No one enjoys going to the DMV ever, but sometimes you must do so in order to keep your motor vehicle on the road legally. Yesterday morning was such an occasion, as I went with my dad to the local office to get replacement license plates. Someone saw the shiny new 2021 registration sticker on his Hyundai Tucson and thought it would be nice to steal the rear plate that it’s stuck to. Not wanting to drive for very long without a rear license plate on the car, a trip to the DMV was begrudgingly called for.
This may be the times of COVID, but some things don’t ever change, such as the long queue for the DMV in the morning, well before the doors open. Of course, the line is socially-distanced, so it stretched well onto the adjacent sidewalk and out into the residential area. We arrived half an hour before the office opens at 8:00AM, and the wait time ultimately came to about two hours, which is not all that different from “normal times”, if you’re so unprepared as to not have an appointment.
Appointments aren’t possible at the moment except for driving tests.
In these not so normal times, you get your temperature taken and answer a few questions as to the condition of your health vis a vis the coronavirus. Once the building reaches a capacity deemed safe, they take down your phone number and asks you to wait inside your vehicle - you’ll get a text when your number is called and ready to be served. Other than the unusual waiting and screening situation, the procedure at the DMV is not all that different: you’ll spend most of the time waiting, while the thing you’ve come to the office for takes less than five minutes (driving tests notwithstanding).
Excluding the wait, we were in and out of the premises in no time with newly issued metal plates. Fingers crossed these survive long enough to last a calendar year!
The saddest place on earth.