Timothy Birdnow

My 93 year old father needed to renew his driver's license. I took him down to the Deer Creek office where the people are civil; most other DMV offices feature, uh, a more "colorful" lot. But Deer Creek folk are amiable, or as amiable as you will find at the Department of Motor Vehicles anyway, and I didn't want to take any chances with the others.

Sadly this office is pretty far from Dad's. Even more sadly it was the day before a national holiday and the place was packed. The whole process lasted almost four hours!

I would blame it on Juneteenth, but in reality it is usually packed; quality draws the public like a moth to a flame.Everyone wants to avoid the nasty DMV tongue-lashings and purposeful incompetence of other offices.

At any rate we signed in and spent hours sitting in my truck talking. As Dad can't hear my throat was raw by the end; you have to yell at him in general conversation.

We finally got a text telling us it was time and Dad made his way to the clerk (the only clerk doing driver's licenses - and only other was a woman doing license plates).He couldn't hear what she was saying in the din. I had to go over and help him. Dad was getting confused by the whole procedure too, and it took forever to get through the questions and get his photo taken. I had to fill out the paper the clerk gave him (which she normally would ask verbally but he couldn't hear.)

As we left an older woman in the waiting read said "you did it!" and started applauding. The whole waiting room broke out in applause for my father!

What struck me was how similar this was to a Soviet type of snafu. In the old Soviet Union the citizenry had to wait in lines for hours for anything, and often either didn't get what they sought or had to suffer abuse for it from haughty clerks. Americans generally avoided all of this because of our free market system which fostered efficiency and made the public expect efficiency. No more. As we slide into a socialist system we are getting socialist problems. This four hour wait to get a driver's license was just the beginning.

We see it all over these days. No customer service. Self service in ordering at places like McDonalds. And when you do get service usually it's bad and discourteous.

I recently ordered a pizza and two salads from Jets, a national chain. The delivery driver showed up with just the pizza. I asked "where are the salads?" He points at the pizza box "it's all there". I could barely contain myself from strangling the nitwit.

I was charged no less than $20 for the salads.

So I called the pizza place. The woman was new and she immediately put me on hold where I remained for over twenty minutes. Remained, that is, when she wasn't hanging up on me (which happened twice and I had to call back.) Eventually the "manager" (I use that term loosely) came on. No apologies,not promise to run the salads out. In fact I don't think he believed me.

We got into it and he kept saying "it's not my fault" as if it was somehow MY fault! Eventually he claimed to have refunded my money, but I knew he didn't. I had to call the store the next day and speak to the general manager. Sure enough the shift guy hadn't credited the account. (The GM was apologetic and competent, but anyone in charge should have been capable of at least saying he was sorry.)

All I wanted was my salad.

This is where America is at these days. And it is a function of the socialism that has been creeping into our country, along with the declining educational standards and coarsening of our culture. We have been Sovietized.

We used to enjoy better. This is what happens when people expect to live for free and not work.

So everyone should get used to long lines, bad customer service, and endless bureaucracy. It is our future unless we do something drastic to return to our old ways.

I fear the Socialists have won.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:47 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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