DMV stands for Department of Motor Vehicles. It is the place where you have to go to do your driving test, and renew your license. For some reason, your license does not last very long here and time has flown since October 2005 when I passed my driving test here, so I had to go to renew my license as it ran out on October 1st 2008. Getting my license in the first place was very difficult and frustrating as the State of California seems to be trying to set some kind of record by running the most badly run and inefficient organisation you could imagine.
I spent way more time in Oakland DMV than I'd have liked today. The only good thing is that it is walkable from my house, and is actually quite a nice building - shame I didn't get a photo of it and no one else on Flickr seems to have one.
What is on Flickr is quite funny - a tribute to the way the internet manages to publicise problems and issues with society. My own experience was frustrating again. Admittedly I realised too late that my license had already expired. I managed to make 4 different appointments on line, seems there is a way to make appointments on their website but not way to cancel them.
Having not got the paperwork for my renewal, I called to get it, but after struggling for ages with the voice activated phone system they have, I found out that it would take around two weeks for them to send the paperwork to me. Having not got the paperwork, I had to fill it in there and then and didn't know I needed to provide my social security number to renew the license. You would think that they would still have it from last time, but I had to provide it again. Having not memorised my US Social Security number (I can reel off my UK one from the top of my head as I have had it since 1984) I had to go back home and get it. Unbelievably, the DMV person I was dealing with said that she could put in my application for a new licence, but "it would just be rejected" - eh? Maybe the better advice would be to tell me how to do it properly? Or send the renewal notice to me so I wouldn't get there and have to find out what infofrmation I needed to provide there and then.
So having no more appointments left that day, I had to go back and get the Social number and then wait around for around an hour. The second DMV lady I spoke to was even worse, now telling me I needed to provide her with "birth documentation" (whatever that means) as my renewal notice went to my old address. How this happened when I changed my address on their website when I first moved here I have no idea. I had not clue what birth documentation meant, I thought she meant birth certificate - one of the hallmarks of dealing with the State of California is that none of their people seem trained or skilled in communication. It actually seemed to mean also my passport and as I had my green card with me I was out of jail this time.
I then had to join yet another queue and have my photo taken again, seems they can't just re-use the photo from 2005. Having been initially told to join the wrong queue (there are many queues in the DMV) I wasted more time trying to get this done, only to find that I had to sit a 10 question driving theory test to renew the license - this I didn't expect!
I managed to pass this with only 2 questions wrong, which is pretty good for someone who has only used a tank and a half of fuel since July, and one of the ones I got wrong I had managed to change from the right to the wrong answer as I had second thoughts about it.
So, whilst all striving to keep hold of our jobs in a terrible economy, the State of California managed to burn up my entire afternoon by, not sending the renewal notice to the right address, even though I gave them the right address 5 months ago, not being able to send out the renewal paperwork in less than ten working days, not explaining what personal information was needed up front to renew a license, not the explaining that yet more personal information may later be required and having a generally slow, inefficient and badly run system.
In Europe most people think the USA is a model of efficiency. The problem here seems to be that there is so much resistance to public spending in the US (listen to the presidential debates and it seems that no one will ever be able to make a positive case for taxation), that all public services seem to be run as cheap as possible. However, having hired the people that work there at the lowest pay they can get away with, the net result is a system that wastes everyones time. Wouldn't it be a bit of an investment in US efficiency to make this place better run, so ordinary workers like me wouldn't waste an entire afternoon trying to renew a license? Wouldn't a bit more money spent here benefit the whole economy as the DMV could stop wasting so much of everyone's time? Seems logical to me, it must be easier to renew a driving license in Romania.
So having got my new license now, and the picture on it is a classic as I was so pissed off when it was taken, I have found out this new one does not last three years like the old, it only lasts until my 43rd birthday in December of next year. Do I really have to go through all this again in 2009? Come on California, get your act together.
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