Have I ever told you how much I hate the DMV ? Well, it's a lot.
We've had the Totally Rockin' Minivan for twelve years now. Every two years since we bought it we've had to renew the registration with the Department of Motor Vehicles and every two years there is some ridiculous and avoidable annoyance or drama that goes along with it. Because of this, I now firmly believe that the State of New York seeks out the most miserable, nasty, unhappy people it can find and offers them work at the DMV.
This year the registration was due to be renewed in June. Nothing about the car has changed so it should have been a simple matter of sending a check to Albany, and then receiving a sticker in the mail a few weeks later. This was my first mistake: assuming that something simple would actually be simple. I mailed the registration form, with the husband's signature on it (it's registered to him), along with a check on April 30th. It never arrived.
I know what you are thinking: Why didn't you just renew online? That seems like a good idea except that two years ago I did renew online. The first time I tried it the screen froze and I couldn't complete the transaction. The second time, I did everything it said and it seemed as if all was well. When I went back ten days later to check the status, there was no record of the transaction. By this point it was too late to mail it in and I was still trying to avoid dealing with these people in person, so I gave it one more go and filled out the online form, gave over my credit card number and crossed my fingers. Ten days later I received my registration in the mail. Two days after that I received another registration, for the same car, in the mail. After several phone calls, over the course of two days, I finally found a human being to speak to in order to be certain that I wasn't charged twice for the registration. The man on the phone told me not to worry, there was no extra charge on my credit card. He told me to just discard the second registration sticker and card because their computer had made an error and printed out a second registration for twelve thousand vehicles. Twelve thousand! And he said it like it was no big deal. In person they give you such a hard time registering one car once but they accidentally register twelve thousand of them twice and it's no big deal. So, this year I figured I'd just mail it in and not have to think about it.
Dennis is on Active Duty with his Reserve Unit. The registration sticker should have arrived before he left. It didn't and that worried me. I don't like dealing with these people in person. He said if it didn't arrive by the fifteenth to call our Assemblywoman and get her to help me out with this. Sure enough the fifteenth came and went and no sticker. On Monday I called her office and told a woman on her staff the problem. She took my information, called the DMV and called me back with assurances that there was someone eagerly waiting to help me out down at the local DMV office. Foolish me, I believed her.
Not having the form that was mailed to me, because I had sent it off with a check to Albany, I went to the DMV office with just my checkbook and ID. Keep in mind that all I wanted was essentially to give them money to maintain the status quo. I wasn't changing anything about the car. I waited half an hour for my turn at the window. I handed over the form I filled out there and explained the situation to the woman behind the counter, heretofore referred to as woman #1. She didn't care. She wasn't going to process the paperwork without my husband's signature. I explained that he was on Active Duty until the end of the month and there was no way to get his signature. (As an aside here, After all this nonsense was over an acquaintance asked me why I didn't just sign his name and until that moment it didn't even occur to me. The fact that it never occurred to me pretend he was out in the car and then forge his signature says something about the kind of person I am. I'm not sure what kind that is. The phrase "glutton for punishment" comes to mind.) As a way of being helpful without actually helping, the woman to the left of #1, heretofore referred to as #2, said that I probably sent it in without his signature in the first place which is why it never went through. And then she smirked. Woman #1 asked in a rather condescending tone, "Well, do you have his power of attorney?" I think she fully expected me to say no. Instead I said "Not on me." She shoved the paperwork back at me, put her hands up and said, "Well, then, I can't help you." and got up and left her window.
I was pissed. She was rude to me right from the beginning and I didn't deserve that. I drove home, muttering to myself the whole way. I fished through the file cabinet and found that I do in fact have Dennis' Power of Attorney. I also found his will and I'm his Health Care Proxy. See! He trusts me! Razzafrackin' DMV. All I had to do was have my portion of it signed and notarized. Still muttering I went to the nearest notary who just happens to work at the bank. She is a nice woman about my mom's age. I told her what I needed and she asked if I was okay. That's when I got weepy. You know that I'm-so-angry-and-frustrated-over-stupid-avoidable-crap kind of weepy. I'm glad I didn't do that at the DMV. I should have known that they weren't going to be helpful. Thinking that the Assemblywoman's office had smoothed things over for me got me off my guard. By the time I was done at the bank it was too late to go back to the DMV. So I decided I would take them on again the following morning.
I've never executed a Power of Attorney before and wasn't sure how to go about it. Which is why I did it wrong; at first. I know enough to know I don't surrender this document to anyone. They can copy it but it is mine. As I said before, Dennis is away with the Army and while he has his cell phone with him, I can't really have a conversation with him about what to do next while he is on the range for small arms training. So I showed up at the DMV with only my portion of the PoA. It looked to me as if that was enough which is one of the many reasons I am not an actually Attorney. As luck would have it I ended up at Woman #1's window again. She looked over the forms and then insisted on keeping my original and only copy of my portion of the PoA. I refused and I was loud about it; polite, correct and loud. I insisted on speaking to her supervisor. Well, Supervisor came over and looked over the paper and said they would need to keep it and would mail it back to me at a later date. Given the DMV's track record with handling my documents I doubt I'd have ever see it again. I said there was no way I'm giving them this document. Once again #1 threw the papers at me and refused to help me. This time she folded her arms and just stared at me like she was daring me or something. All I wanted to do was renew my registration.
I went home and retrieved the rest of the document. I sat down and read the entire thing. It is written in legalese and it was work to read it. I realized my mistake: I needed both parts of the document for it to be legal. Fair enough. I also knew that they weren't entitled to keep it. I set off once more, this time to the local office supply place to make a copy for the DMV. I wasn't doing that to be nice. I don't trust them and I didn't want to let the original out of my sight. The only parking place I could find was in front of a law office. While I knew I was right about this whole PoA thing I wasn't confident and I just wanted a qualified third party to say, "Yup, Ellen-Mary, you are entirely correct." This was a stroke of luck for me. The lawyer looked it over, said I was right and for the impact it would have tucked her card in the paperclip holding it all together. She even made a copy for me, gratis.
I went back into that freakin' office once again and didn't wait on the line this time. I got Supervisor's attention, handed her the original stating I was keeping it, handed her a copy and said I wanted the car registration renewed. The lawyer was right, her card got a reaction. Supervisor called me Mrs. O'Brien, something she hadn't done up to this point, and personally put in the information to renew my car. She handed me the new sticker and card and wished me a nice day. It was kind of surreal. I told her we weren't done. I wanted a note on the account so if my original check shows up I won't get billed twice or for a returned check fee or something. She assured me that the DMV would not charge me twice and that the check, if it ever arrived, would be returned to me immediately. Would you have believed her? I didn't think so. I put a stop-payment on it.
This took two days of my time and was unnecessarily aggravating.
I like to believe that people are basically good. That most people will be helpful if they can and if you are polite to them. I believe people should be respected and respectful. None of this is true at the DMV.
