A License to Drive Me Crazy

Our Founding Fathers, some of whom weren’t really fathers at all, nonetheless were able to design a great nation with only their brains and quill pens. And a big part of what makes that nation great is the checks and balances they put in place for and among the three branches of government: the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch, and the Department of Motor Vehicles.

I used to live in California many years ago, and I have fond memories of afternoons spent at the DMV, a classic work of fiction in one hand and a numbered ticket in the other. But I had forgotten those experiences during my time in Seattle, which has a much more efficient DMV due to partial privatization.

But there is no such privatization in sunny California. Instead, their DMV–named “A Public Service Agency” proudly on its letterhead, just in case you weren’t sure–is a true government agency, with the full faith and credit of Arnold Schwarzenegger to back it up. On my recent return to California, I found that the DMV was everything I remembered to be, even eerily so. The one change was the increase in the number of people standing in line.

As I waited in the first of four lines that day, I thought that the California DMV could benefit from the privatization enjoyed in Washington. So to help them out, I came up with a short multiple-choice test which anyone who wants to open their own DMV office must pass. Here are some sample questions.

1. There is already a long line of patrons with expiring licenses outside your DMV office when you open. The best way to manage the line is:
   • A. Install machines that dispense numbered tickets based on a handful of patron needs, such as license renewals and automobile registrations.
   • B. Have 4 or 5 DMV employees assign and direct patrons to numbered windows. Once the queue dissipates, those employees can move to other stations as needed.
   • C. Have a lone DMV employee personally question each patron, and allow patrons with completed forms to cut to the front of the line, a line which anyway meanders through the middle of other sections of the room where different patrons are standing around because there aren’t really any signs to direct them even to where the line begins.
2. To get the right information into the hands of patrons, you should:
   • A. Place materials and forms in convenient and clearly-identified racks.
   • B. Place materials and forms on a large counter staffed by a friendly DMV employee.
   • C. Hide all materials behind the counter, and only allow the lone DMV employee from answer 1C to hand the materials over the counter after an extensive interview, which must include a note from your mother, because if the terrorists ever got hold of these materials we are all doomed.
3. Heightened federal security requirements mandate that any new applicant for a license present a passport, birth certificate, or other proof of identity. You should communicate this requirement to patrons by:
   • A. Printing the requirement clearly on the application form.
   • B. Printing the requirement clearly on the instructions supplied with the form.
   • C. Including one sentence about this requirement on your DMV web site, but not on the application requirements page since there isn’t an application requirements page anyway but on an obscure page so that the Communists–yes, there are still Communists–will find it difficult to locate because let me tell you the lone DMV employee in answer 1C is just one man (or woman) and he (she) can’t be expected to fill out your (your) forms especially if he (she) were to be repressed by a Communistic system such as the one in the former Soviet Union where people had to wait in line for hours for the most basic of needs such as getting a driver’s license.

If you answered ‘C’ to each question, then congratulations! You are ready to open your own DMV branch office. If you didn’t answer all questions correctly, just stand in that line over there and ask the employee for a small 80 page book to review.