The DMV: Doubting My Verisimilitude

Greetings, solipsistic reader, as this week I was rudely forced to question if I was real or not, whether this was truly 2022 or not, and whether I lived in a hotbed of technical innovation or not. Yes, I visited the California DMV!

For those of you that are not following along, the DMV is the American equivalent of the UK's DVLA - i.e. the bureaucracy which registers cars and drivers. In terms of effectiveness, I'm afraid the DMV is more birdman of Bognor than it is Apollo moon rocket, and it's safe to say that never again will I complain about the DVLA. In fact, I think the 'A' in DVLA might stand for 'amazing'.

Previously on Emails from America, I'd had some trouble renewing my US visa, which in turn meant my California driving license had expired. After many happy hours of polite smalltalk with my employer's lawyers, and despite USCIS initially issuing me paperwork indicating I was a citizen of the Philippines, my visa has now been successfully renewed, giving me the opportunity to also renew my driving licence. Of course, this involved a trip to the offices of the DMV, because it's not possible to do this online.

There was some concern that maybe I'd have to take another driving test, at which point I was quite likely to throw up my hands and refuse to leave the house again. Unofficial online documentation appears to indicate that if you renew your licence within 90 days of expiry, you should avoid that particular embarrassment, so given that I was about 75 days out of date it was looking hopeful.

So, I took a combination of the train and Shank's Pony (American readers, don't say this blog isn't linguistically educational) to the Redwood City DMV, in good time for my appointment. At the head of the appointment line I was accosted by the first member of DMV staff with which I'd have the pleasure of interacting. She slightly-less-than-politely indicated that I'd need to make an online application first, write the application ID on a form, then come back. The online application was the usual trial (follow the link generated by a QR code; type in some details; have it ask you whether you want to link this application to your existing account; oh you do, OK, wait for the email we're sending you, click on the link, then come back to this page, DON'T UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES CLOSE THIS BROWSER TAB, fill in some more details, what is your name? Height? Weight? Colour of eyes? Serial number? OS version? Do you truly love Big Brother?) which I managed to navigate with only a small amount of swearing. I got my application ID, wrote it on the form, and returned to the front of the appointments queue.

There then followed the first of two exchanges that day which made me wonder if I was in California in 2022 or not. I'm going to tell you word for word what the person handling the DMV appointments queue said to me, with no hint of irony:

"SHOW ME YOUR PAPERS!!"

At this point I'm really hoping that Donald Pleasance has done his job properly, and I'm determined that if I have to steal a motorbike and make a break for it, I'm not going to get caught in the barbed wire like Steve McQueen. I was somewhat mystified by which papers she was referring to, but apparently my passport and a valid visa and I-797A was sufficient.

Having passed that particular examination, I was given a queue number; F001. This is because the DMV doesn't do anything a simple as run a single queue, or even different queues for different types of business. Instead there's a room full of people waiting, a room full of operators servicing the queue, a set of different letter prefixes for different transaction types, and an arbitrary system for reading out who gets served next. Now, it's 8am and I'm the first person there: surely I'll get served first. Nope, first up to be called is G001, then G002, and I'm then beginning to wonder if I'll get served at all. But I'm served third, so another hurdle successfully navigated.

I give my papers to the operator, who says, "Read and follow the instructions on the tablet". On the tablet it says, "Press Next, then review the information on the following screens for correctness and tell the operator if anything is wrong". So I press Next.

I'm presented with a screen that says this:

NAME: Philip Beevers

ADDRESS: 365HAWT

I'm a bit worried about this. Is 365HAWT really my address? I think that's not correct. If I wrote that on an envelope, pretty sure it wouldn't get to me. So I say to the operator, this doesn't look right, I think my address has been truncated.

"SIR, YOU ARE NOT LISTENING, PRESS NEXT AND FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS"

OK, well I thought that's what I did, but let's assume this is OK and just press Next. In fact let's just blindly press Next until the end of time; the dopamine hit will take me from what feels like 1984 to something more like Brave New World, and if we carry on like this the blog post I write will be a useful primer for a college course on dystopian literature, because I like to see the joy in all things.

Eventually, after the operator expresses surprise that my paperwork actually looks plausible, I'm given a piece of paper and told to go and see some people with a camera. Of course, I'm not told why, and at this point it feels like I'm being shepherded into the workflow labelled "needs another driving test" but I'll just go with the flow.

The camera operator is a genuinely pleasant person who politely calls me 'Sir' and clearly explains what I should be doing. Presumably he's not been at the DMV for long. Once my picture is taken, he tells me to talk to his colleague, who again is genuinely very pleasant and polite and gives me a slip of paper which serves as a temporary driving licence. Buoyed up by the refreshing experience of being treated like a human again, I even have the audacity to ask a question, which gets a clear, sensible and empathetic answer. Phew - I have a driving licence.

Now, this is an amusing little anecdote, but I can't help but remark on the irony of one week having visited Boston and bathed in the story of how some immigrants came to this land and made it their own (stealing it from the previous residents in the process, but let's not spoil a good tale), whilst it's clear on the flipside that the current day US is doing everything possible to make immigrants feel like they don't belong here.

Anyway, Halloween is also coming, and that's all kinds of fun. I'll leave you with this humorous piece of street art I happened across the other day: