G066 to Window 3 please

my morning trip to the DMV today was like a conversation with my parents about boys - it veered on potentially disasterous and ended up thankfully innocuous.

10 minutes (which ain't bad on a monday morning in DMV time) after being assigned "G066," i got a flash on the screen summoning me to Window 3. ah, good ol' Window 3 (okay, i don't know what Window 3 is for either, but at least i got a window). so far so good.

behind the counter is a nice enough guy. jokes around with me about how i don't have to update my weight (ah, hrrmph, i mean, it hasn't changed since hs) on my driver's license renewal. done in about 7.25 minutes tops. smooth sailing so far.

then he tells me to head over to Window 29 to get my picture taken. i take a look - it's about 20 people long. greeaaaat. i get in line and to my surprise, it's moving at a decent pace (again, in DMV terms - anything that's not a snail's pace is a decent pace). finally i get to the front and the woman says "you aren't in the camera system. please go back to the window that you got this processed and have him figure it out."

i knew it! i knew they weren't going to let me get away this easy! they had to make me sweat a little before i got my get out of jail free card.

i go back to familiar Window 3 - a woman is upset in line in front of me with the semi-pleasant guy behind the counter (surprise, surprise). 8 minutes later, he's finally done with her, takes my papers and goes back to where i was - Window 29. (hmm, not seeing efficiency at play here...).

he returns and greets me with a promising sign of sitting down, sighing, rubbing his forehead and looking down. he says "well, it looks like you are in the twillight zone of the DMV." (could there BE a worse place to be???). apparently he has processed me through one end of the system and i have not showed up at the other end and they don't know where i am in the abyss. and there's no way to redo the whole thing without finding me in the abyss first. i hate those darn abysses.

it was in this moment that i felt my blood rising and thinking "i can stay calm right now or turn into a raging bitch." it's that key moment in customer service that we've all experienced - that moment where if the guy in any way were to act like he didn't give a rat's ass about my situation, the scale would have easily tipped to bad, bad things.

thankfully, he was nice. somehow retrieved my file and even went personally to the camera window and took my picture. the day was saved! Window 3 - thankfully innocuous. hooray hoorah.