The Chinese Hell of the DMV
Ok, ok...I'll write about the DMV. I've had several queries about what happened at the evil DMV so I'll tell you.
It was a dark and stormy night, well actually it was a bright and sunny day with highs around 65 and quite pleasant. This was a good thing because the line at the DMV at Tysons Corner went out the door. Literally. We got to wait for quite some time outside, as the bottleneck was located relatively close to the door. It is not a wise thing to put your "triage desk" in a place that effectively blocks the flow of people and necessitating a wait before you even got into the door. I can't imagine enduring that on a typical January day. Perhaps it would also be a good idea if there were more than two people working this triage, when neither of them seemed to speak Spanish and quite a number of those in line clearly would have done better with a Spanish speaking clerk.
Ok, so through the triage line I finally went, where I told them I needed to renew my driver's license, received my little letter and number coded bit of paper, appropriate application, and sat down to fill it out. It didn't take too long to finish the form and begin the wait. The good news was that I had my Treo and could play Galaga while waiting :-).
50 minutes or so later, I got called up and gave the nice man $10.00 and he went off to get my form "signed" I guess by some supervisor or something. The Australian man next to me was becoming clearly agitated by the clerk he was dealing with, and she was not to pleased with him. It was rather interesting to hear the Australian accent "now look here" followed with the Chinese accent of the clerk "you have too many things. Go away now. Too many things!" The Australian followed with "I was told I could do five now, then get back in line and do five more." Apparently he had MANY registrations to deal with for some reason. The Chinese clerk just kept repeating "TOO MANY THINGS!" Luckily, I got my form back and was told to go sit somewhere else "for two minutes".
So I sat and waited to be called at the happy fun picture place, and watched an African couple yelling at another clerk for some unknown reason, while only catching snippets like "We could do this in New York" and "what is wrong with you in Virginia?" The nice security man with the gun moved a bit closer to that one. About 20 minutes later, another happy woman then called me over, took my picture, then told me to go sit down again and wait for my license.
About 10 minutes later, I got my license, the picture wasn't horrific, I got out a side door so I wouldn't have to worry about Angry Australians or Aggravated Africans, and slithered home. Thank the gods that I don't have to do THAT again until 2010.