Bureaucracy---- at its finest

Today the BMV (Bureau of Motor Vehicles, Ohio) demonstrated to me exactly why the government should not be managing our health care (or car companies, banks, education, etc for that matter).

Now, I have a bad habit of losing things. Particularly my wallet. I, uh, misplaced my wallet and needed to replace my license. I have not known the location of my Social Security card for... well... I don't know. In any case, I needed to go to the Social Security Administration and get a printout confirming my Social Security Number. Which I did. For once there wasn't a line. It is a miraculous thing when there isn't a line at the S.S.A. office. That took all of five minutes. Personally, I think it was a set up for what was about to happen next. Things were going too smoothly.

Since I was in Ravenna anyway, I went to the main BMV office rather than one of the License Bureaus. You know those twisty lines they have with the ropes? It wound around. Three times. I stood there for probably twenty minutes, twiddling my thumbs. That's to be expected. It's a government office, one that most people deal with at least once a year to get their tags. So I'm not freaking out at this point.

I get up to the counter. This grumpy, awful lady takes my S.S.N. printout and my birth certificate. She hands me the "application" to get my duplicate license, and asks me for my address. I rattle of my mom's address (I moved home last year because the economy sucks in general, but for the record I have lived on my own) thinking every thing's hunky dory because I changed my address with the BMV about a month ago when I realized (belatedly) that the tags had expired on my car. I never had a car in my own name until 2009, so... yeah. Anyway, I had just changed my address with them a month ago.

"That's not your address in our system. I'm going to need to see proof of address."

I explained to her the whole story I just explained in the previous paragraph.

"Well, it hasn't it our system yet, so I'm still going to need to see proof address."

What. The. Heck. How pathetic is it that in this age of computers after a month (more than a month, actually, probably closer to two or three months) that they couldn't get a simple change of address into the system. I mean, you can literally send information from here to Columbus in a matter of seconds. What. The. Heck.

So the lady sends me out to my car to look for something proving my address. Now, I don't know about you, but I generally don't keep my bank statements in my car. Or my mail for that matter. I did find a Valvoline receipt with my name and address on it. She of course said that wasn't valid proof of address, and I would have to go get a print-out of my account information from my bank and have them sign and stamp it. Or I would have to produce some sort of utility bill (which I don't have because I live at home).

Now, I don't know about your bank, but generally most banks require you to have some sort identification, preferably photo identification, in order to give you anything with your account information. Luckily for me, my cousin is a teller at the branch I go to, and everyone there knew me well enough that they were willing to vouch for my identity and give me the print out. Problem is, my bank is in Kent. I had to drive all the way back to Kent, then all the way back to Ravenna (though in hind-sight I suppose I could have gone to the Kent License Bureau, but I wanted to face off with the nasty lady at Ravenna).

The story gets better. This next part doesn't have so much to do with the inefficiency of government bureaucracy as it does general annoyance. Apparently we have to punish people with CDLs (Commercial Driver's Licenses). Getting a duplicate of a regular Class D license in Ohio costs $22 (highway robbery). Getting a duplicate of CDL (Classes C, B, and A for those who care) costs $27. Guess who only came prepared for the $22? Yup, you guessed it. I had to drive all the way back to Kent to get five more dollars because the BMV does not take credit cards (not that I had one anyway with the AWOL wallet).

At this point I'm so ticked off and I've already stood in a ridiculous line twice at the Ravenna BMV office, that I decided to go to the Streetsboro License Bureau near home instead. Now we're back to the stupidity of government offices. On Wednesday, just Wednesday, the Ravenna BMV is open till 6:30pm instead of just 5pm. I assumed, therefore, that the Streetsboro office would be the same. I mean, they both offices for the same Bureau, right?

The Streetsboro office was closed. They're only open till 6:30pm on Mondays. I didn't bother checking Kent, though I'm curious to see if their late day is on Fridays. Anyhow, I ended up trekking all the way back to Ravenna to wait in another hugely long line and finally get my license. I also learned from the much nicer lady that I dealt with exactly why I had to go through all the run around to begin with.

Apparently the Ohio BMV is at least a month behind in all their paperwork and mail-outs. People who ordered tags online almost two months ago still haven't received them, and have ended up coming in to buy tags. And we want these people to run health care? Well, I suppose it wouldn't be exactly these people. I mean, this just the Ohio state government messing up the BMV, we haven't even scratched the surface of what federal can do.

The moral of the story: Show up to BMV at 10am with at least $50 on your person and every scrap of personal information you can think of in your purse.

Oh, yeah, and don't lose your wallet.

Just think, when the government runs the rest of our lives as poorly as they do the BMV, we'll get to do this same thing at school and the doctor's office!