Tough Times at the DMV

ha ha, "gang." you need a more diverse set of friends and experiences.

Manys: Gold Medalist at the 2009 Smug-lympics.

I was there on Wed. and, in all fairness, it was fairly reasonable. I just needed to get a new copy of my registration after moving so I can get a new parking permit and while I can change the address online they're not yet to the point where I can, at the same time, request that they send me a new copy. Nope, I need to wait in line for an hour and pay $18 just to get someone to give me a print-out. Something I could have done at home, probably for free after doing the address change, but they'd rather charge me a ludicrous fee for it and MTA loves forcing me to jump through hoops and give other agencies money to support a program that basically seems to exist to squeeze money out of people parking on the street and give them yet another reason to try and give you tickets.

The actual DMV part, though, wasn't bad. I found the paperwork online and it was actually one of the nicer PDFs where you can type in the information, print it out, wait in line, tell the guy what I needed, pay him and leave. It was maybe 5 minutes to transact business and an hour of waiting in line to do it.

I swear, they need to either move it online where it ought to be or at least open an express line for people who already have all of their paperwork filled out and just need to have something simple done.

MTA, to their credit, made me stand around for 15 minutes while the agent waited around a bit after dealing with the previous person, slowly took her time filling my request, chatted with someone else to help solve their problem, and then had to get my permit twice because she didn't seem to understand me when I said I'd moved and needed to get a new permit. They're also pretty restrictive with what they'll take as proof of address. Apparently a post office change-of-address confirmation isn't good enough. In this largely paperless, online age where most sensible people pay their bills and get their bank statements online (and don't always have them in the name of the person who owns the car) those or a lease are just about the only things they'll take. I guess that expensive registration copy is just a formality since even the DMV needs to be double-checked lest I hatch a cunning scheme to park in another neighborhood during the day.