03.13.2004
MVA
I renewed my Maryland driver's license yesterday. We've got these things around here called MVAExpress, which are MVA offices (DMV offices to most of the rest of the country,) which offer a limited number of services, of which license renewal is one.
The office opened at 8:30, so I arrived at maybe ten after eight in order to avoid the inevitable line. True to form, though, I waited in the car for a while anyway, as one of those already waiting was clearly regaling the others with some colorful, handwaving tale, sloshing his coffee around and beaming his every-other-tooth-missing smile. Had I brought my recording device along I'd have joined them, but hearing that kind of rant without being able to record it for later pains me too much.
Eventually I got in line behind about eight others. In the ten minutes I waited there I did get to hear these strangers sharing their experiences with being stuck behind teenage drivers talking on cellphones, and arguing about whether or not Maryland has a law against that. Later the door opened.
Inside they herded us into three lines. One was for tag returns and information, one for a whole bunch of other crap, and the third was solely for those of us renewing our licenses. I was third in that line. There were four counters occupied by MVA functionaries, plus some Pakistani dude walking around behind them, and a couple of other persons shuffling to and from the Information desk. Good odds, I thought, except that they only took the first person from my line right away. Two of those from the miscellaneous crap pile got to go, and the information desk had three or four customers milling around in front of it. Still, surely it wouldn't be long.
Then I noticed a murmering sound from the desk persons. I figured out quickly that they were having some sort of difficulty with their computer system. The old white woman at one of the desks, serving the person who had been first in the renewal line, was pressing what appeared to be her "Enter" key slowly and methodically, at a rate of about five keystrokes a minute. She was looking around her while she did it, as if she were maybe waiting for someone to tell her when she could stop. An old, well-dressed black man was doing basically the same thing. An Indian woman appeared to be having better luck; or at any rate she wasn't looking around much, and she was hitting more keys than just Enter.
After more mumbling the Pakistani dude picked up the phone which was hung strategically on the wall behind all of the desks. It had a very, very long cord. He began shouting things to the service people. "Log out. Okay. Log on. Okay. Log Out. Okay..." He then drifted toward the service people I couldn't see, and also out of my hearing range. The Indian lady then began telling some of the others different things to try. "Hit enter, then tab, then enter, then spin around in your chair, then scratch your chin..."
For all this, that woman gave me hope. She wasn't just hitting enter. She managed to get through with whatever she was doing for the person at her station, and then she got up to help the old black guy. She grabbed his wrist to stop the pressEnter-release-pressEnter-release motion. She whispered something into his ear, I imagined I heard her saying, "relax, everything will be alright."
The guy on the phone came running over to her to say something. Then he ran back and hung up the phone. "No one else is having a problem," he said, confident that this was good news.
"We're still having a problem," said the old woman still striking Enter.
The Pakistani guy then walked out of my sight, returning in a minute with a younger black man. "Call the help desk," the Pakistani was saying to the black guy.
The Indian woman was massaging the old black man's back. The customer there was looking around with that, "Are you seeing this?" look on her face. The young black guy who now had the telephone was trying to find the number for the helpdesk while the Pakistani massaged the shoulders of the Indian woman massaging the shoulders of the old guy.
At this point I noticed that none of the stations had phones; the phone on the back wall was apparently the only one. That long cord was a damn fine idea, though apparently no one had figured out how to talk to the help desk on the phone while simultaneously sitting at their station trying to fix their machine.
A puffed-up white policeman came in from outside at around ten 'til 9. "Everyone sitting quietly at their computers. This doesn't look good," he said helpfully before heading somewhere out of sight with his cup of coffee.
A few more customers finished with whatever they were doing. I was suddenly the next license-renewer in line. At the information desk, a man who was apparently from Thailand was having U.S. immigration law explained to him by a droning someone-or-other. "Your wife will have to have the letter from the State Department, because she has diplomatic rights," the drone was saying.
The man mumbled something back to the drone. "Yes," the drone responded, "she'll need two forms of identification, also, including a valid passport. She is type D, right?"
mumble-mumble
"Okay, but you'll have to get a letter. Go talk to your embassy, or, or, or I don't know who you're supposed to talk to, but we need that letter from the State Department. Can she drive in her country?"
"Um, I, no, I mean I think yes, I mean I don't know."
"Okay, well she'll need that letter. Let me check with my boss." She then walked over to the Pakistani guy and asked something about diplomatic drivers licenses.
He responded, "Type D? Or Type A?"
"She's type D. I never heard of type A," said the drone.
"Yes, type D and type A need the letter," said the Pakistani guy.
"She'll need the letter," said the drone. The customer left, obviously very comfortable that he now knew how to proceed.
I noticed that the Indian woman was no longer at her station, or rubbing anyone's shoulders, or anywhere in sight. It was 9am, probably time for a break. The other customers were all still trying to get whatever they came for; the license-renewer before me was sitting in front of the old woman who was again repeatedly hitting Enter.
An hispanic girl, trailed by two children, walked in from outside and walked up to the information desk. The information drone walked out from behind the desk and walked her over to the old Enterpusher's station, and had her sit down beside the other license-renewer. "You'll do that here," the drone said.
The old woman finished with the license-renewer at her station and then began helping the hispanic girl. I sat and watched, taking notes for next time: this girl was getting her license renewed. Apparently the procedure is to skip the lines entirely, go to the information desk, act stupid, and have someone escort you to a station.
Eventually the old woman handed the hispanic girl her new license moved on to me. She was very polite, and funny. "Let's see how slowly I can help you this morning," she said before resuming her Enter-pressing. Eventually she verified that my weight was 205. "Yes," I said, before mumbling, "my target weight."
When taking my picture, the woman made sure to maximize the girth of my chin by saying, "you have to look down further. Further. Further. Okay, there." I could barely breath by the time she took the picture.
"Thank you for your patience," she said as she handed me the laminated picture of my overstuffed, scowling face.
Other stuff:
NASA Schedules News Briefing About Unusual Solar Object "Dr. Michael Brown, associate professor of planetary astronomy, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. will present his discovery of the most distant object ever detected orbiting the sun. He and colleagues made the discovery as part of a NASA-funded research project." (found on root.cellar)
More on Howard Stern's anti-Bush campaign. (found on The Birdhouse Blog)
