MISS SIP IN AL BILDIN’

Not long after my older sister got married in New York back in the late 1970s (heee hee hee… she’s not just older, she’s just old), I remember going with her to a scary building in an unfamiliar part of Queens to get her name legally changed on her IDs. The City was dirty, bankrupt and crime ridden in those days (well at least it’s not bankrupt anymore). With major budget cuts in the police and fire departments and even garbage pick-up reduced, there certainly was no money to properly staff, service and maintain municipal buildings. I’m not sure if my sister took me along for entertainment, moral support or to be a body guard but the only thing scarier than the building itself was the people inside it.

 

Mentally that nasty experience has become the touchstone in my head that I compare any of my dealings at government offices with. Compared to that prison-like industrial non-descript rat-hole and the human-like beings inside it that all looked like extras from Taxi Driver, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and The Warriors, most government offices I’ve been to since don’t seem that bad. The small claims court in Van Nuys California I went to when a guy at a car wash stole my radar detector was like a pristine presidential palace. The New Orleans business permit office I once had to register at was like a day spa. The Miami DMV where I got my first driver’s license was like a vacation suite.  And the Texas Social Security office I visited last week to get a replacement card… umm… well at least the building was nice.

 

With rows of chairs and numbered cubicles running down the hall, the lay-out of the office was similar to the Driver’s License renewal place I had to visit earlier this year. Apparently you have to get a new picture on your ID every 15 years, which makes sense. I was in my late 30s when I got my old license and as I learned photographically speaking, your 40s is when any last vestiges of visual youthfulness are pretty much washed away in a sea of sag and creases.  In my old photo the pepper vs salt ratio of my beard was the opposite that is now plus I had a lot less wrinkles and a lot more hair. Unfortunately on my new, typically unflattering face-flattening photo, I look like the CEO from Dilbert with an extendedly tall bald shiny noggin.

 

Just like at the Driver’s License joint, when I walked into the Social Security office I was directed to a primitive looking touch screen computer where I was instructed  to type my name, number and choose the reason for being there. Unfortunately the touch screen had been over-touched and looked like a blind monkey had been playing a month long game of patty cake with it. Trying to spell my name with near useless ‘D’ and ‘L’ keys was not easy.

 

While trying not to look like a completely useless rube as I attempted to get my name to read something more than ‘anie ewbe’, more folks funneled in through the door and a impatient sounding line started forming behind me.  At least they were as blind and incompetent as me, also not noticing the unused second terminal just on the other side of the entrance. After finally getting my information correctly entered, the computer spit out instructions for me to take a seat and wait for my number A325 to be called.

 

Once seated, I noticed screens with the ‘now serving’ numbers in three different series. I am sure there was a real order somehow being followed but there was no way to tell how long my wait would be because numbers seemed to be called randomly from any of the three sequences. Some folks had longer and more complex issues than others, so I could not just count the people in the waiting room and calculate how much of my life I could expect to be wasting in that room. Back at that similar Driver’s License place a few weeks earlier, I was glad they took the photo at the end because I believe I visually aged I waited there so long to be called.

 

The one thing I could keep track of was how long the gaps of time were when they paged someone that did not respond.  They would wait just shy of five minutes before they gave a second attempt at a number and then nearly another five minutes before the third and final call. Those painful 10 minutes intervals that could have been used helping the alert, awake and mentally present felt like an eternity to me. I kept thinking they should give someone two minutes to get their ass up to the window. If they are too slow or stupid to pull off that trick off, NEXT!!! its to the back of the line with them.

 

The melting pot of American society is a beautiful thing but some of the folks waiting with me in the room looked a tad too melty. A family sat behind me with a little kid that was in constant perpetual motion all over the waiting room except when she repeatedly coughed without covering her mouth. Whenever that happened the undisciplined brat was inches behind my head.  I could almost sense each of the thousands of little diseased kid germ droplets spewing out of her mouth like an exploding volcano and landing all over my body and into the air I was breathing. I tried holding my breath after every cough but it got so frequent I opted to change seats before I turned as blue as Violet Beauregarde.

 

I ended up behind an oblivious hunched homunculus woman that apparently had been too busy muttering out loud to herself to notice that her number had long ago been called out three times and posted on the 4 obvious screens. They now were way past her S104 and currently helping S108. She got up and interrupted two other people being helped to explain her problem. It did not go over well.

 

I like people watching but this was like the extreme sports version. But we were all in it together; none of us really wanting to be there. Not the wiry tated-up Latino in the wife beater and dress shoes. Not the older Asian woman who looked like she put on her chunky pink lipstick during a turbulent plane landing. Not the woman with an eyepatch trying to pawn off her screaming baby on her husband.  Not the tweeking sullen guy in crumpled clothes. Not the confused old couple that sounded like they needed a lawyer more than advice from the agency seemingly taking advantage of them.

 

My head wandered. I have no memory of getting my original social security card but for some reason I do remember years later getting it laminated. Kids these days take lamination for granted like cell phones and computers but for those of you my age from the 8-track tape, phone attached to the wall and black and white TV era (or even older like my sister’s stone age era) lamination was not easy. While you wait laminate became a big deal. Like those clicking label makers that embossed letters on a thick stiff plastic strip, typewriter copy paper and 45 rpm spindles. I am from a different time. I’m older, wiser, I’ve been around. I know for a fact that no matter how miserable this wait is, it’s still way better than the one in 1970s New York.

DILBERT’S CEO                                            SLIP O PAPER