A Trip to Wonderland

I went to renew my drivers’ license this past Saturday and felt like I had just steeped through the looking glass.

When I do my training classes on customer service, I ask attendees “What state government agency is universally hated in every state?” The answer I get most often is Department of Motor Vehicles. So Saturday after four years of avoiding going to the DMV I had no choice. It was close to the end of the month and it was a Saturday. The worst possible time to renew, but I had no choice; my license was going to expire on Sunday. Reluctantly I went and I was prepared for the worst.

As I pulled up to the main DMV office – the only one open on the weekend, I saw empty parking spaces. My first thought was that the DMV was now closing early in response to budget cuts. I even started to drive past the DMV when I noticed a couple of people walk in the door. I was shocked. Things looked strange and were getting stranger. It was almost as if I had seen a fully dressed white rabbit walking through the doors of the DMV.

I made a questionably legal U-Turn right into the parking lot to chase the rabbit and hoping no one saw that maneuver moved quickly inside the building to get lost in the crowd. As I dropped down the rabbit hole, I thought “Uh oh! Not a big enough crowd to get lost in.”

A Highway patrolman walked in the door. Was he looking for me? Like the Mad Hatter, I put my hat on, and pulled the brim down low in an effort to blend in as I joined the line to be screened.

In the DMV here, you have to be screened to move to the next level of bureaucracy. The process reminds me of the “tea party” where nothing makes sense. You have to stand in line to get permission to stand in line.

I quickly moved up in line until I was before one of the “screeners.” These are people who make sure you have all the right documentation BEFORE you get in the REAL line. In the past this line would have taken me 35 to 45 minutes on a good day. A good day would have meant being in the parking lot ten minutes before the door opens on a Wednesday in the second week of the month. On a Saturday towards the end of the month this line alone would have been a good hour plus wait.

But this line moved. It moved so fast, I couldn’t read my book because the people behind me kept telling me “the line moved.” I moved through the screen line in 13 minutes.

The attitude of the screener was different. In the past they would just hold out their hand to receive your paperwork, look at it and give you a number. You hoped they didn’t send you back home chasing some obscure piece of paper.

After receiving a service number, you would have to go and sit and wait for your number to be called. This time smiling like the Cheshire cat she greeted me, and after looking at my paperwork, called me by name and told me the renewal line was moving pretty fast and they would have me out pretty soon. Of course, though shocked she even talked to me, I didn’t believe her.

Once I got my number, I looked at the Call Board and saw there were 42 people ahead of me. Now this was more like the DMV I remembered. I sat down and started reading. I had been reading only about ten minutes when I looked up as saw there were only three people ahead of me. My first impulse was to look and see if my watch had stopped – no DMV line moves this fast. In the time it took me to check my watch and look up at the board again – MY number was up.

I looked at my watch. “Curiouser and curiouser!” I thought to myself. This can’t be real I must be dreaming because I had spent only 11 minutes waiting.

I went to the window, reviewed all my information, and paid and was told to go to the photo window. Four minutes after my number was up, I was on my way to the photo window. What happened next shocked me even more.

The clerk took my picture and then told me she thought it didn’t look good and asked my opinion of it. My head was spinning. Did I hear her right? It didn’t look good and she wanted my opinion? I thought they were trained to take bad pictures. I looked and agreed it was lousy.

Then just when you think things can’t get more shocking they do…she retook my picture FOUR TIMES until she got one we both agreed was good. Five minutes later I was walking out with a new drivers license.

I came in expecting a two to three hour exercise and walked out in a little over thirty minutes. Something had changed. What happened? The place was quiet. No one was stressed. People seemed happy. There were only two possibilities here. The first was this was the site of the first Stepford DMV operation. The second possibility was massive use of recreational drugs.

The is a third possibility that was so far fetched I didn’t even consider it until them: something has changed in the way the government does business.

It is a crazy world. Black is white. Bad is good. Corporations are now reviled for poor customer service and the DMV is the paragon of perfect customer service.