As you guys know, I'm a government employee.  Some people like to label all government employees as lazy, inept, overpaid, or corrupt.  Obviously, using a broad brush to paint such a large group with is ridiculous, but after this week I completely understand why Americans think government employees are so incredibly incompetent, unhelpful, and overcompensated.

Meredith and I will be traveling to Japan in April.  I've never been out of the country before so I need a passport.  To understand the difficulties I had in obtaining the passport, it is important to know that I was born in Kalamazoo County and adopted at birth in St. Joseph County.  My mother later remarried and my surname was changed at age 6, again in St. Joseph County.  This is all relatively standard fare, but it caused a heck of a lot of unnecessary complication when applying for my passport.  I had to jump through a ridiculous number of hoops to get it all sorted:



Quote:

1)  Go to the St. Joseph County Courthouse with my application and passport fee.  Since I was adopted in St. Joseph County, I figured they would have my birth certificate on file.  They didn't.  This is my fault.  Distance:  10 miles. 2)  Call Kalamazoo County to ensure they have my birth certificate.  I clearly state that my name was changed and the name on the birth certificate is different from my driver's license.   3)  Go to Kalamazoo County to get my birth certificate.  Oops, we can't give you that!  Your driver's license doesn't match your birth certificate!  Sorry we forgot to mention that on the phone!  Distance: 30 miles. 4)  Go back to St. Joseph County Court and get a copy of the name change order.  "That will be $11, please."  Distance:  30 miles. 5)  Go back to Kalamazoo County and present the name change order.  Get the birth certificate.  Distance:  30 miles. 6)  Go back to St. Joseph County with the birth certificate.  Pay $75 for the passport application, $8 for a passport photo and $25 for the clerk's "processing" fee.  Return home.  Distance: 30 miles + 10 miles. 7)  Get a call an hour later from St. Joseph County.  Kalamazoo County gave me the wrong birth certificate.  It belonged to some poor sod with a similar name.  I'm sure he appreciates me having a certified copy of his birth certificate. 8)  Call Kalamazoo County to report the problem.  They won't mail, e-mail, or fax the correct copy of my certificate to St. Joseph County, and I have to bring them another copy of the name change order since they shredded the old one.  Bastages. 9)  Return to St. Joseph County.  Pay another $11 for a second copy of the name change order.  Pick up the incorrect birth certificate from the county clerk.  Distance:  10 miles. 10) Drive back to Kalamazoo County.  Swap name change order and incorrect birth certificate for correct birth certificate.  Distance: 30 miles. 11) Drive back to St. Joseph County.  Hand in correct birth certificate.  The clerk informs me that I need yet another copy of my name change order to send with my passport application.  So I walk back to the probate court and spend another ELEVEN FREAKING DOLLARS to get a third copy of the order.  Mind you, I had to pay $11 for this one-page document just so I could carry it roughly 200 feet and hand it to another county employee.  I return this to the clerk and finish the application.  Return home.  Distance:  30 + 10 miles. Passport Cost:  $75 Administrative Costs: $79 Total Mileage:  220 miles Fuel Costs:      $35.00 Vacation Time:      12 Hours

Rant 1:  It's too expensive.
Imagine this scenario:  You have a one-page document on your desk from fulfilling an earlier request.  The requester needs another copy of the document.  You make a copy of the page in your Xerox, stamp it, and sign the bottom.  This process takes approximately 45 seconds.  What kind of value do you think that 45 seconds is worth?  If you're a probate clerk, it's worth $11.  If you're a county clerk, it's worth $13.  If you need to spend two minutes reviewing a passport application, your time is worth $25.  At $13 per pop, the county clerk's time is apparently worth $1,030 per hour.  Unfortunately, the government has a monopoly on vital records, so they don't have to show value for their services or offer any real competition.

Mind you, the total cost isn't really significant.  That said, I don't think I'm out of line when I get upset about paying $11.00 per copy for a single sheet of paper, especially considering it required the clerk no effort to provide the copy.  If you need to charge me a reasonable fee (about $0.10 per page these days) to cover paper and toner, I have no problem paying that.  Asking me to pay more for this service when I already pay your salary via taxes is unacceptable.  It is ludicrous that I paid more in administrative fees than I did for the passport itself.


Rant 2: It's laughably archaic.
This is 2010.  Asking a citizen to drive from one county to another to acquire a document and drive back again is insane.  Asking him to do it three times in a row is patently ridiculous.  We've had fax machines for 35 years and encrypted e-mail for nearly twenty.  I'm betting every county clerk in the country has a fax machine and an Internet-accessible computer sitting in their office, so USE them.  Why do I have to spend two hours driving across two counties and back when you can scan a document and send it via encrypted e-mail in less than a minute?  Imagine how much worse this would be if the two counties were on opposite sides of the state, or - worse yet - on opposite sides of the country.


Rant 3: Nobody cares.
Perhaps the part that upsets me the most is that nobody from either side of the equation really cared about all the trouble they were putting me through.  Employees from both counties were unsympathetic at best and had an attitude of "It's not my problem."  The ball was continually dropped in my lap, even though the documentation issues were completely out of my hands.  If St. Joseph needed something from Kalamazoo County or vice versa, I was the one that had to make it happen.  The two offices wouldn't even pick up the phone and call one another to ensure everyone was on the same page.  Don't tell me you're "sorry about the trouble" and send me on my way. Do something about it.  If you need a document from the other court, pick up the bloody phone and have them to fax it to you.

Considering how much I paid for documentation and processing, someone could have at least smiled and pretended to give a rip.  If I'm paying somebody $13 to print, stamp, and sign a sheet of paper, the least they can do is provide me with some Vaseline before they bend me over.  Apparently, the term "civil servant" means nothing these days.



-b0b
(...is done venting now.)