RE: Government Workers

I got this respose back from the DOL office the other day. It's nice to know that somebody took the time to write me back and also to make sure the District Manager knows about it. Now I'm kindof scared to go in and get my license.

Dear Mr. Henry:

Thank you for your recent letter to Director Liz Luce. I have been
asked to respond to your concerns

Providing prompt, courteous and professional customer service is very
important to the Department of Licensing. It is also extremely important
for us to know when our customer service is not meeting our own
expectations. Please accept our apology because it appears very clearly
that you did not receive adequate customer service in this situation. If
there were some sort of system failure regardless of the time of day we
should have simply re-entered the information and completed the
transaction if we had all the requisite items. That would have been the
normal procedure for our offices.

The information in your email is being shared with the District Manager
Jeff Rew for the Pullman Driver Licensing Office. He will be working
with the supervisor and staff at the Pullman office on the customer
service issues you raised. This should raise awareness and encourage a
change in the quality of customer service at the office. I am also
asking that you contact Jeff directly at (509) 921-2313 or via email at
jrew@dol.wa.gov.

Again, thank you for your letting us know of your experience with the
Pullman office. Your comments are very important to us. We look forward
to providing you with quality customer service in the future and hope
that you will let us know of your future experiences with this or any of
our offices.

Sincerely,

Kathy Eberle
Administrator
Driver Examining

Cc: Liz Luce, Director
Myke Gable, Acting Assistant Director
Jeff Rew, District Manager

I'm in!! aka: I don't have to change my major!

It isn't totally official yet, but . . . I got accepted into third year! I went onto the U of I registration page just to see if they've opened up third-year studio for registration, they had, I checked the box next to one of the sections, clicked "register" and voila! I'm registered. I haven't gotten an acceptance letter in the mail, except for my two false alarms (the College of Art and Architecture Dean's List acceptance letter, and the College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences Dean's List acceptance letter). I'm not the only one that has figured this out yet because when I registered the only section with an instructor listed was full with 3 on the wait list, plus the other two sections had 3 and 4 registered respectively but their instructors are TBA.

Fourth of July

Here are some photos I took of the Pullman fireworks celebration.

Government workers

I went in to the DOL today to get a Washington drivers license. And I don't have a drivers license. I was a good customer and had all the documents I needed and they appreciated that, they told me so, but apparently not enough to fulfill their job descriptions. I walked into the office at 2:20, ten minutes before closing. They started my application, after complaining about the time a little bit and how they had plans for when they got off work of course. We were making great time, since I had all the right documents, they issued me the eye test (I passed) and then their computer crashed. Now the lady helping me starts pushing buttons like crazy, a few f3's maybe an f5, but to no avail. Finally with a ctrl + alt + delete she restarted the computer. After rebooting and finding that the application wasn't saved she handed me back my documents and said to come back on Tuesday, but don't expect to walk in at 5 and get it done because Tuesday is their busiest day. I explain that that's not really an option because I work and I don't get back to Pullman until 4:30 (and that's not in any condition to take a photo where people will be forced to identify me from). However, the women "helping" me insisted that she was planning on already being in the car on her way to the bank so I'd have to come back some other day. Anyway, I left (looking quite disgusted) and came home drivers license-less. When I got home I wrote a nice e-mail to the director of the DOL stating my complaint that their employees who are supposed to work in a customer-centered environment and give great customer service, are actually creating a self-centered environment worrying about not logging overtime hours and not actually serving the customers. But even with all of that I expect to go in next week and be treated the same, but at least I feel like I've complained enough.

Ñoquis caseros

Kelly and I enjoyed ñoquis (pronounced NEO-keys) tonight for dinner. I learned how to make them in Argentina. They are mainly a type of pasta made from potatoes. I hadn't made them in a while so I was a little rusty and they turned out a little larger than they were supposed to and a bit rubbery. This was the first time that Kelly had ever tried them and she like them so I guess they didn't turn out that bad.