True Story:
I went to the DMV yesterday. I guess when people leave New Jersey, they don't usually come back, so there was a lot of confusion over which forms I needed to fill out and which documents I needed. Was I renewing my registration? Or maybe this would be considered a brand new registration? And by their account, I was missing 3 or 4 documents required to get everything done. Since I've just moved back to Jersey, I needed to redo pretty much EVERYTHING: driver's license, car registration and plates, car inspection. At one point, they also told me I'd have to retake the driver's written test. Which is about when I really lost it.
I decided then that the best way to handle the situation was to simply act like I didn't need any of those documents or special procedures. I figured, if they didn't know the appropriate work flow to give me what I needed, then the only thing standing between me and my fully licensed glory was them. Why not simply pretend that I knew what they were supposed to do and guide them accordingly? Surprisingly, that actually worked.
A quick aside about the NJ DMV. It takes roughly 3 times as long to go through there as it did in California. California was all about those deli-counter number tags. They assigned you a letter and a number and when you were called, they took care of all your stuff at once. In New Jersey, they are ALL about the assembly line approach. First the reception area. Then the document checkers. Then the counter, the waiting room, the counter again. And if you're really lucky, that's when you get to leave. If you came to the DMV for more than one thing, you need to start over again.
If the lines were short, it wouldn't be an issue. But due to budget cuts and the miserable economy, my county (which contains Newark) halved the number of DMVs from 4 to 2. Additionally, one of the remaining DMVs only does licenses, not registrations or inspections. Which means, 800k people are attempting to use this one DMV per year. Tell me that's not an infrastructure problem of the highest magnitude.
4 comments:
"I guess when people leave New Jersey, they don't usually come back..."Wahaha!
oh i beg to differ :) you've been using that trick on your coworkers and subleads now for a while :) I think health connect was just the training ground ;)
I thought NY was bad.
New Jersey is 5x worse than any other state out there, when it comes to the DMV. If it's not a crazy person in your face about "stealing" their pen, then it's the folks behind the counter flipping out because you put a toe past the yellow line.
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