Saturday, July 7, 2007

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.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow--welcome to Washington! Sorry about your bad time--it's tough when you have a great work ethic, and yet when it's you that needs the service, no one else does!
Hope it goes better next time. Thanks for the blog and the beautiful pictures! They were great!
Love,
Fran