Carol's Corner

A layout I did of myself and my 2 sons in the first grade.

I went to the Department of Motor Vehicles today. Wait! Where's everyone going? This is a rant about the DMV--I swear.

I had to take Alex today for his driving test. Yes, I know he's 18 and going off to college in like 2 days, but he still only had his permit and we told him it was time to get on the stick and get his license. Anyway, they take appointments now so we made one for 9AM. The e-mail they sent said to arrive 15-20 minutes early so we got there at 8:45 AM. The first surprise we got when we walked in was they had totally rearranged the place...it's more like a bank. You wait in one line and the next available person helps you. Well, we did the paper work, Alex took the road test at 9, came back did more paper work, got his license and we were out of there at 9:30 AM!!! I still can't believe it. When I took each one for their permits we were there each time for a minimum of 3 hours most of it waiting in endless lines only to be waited on by people who took customer service lessons from the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld. This time, however, the people behind the counter smiled and talked and joked. It was--dare I say this--a pleasant experience!!

All of Alex's friends have had their licenses for at least a year some 2 years and they all told him to expect to be there for around 3-4 hours. So I guess it was a good thing he didn't get his license before now.

All I can say is thank you FedEx!!! A while back they had a thing on the news about the DMV hiring FedEx as a consultant on how to improve service and speed up the process. Well, it worked!