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Wednesday, August 13, 2003

Kids, I have seen the devil, and his name is the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration.

I woke up early this morning (noon) in order to go get my license issues resolved. With birth certificate, social security card and two proofs of residence in hand, I set off with one of my housemates to conquer the local chapter of the Motor Vehicle cult. Upon arriving, I noticed a few things: first, that nobody knew how to drive. This would normally not bother me too much except that they were, at the very least, present to get a learner's permit. Anyone who stops suddenly blocking the lanes in both directions in order to drop someone off can just give up now. Second, if you take the MVA to be a microcosm of the state of Maryland, I can tell you for a fact why the economy is failing: a majority of the state is comprised of slightly overweight girls who aspire to, one day, with a lot of hard work, make their way up the social ladder to "skank." Thirdly, having six employees who do nothing but check to see that people are staying in line while a total of four employees actually help people is the most inefficient possible method of actually helping people. As if they care.

So, I worked my way through the first line to a desk where a woman checked all the aforementioned proofs of my identity (ostensibly because there is a huge run of somewhat well-dressed white 20-somethings trying so hard to emigrate to Maryland from Colorado). At this point, it should be noted that one proof I used was my lease. My housemate, who I mentioned earlier, had THE EXACT SAME LEASE with a difference, obviously, only in the "tenant:" line. They accepted mine without comment. They rejected his. The only explanation I can concoct for this is that randomly screwing people gets the desk lady off, and not in the same way as, say, Kobe Bryant. So I got a number, and my housemate didn't, rendering his purpose for being there at least mildly moot. My number? Three hundred and forty-seven. Scratch that, three hundred and forty-seven A. The number they were on? One hundred and forty six. I was two hundred and one satisfied customers back.

I naturally assumed (note: incorrectly) that the gobs and gobs of people sitting around were homeless prostitutes who just took numbers for the sheer sake of getting some shelter until nighttime, and my number would come up momentarily. Or at least within an hour. After all, there were something like 30 stations lining the room - there's no way it could take more than, say, an hour and a half if each person took ten minutes. So I did what most people would do in my situation. I drove home and got lunch. Came back hurredly about half an hour later, and they had advanced to a mindblowing 154. They had served EIGHT people in half an hour. "Hm!" I said to myself at this point, "Maybe this was a BAD idea..." but alas I stayed, possibly out of a sense of masochism. To sum up: Over the course of the next hour and fifteen minutes they advanced all the way to... 182. This meant that, being a hundred and seventy people back would put me at being served, literally, sometime on Friday. But I still stayed.

Then an interesting thing happened, something which I'm not sure I can explain, with either my physics or mathematics background. The numbers... went backwards. They went... from 182... back to 178. This was unacceptable. This was the last straw. If they weren't even going to stay to any sort of sequence, I didn't see why I should wait around for these jerks to get their acts together. So I left, to go another day at opening.

Look, I can understand if there's a serious disease or a plague of locusts descending upon your city that you need your city workers somewhere other than the MVA... but seriously, what the hell is wrong with these people? I can't even get my license fixed because they've decided that having a workable, efficient system might actually make them productive, which is a sin in the eyes of the MVA church? I started thinking of plans to get back at them. My first plan involved getting a 70 year old and placing them in front of the building in a car and telling them to back out, which would, if fruit markets are to be any guide, result in many deaths when the car flew through the front doors. My second plan, a better plan, involved hiring people to hijack planes to fly in to the building. The second plan has the benefit that the US government is apparently not interested in finding the people behind flying aircraft in to government buildings and/or are too inept to do it, but the downside that it's horribly cliche. The first plan has the obvious downside that it means I have to interact with old people in a manner which does not involve mugging. So alas, my attempts at MVA retribution are all but dashed unless someone can enlighten me as to a workable plan of attack in the near future.

Fucking cops.

cranked out at 3:48 PM | |

 
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