We took David for his passport February 3. It all went very smoothly until they noticed that I put down my place of birth as Ann Arbor; David’s birth certificate listed Seattle. There was nothing we could do about it; I wasn’t going to lie on a legal document. We just figured with 13 weeks to spare, we could catch any problems. The receipt they gave us said we could expect our passport March 19th.

Yeah right. At the five week mark, we heard that passports were now taking 10 weeks to process, so we didn’t freak. At 11 weeks I freaked. The online tracking said his passport was sitting in the Seattle office. Did that mean it had been to the main office and was on its way back to us? Did that mean it was stuck? The friendly computer also said don’t even think about contacting us until 2 weeks before your trip. Really, we’ll hang up. Don’t even think it.

At exactly 2 weeks before the trip, I called and endured interminable automated announcements only to be told I couldn’t even wait in queue for a real person—call another time. I finally talked to a real person who said she’d expedite my passport for no extra fee, they would have it for me by 4/29, and don’t even think about calling until 1 week out.

Monday, I called. And called. And waited on hold for forty-five minutes. Finally, a customer service rep said my passport was in the Seattle office. All he could tell me was I would be getting a letter. At which point I chose tears. I was sure it was the Michigan/Seattle screw up, and we were screwed.

My rep, a bit freaked by the crying woman on the phone, agreed to talk to his manager and came back very nice. The letter I was going to get? It just said my passport was expedited. He then treated me to a behind the scenes look at passport processing. They are allowed 72 hours from the time an expedite order comes in before they do anything. So my last person put in the expedite order at 10:00 p.m. and three business days, i.e., five days later, it got moved. No one is checking the leave date on the passport requests stacked to the ceiling. They have such a backlog that if I hadn’t called, my passport would have languished until Christmas. His words, Christmas.

David’s passport got here Thursday.

The take away lessons:

1. Unfunded mandates make everyone’s life miserable. Like you all have to get passports, but we won’t hire more workers to process them.
2. Don’t trust bureaucracies. I know. I know most of you are saying, like duh. But I still have this good girl mind set that if I follow the rules, I won’t be screwed.
3. Stay on top of your own stuff. My sister commended me for even noticing that we didn’t have David’s passport because, frankly, that’s often the sort of thing I don’t pay attention to.
4. It’s all right to cry. Yes, I felt like crying, but I also chose to cry at the poor rep instead of ranting at him. I purposefully made a play for his support. It’s not the only strategy to use but it got me information even if it couldn’t get me results.
5. Leave more time. Whatever it is. Leave way more time than you think you’ll need.