overgrown trees and bushes. She said it didn’t matter. I assume that if I had stopped “properly” and then pulled out and hit the dump truck that I was unable to see coming up the street, I’d be smashed flat and dead but I’d have my license, by God!
She went on to point out that I had also committed the grievious error of turning left before she said to do so. I pointed out the fact that there was a WALL directly ahead and NO ROAD to the right so logically, I assumed I was to turn LEFT.
Oh, and I also failed to hold my hands in the correct "10 and 2 O’Clock positions on the steering wheel. I was more at “11 and 4” which was unacceptable to the evil DMV minion giving the test. Sigh So, yes, at age 30 I failed my driver’s test. And I also figured out why there were no lines in that particular DMV. Everyone else in town knew that it was at the center of DMV hell and had sense enough to stay away from it.
Also, another data point to wave in the face of that bozo (sorry, didn’t mean to impugn the dignity of clowns everywhere): I just changed my licence from, ahem, Pennsylvania to Texas, and I didn’t have to present no steenking birth certificate.
Some years back, I had to retake a driving test (also in PA, natch), and the state cop who does the examination threatened to fail me for the same reason. I don’t know how, but some psychic jiu-jitsu related to my look of utter incredulity managed to get him to relent.
I remembered reading something a while ago that the ‘optimal’ hand postion wasn’t at 10 and 2 anymore. A quick google search turned up this site. Smart Motorist - Safe driving position
Better than calling the cop, call the court to which your tickets were assigned (I’m assuming that there’s an address/phone number on your ticket.) Explain your situation, and the steps you’re taking to comply as quickly as possible. Back up the phone call with a written letter (a must have piece of documentation if any dispute arises later.)
Amaaaaaazing rant, Juniper. Never before have I been prouder to have you in my sig line.
It’s a shame you had to come to PA, though. The best part is that as soon as you’re actually allowed to drve, your car will simply be swallowed up by one of our gargantuan potholes, thanks to the glorious PennDot work ethic.
Excellent rant. Excellent.
Not knowing what your line of work is, this might be reduntant. But you should write for a living.
[slight hijack]
My own experiences with public services (and to some extent businesses) in the U.S. is now 18 years old. But I still have horrific memories from my touches with banks, insurance companies, INS, DMV and the like. I simply cannot understand why the richest, most powerful country in the world can’t have a smooth and well working bureaucarcy like most European countries have. I expect it to have changed by now, but as late as 1985, to withdraw money from my bank account (Allbank in Chicago), the woman working the teller had to walk over to a file cabinet to compare my signature on the withdrawal slip, with my signature from when I opened the account. Amazing.
[/slight hijack]
Yeah, but to arrive at the driver’s license bureau, you have to avoid psychos threatening to throw themselves off bridges, horrific car accidents on highways 360 and 35. And that’s just yesterday’s traffic report.
Hey, no problem. I only work in the office about two hours a week, and of course, living in Euless and working in Arlington the logical way to go is via 360. So of course the one time all week I am on 360 is when this joker decides to pull his/her attention-getting stunt (aside- I have great sympathy for anyone attempting suicide - but not when they go to such extravagant lengths to make sure EVERYBODY KNOWS ABOUT IT)! It wasn’t until I got to work that I found out exactly what the problem was. Thing is, as you may well know, 360 is really the only north-south corridor in Arlington. 157 is all messed up because of the construction, and it’s stop-and-go when 360 is NOT shut down. I tried 157 once when 360 was merely slow and it took me an hour and a half to get home. My only logical choice was to go the 20/820 route, which didn’t take as long as I thought but was WAY out of my way.
Uh, Juniper, according to PennDOT’s own website, you do not NEED a driver’s license. Not if you have another one of the documents listed on List A on the website. Do you have a valid passport? Print this linked document out, take it back with your passport, and shove it up the dickhead’s ass!
A friend of my daughter went into a store in NC to buy beer and came out shaking his head… it seems the clerk there had carded him and told him he had a fake license.
How did she know it was fake? Why because there is no such state as Delaware!
