The Efficiency of Government Agencies

You know, some days the ineptitude of our government agencies surprises even me. Grant's parents decided to ship us out some things for Ziggy last week. Eager for them to arrive they paid for priority shipping and package tracking. The two boxes should have arrived on Wednesday of last week. As of yesterday only one had arrived and the other was missing. It was explained to my mother-in-law, when she went to the post office to investigate this issue that priority shipping isn't really a priority, just a chance, and that the fabulous tracking tool they use will allow them to find the missing box some time in the next couple of days, they're not sure where it is right now.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but a good tracking system will tell you where things are when you need to find them. Not in a couple of days when they are likely to show up. The depressing thing about this is that I already knew their tracking system doesn't work because they lost my grandmother's remains for 2 days a couple years ago. Tell me again why we continue to allow them to operate this way?

But the icing on the cake came this morning. I was pissed off about our general state of the union and realized I hadn't changed my voter registration to our new address. This was because I tried using the automated address change system on the DMV website and they told me my information was wrong. You know, things like my name, birthdate and social security number. Things I could clearly screw up.

So I sat down to try it again this morning, and once again my first attempt failed. At this point Grant jumped in and made a suggestion, why not try my maiden name. I mean, my married name is typed right there on the physical license I have sitting in my hand, so clearly that's the name on file, but gee, why not try something else. So I figured I'd already been told clearly several times that the other option wasn't going to work and I might as well. Wouldn't you know using my maiden name in that field allowed it to process with no problems? I cannot believe that some how my file is under my maiden name, yet my license is printed with my married name.

Man I love our government at work!