Devil Most Vile

By: Reach for the Sky

the DMV. My oh my, the DMV. Another year, another renewal. Another trip through hell and back. This a rant, plain and simple. Try not to hold anything I say against me. I did, after all, just get back from the DMV.

A long time a go, there was a show called Mega XLR, which was a parody of the all the giant-robot anime, about a red-neck who got a hold of his own walking weapons platform. I didn't watch too many episodes, as I found it around the time I was growing out of cartoons*. One episode stuck with me, however, in which the protagonist's giant robot is impounded, and in order to get it back he must get his license renewed at the DMV. I thought it was funny at the time, watching the character moan and groan through the ordeal. Now I know that there was no exaggeration, no caricature. In fact, the DMV is so awful, so completely cemented in its beuracracy, the show couldn't capture it. I won't be able to capture it in the words that follow. Just know that the DMV is so bad, everything bad about it should be multiplied by 10, to keep the rage to scale.

So I'm at the DMV. I've just arrived, three people working, about ten in line. Score. I have everything I need, renewal application, VOE, social security number, etc. Just a wait in the main line. So I wait. In a couple of minutes, one of the workers finishes with a customer**. And immediately goes on break. No movement in the line yet. Soon another woman comes to take her place, finally taking a customer out of the line. The other two workers are slooooooooowly servicing customers. After helping one customer, the replacement woman leaves for the day. Nobody takes her place for the rest of my visit. The other two work at a snails pace. Twice someone simply walks up to them, skipping the line. I begin to wonder if there's some VIP pass available. One customer only speaks Spanish, practically the universal second-language for employees in Texas. The man receiving him clearly understands very little, and speaks even less. This slows progress down to a crawl. Twenty-five minutes in, 5 customers down. The line has filled up behind me.

All this time, there are at least three employees just sort of wandering around. Whenever one of them decides to (pretend to) do work, he seems to go the extra mile in making sure it takes him five times as long as it should. The one's working the desk seem to be working in bullet-time now. There's a woman behind me with her baby. She should have brought his document, he'll be sixteen by the time she gets her turn. I look at my SS card and realize I'll probably collect my first payment before I get through this. I try to pass time by thinking of the things I could do while waiting, like memorizing the dictionary or something. I find that a few people I though were coming in pairs were actually alone, and the line would take longer than I had thought at first. My stomach kindly reminds me that I haven't eaten lunch yet.

This goes for about thirty more minutes. Finally its my turn and I get to find out what's been taking up so much time. For one thing, a minute didn't pass without the worker having to talk on the phone. Just from her side of the conversation, I'm pretty sure she was getting calls from the local Lobotomy Recipient Clinic. She need many, many things from me. My old drivers license, my proof of insurance, my VOE, my social security number, my application, my dad's drivers license number, my signature (thrice), my fingerprints, my picture, a blood sample, a sacrificial lamb, an activation key, proof of membership to the Illuminati, my dog, an original Van Gogh, and the promise of my first-born child if I could not guess the workers name. After all this I receive my temporary license, and stagger out of the DMV. I'm blinded initially, as its the first gleam of sunlight I've seen in years. I level up. I learn FIRE SPIN.

*I was a late-bloomer when it came to cartoon-watching

**Maybe not the best term.  The service here does not approach the level of even the greasiest of gas-stations.