DMV Visit

[Phoebe]

For some reason the DMV is the one place you will find the ultimate authentic cross-section of humanity in a given location. So many people have some sort of vehicle or otherwise need to be there in person. And for some reason it's always a terrifying experience where people are either driven mad by waiting in line or by the encounters they have inside, and therefore peel wildly out of the parking lot and nearly hit your car, or perhaps you have a lot of people who are newcomers to driving, which is why they're there in the first place, and then they almost hit you with their cars. Spending time at the DMV makes me feel like I live a really sheltered life. My vehicle was nearly rammed by multiple other drivers, I stood in line with an interesting assortment of humanity - including a woman who continued fanning herself the whole time even though we were standing right next to each other, which meant she was fanning all of her personal bodily aromas straight into my face, and then realized half the cars in the parking lot had people sitting and waiting inside them in the terrible heat rather than have to enter the building.

[Zen]

Our city is a reasonable sized city. The city of Champaign itself is nearly 85k and the Champaign "metro" area is rated as nearly 230k, which makes it not that much smaller than the area of Michigan where I grew up is now, though the Flint area had a higher population then... Recently we went for an extended period of time with NO DMV near the majority of the people in our metro area! It turns out that the extremely small building that housed our former DMV office had inadequate ventilation and was condemned as a heath hazard. For several years, evidently, the employees of that office had been suffering from the effects of what is referred to as "Sick Building Syndrome": "eye, nose, and throat irritation; headaches, lethargy, difficulty concentrating, and sometimes dizziness; nausea, chest tightness; and other symptoms."

What this meant is that we had to go about an extra 30 minutes round-trip to Monticello or Rantoul to go to the DMV in one of those smaller towns. Sure, those two towns are technically still "inside" the Champaign metro area, but nearly 145k of those 230k people live within 6 miles of that old DMV office that was condemned. The drive time for the three facilities from my house, for instance, is 8 minutes for the old one, 22 minutes for Rantoul, and 28 minutes for Monticello.

Now, don't get me wrong! I'm really glad they closed that old location! I expect Stan will back me up on this, as he probably had to go there a couple times while he lived in Champaign as well... the place was a dump! It was tiny; the lines frequently went all the way to the door; they had about 40 or 50 nasty plastic chairs lined up for people waiting to take the driver's test (adding to the total number of bodies exhaling in the building) at one of the six to eight computer terminals (pumping out heat); and it was about the size of a SMALL gas station convenience store. About half of the space was taken up by a huge L-shaped desk with filing cabinets behind it where the employees worked. There were also what looked to be some offices or something on the end as well, but I couldn't say for sure. It could have just been storage or the furnace room or something.

The new facility is in an existing strip mall where an old hardware store closed. I haven't been there, but it must be better than the old place.

The old location had its own parking lot and certainly suffered from many of the issues that Phoebe is talking about, since the parking lot was also too small and it was usually a challenge to get a parking spot and not have someone hit you while driving in it.

Interestingly, the apartment complex of one of the guys Stan and I used to game with, who hosted our gaming sessions for a quite a while, was right behind that old DMV office. That is my main memory of that part of town! Good times! (My hideous memory for names is attacking me now... he was a competitive ballroom dancer... WTF was his name Stan? ARGH!!!! I'm too freaking old!!! Wait, no... I didn't remember peoples names in high school either... I guess I just suck.. LOL!)

EDIT: Oh, but the funny thing is, before the old place closed down, we still took my son out to the Monticello DMV to take his driver's test, because common knowledge around here says that it is the place to go. Basically, the driving test there is EASY AS HECK. No traffic, only one traffic light in the town, really. Pretty much a simple, low stress driving test.

[Phoebe]

That was a very amusing tale (though sad for the employees) and expresses the very essence of the situation. It's the special combination of a minimally-funded bureaucratic agency designed to take people's money, where nobody wants to work and no possible incentive exists for customer service, and every stripe of humanity shows up to a physically and technologically subpar facility.

Just consider the routines: to get license plates I had to receive three pieces of paper mail, make two phone calls (one to a crazy person who thought that "by May 30" meant "after May 30" and also thought I was the stupidest person on earth for not grasping this), and show up in person only to pay an inexplicable $12 fee.