The good professor Willard Spiegelman brings us a lesson today about renewing one’s driver’s license. For some solid reader service, jump like Fosbury.
Yesterday I went — as I think I must have gone every five years or so during my stay in Dallas — to the Department of Motor Vehicles office on Northwest Highway and Jupiter Road, in order to renew my driver’s license. The office is not pretty. The shopping strip in which it sits is half-deserted. There was a line of people. I waited my turn, went to the woman behind the desk, and gave her my license. She gave me a slip to fill out, and a little piece of paper with a number on it. It looked like the small tabs you get at a delicatessen counter. It had a number. It also said “Estimated wait: 50 minutes.”
I had violated my cardinal rule of daily life: NEVER GO ANYWHERE WITHOUT A BOOK. What was I to do? Well, I read The New York Times. That was 20 minutes. There was nothing to see, no place to walk, but I spotted a Church’s Fried Chicken stand on the other side of the desolate shopping center. I had an early, mediocre lunch. I returned to the DMV office. I waited 15 minutes more. Sixty minutes had elapsed. I looked at the screen and saw that there were still 50 numbers before mine. I did a rough calculation. I could be there for at least two more hours. Enough time to have completed a short novel.
Actually, to read anything I would have had to obey my second rule for happiness: NEVER GO ANYWHERE WITHOUT EARPLUGS. Everyone else was screaming on cell phones.
SO, I came home. I phoned two friends, both much worldlier than I. They said, “You fool: go downtown to City Hall.”
This morning I arrived at the office on Marilla Street at 8:15. I had brought, just in case, both ear plugs and the Confessions of St. Augustine (whose birthday is today). I was prepared.
I was in in and out in twenty minutes. My new license will be mailed within six weeks.
There are some lessons in the story above.
8 comments
Just how long has Willard lived here? I was told this about City Hall 15 years ago.
You can’t renew online?
Yeah and um, this is the same employer who wants to run your healthcare! But hey, maybe they’ll add an OR to City Hall!
Since I’m not in Dallas anymore I had to get a new DL in my adopted state. It only took 15 minutes and I walked out with an actual license–no slip of paper. I guess that’s what a state income tax will get you
I was completely horrified by my experience at City Hall, but I made the mistake of going on a Friday afternoon.
The service was everything you’d expect from unsackable civil servants running a protected monopoly, and the crowd was as svelte and literate as would be expected from a lifetime diet of WWE and Sonic burgers.
@JasonM, I had exactly the same experience. I could not figure out who these people were or where thay came from. Or why! They actually put on quite a show.
The people I dealt with at City Hall, and the overworked woman I dealt with at Northwest Highway, were all perfectly polite and competent. They were doing their jobs. We simply needed more of them there.
What this all has to do with health care is beyond me.
Finally, the omitted Augustinian writing that Freudians have longed for: “City of Self.”
The good Prof gets id.