I've had such a hectic last few days, that finally, I can say that I'm coming up for air!!!

One of the things I did recently was go to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and transfer the title of my '98 VW Beetle from the leasing company/bank to me. I decided to buy it (rather my son Luke has decided to buy it, but it's in my name so we could do a seamless, flawless financing) so I had to visit the DMV to transfer the title. The leasing company was really good about getting all the paperwork in order so that was a no brainer! But walking into the DMV, I see the usual long lines of people at 8:30 AM (where do all these people come from...I'm thinking I've visited at a *good* time!). So I take my place in the line.

Then, I notice there is another line. One that says "Information" and it is specifically people transferring titles. There is a person behind the desk who will check all your paperwork and make sure all is complete before you're given a number to go stand in another line. I think I've hit pay dirt!!! There are only 2 people ahead of me in this line, so I go, willingly and excitedly to this line. Of course, the 2 people in this line don't speak English and they don't have all of their paperwork. So the person behind the counter spends about 20 minutes with each of them, kind of doing a sign language/pantomime of what forms they still needed to get to complete their transaction with the DMV.

So finally, I'm at the head of the line. The DMV person looks at my paperwork, approves it and gives me the lucky number of 13! I'm on my way!

I go sit and wait and see that they are now serving #10. I'm almost going to be called on. Only 2 more ahead of me! So I wait, and wait, and wait. I have time to look at all the DMV people behind the counter. There are about 15 of them in all, but only 3 are actually helping customers. The rest are trying hard not to make eye contact with any of us waiting in line and are typing away on their keyboards, looking too busy to deal with customer service...

...EXCEPT FOR ONE OF THEM. There is actually one of them that is not helping customers or typing away/not making eye contact with customers. This lady is moving a ladder around the area and hanging big, huge yellow smiley face signs from the ceiling. She elicits feedback from all her co-workers (they *can* make eye contact with her and help her, evidently) about which ceiling tile to hang them from and they all engage in a rather happy and upbeat dialogue about the hanging...evidently, the smiley faces are already working on the workers of the DMV.

I'm just thinking that they could readily discard the hanging smiley faces and wait on us customers...I'm thinking that if the purpose of the hanging smiley faces was to induce smiley faces from their customers, wouldn't waiting on their customers and giving real customer service achieve the same thing????

Oh well, my tax dollars at work! They can hang smiley faces, not wait on me until they're ready, and make me wait because they're the DMV and I'm not!