we love bureaucracy

instead of going to oracle for my wednesday meetings or packing to fly out to austin this afternoon, what did i choose to do this morning?

i choose a lovely trip to the department of parking and traffic to renew our residential parking permits. because they expired on may 31st. and it seems like it’s june already, and they’re nowhere to be found.

not that i didn’t try to renew them by mail, having sent in the renewal form and check two weeks ago. but seeing as the check hasn’t been cashed yet, who can afford to wait for the forms to end up in the proper pneumatic tube slot?

getting there shortly after 9am (note to future suckers: the office actually opens at 8am, so if you want to be there first thing in the morning you need to get up earlier, slacker!), i wait in the long ass line for about an hour, when i finally turn the corner and realize that the line doesn’t just wrap around, but there’s this whole back corner, just like disneyland. your wait from this point: until hell freezes over.

i’m in line so long that i:

1. actually win several games of solitaire on my handheld.
   
2. listen in on an hour-long con-call.
   
3. realize that i grabbed the registration for the land cruiser and not the jeep in error.
   
4. call heather and ask her to bring the jeep registration. and a gun so i can shoot myself.
   
5. move about ten feet in the 45 minutes it takes for her to arrive at the sixth level of purgatory, escorted by virgil.
   
6. wait another hour.

when i finally get to one of the golden windows, i’m confronted by the SLOWEST TYPIST IN THE WORLD. i present the forms, and then i see her slowly type in the letters of my street address. i feel my stubble growing. i see her slowly type in the numerals of our license plates. i scratch helplessly at the plexiglass divider, trying to type for her. i watch as she mouthes out the letters as she keys them in. one finger at a time.

i die a thousand deaths.

of course she doesn’t know how to use the system. i mean, how many people are trying to get or renew their parking permits? oh yeah, ALMOST EVERYBODY. it takes her twenty minutes and the help of several people to try and do it, and then she can’t finish it.

i gain enlightenment. i am reincarnated. i forget everything again.

she tells us there’s an outstanding violation on the jeep. it’s the bullshit “failure to turn wheels on an incline” citation. the one we got on our street. which is flat. the one we contested months ago and never heard about. which they have no record of. of course. let’s not mention how i searched for any violations on the jeep online last month and came up empty.

i become a pop star. i am adored by millions. i am beset by scandal. i am spurned and forgotten.

finally, the other woman takes over, takes all of my money and fixes everything in five minutes. i escape with two parking permits.

if i was british i would feel some vindication, perhaps. being american, i don’t. i’ve wasted three hours of my life.

i walk out to my car, to find what there?

a parking ticket.

Posted at June 1, 2005 1:33 PM