Abandon all hope, ye who enter

No matter where one lives in this country, there is little that instills a deep, thriving fear in a person than a visit to the Division of Motor Vehicles. There is a reason that Selma and Patty represent the general tenor of things. 

But it has been 12 years since I had to come face to face with the horror of dealing with the DMV here in North Carolina. And I learned just why it has the miserable reputation it has earned. My license was set to expire on my birthday, and I needed to renew it. 

Nightmare: The Prelude

The DMV sent me an e-mail more than three months ago, reminding me that my license would expire, and they offered to make it easy for me to renew online and gave me a link. “Great,” I thought. That sounds easy. Hold on there, pardner — when I went to the clunky website and rattled around in its web-maze, it said that you had to be under the age of 70 to renew it online, so I would have to show up in person to the DMV office. Frustration No. 1. 

Then, Hurricane Helene hit and Asheville closed down completely for a good two months (it is still not up and running completely). Roads were closed, offices shut down. No water, no electricity and fallen trees blocking streets. The pictures and videos online give only a hint of the devastation. It was actually worse. 

After a few weeks stuck in the house, we managed to evacuate and drive down to the flatlands to stay with my brother- and sister-in-law, who were tremendously generous to us. 

Yet, even when we got back to Asheville, so many streets were closed and the town so discombobulated, that I put off going to the DMV office. 

There was a sub-office a couple of miles from the house, but when I went there, a few days before my birthday, there was yellow police tape across the entrance and a sign that said “Closed indefinitely” and said that it would reopen soon. I checked online and it said repairs were being made for a leaky roof. Frustration No. 2. 

I knew I would have to deal with the main office, on the far side of town in the section of the city full of mattress stores and bail-bond offices. So, a couple of days after my birthday, I went to the main DMV office in West Asheville, a drive of about 12 miles, negotiating various detours along the way. When I got there, the joint was crowded and a sign posted just inside the main entrance, “No more walk-ins today.” They said I should go online and make an appointment. Frustration No. 3

I drove all the way home, around several more detours and traffic jams, and went online to create an appointment, via a website that was horribly designed and confusing, only to find, when I finally found the right webpage, that the site said “No new appointments available.” No explanation of when appointments might be had or how to find out. Frustration No. 4.

(The website is a mess, poorly designed and engineered, making any useful information obscure, difficult to find and even more difficult to understand. If anyone needs to find out how not to design a website, they could not do better than to check out NCDMV.) 

And so, a few days ago, I decided to get up early and get to the DMV office before they filled up. I went past the East Asheville DMV office to check if it was still closed (it was), so I got on the Interstate and drove all the way to the West Asheville office and when I got through the entrance, there was a sign saying “No walk-ins till noon.” Frustration No. 5. 

It was then 9:30 a.m. I got on a line for the info desk and when I made it up to the front, they told me that they only take walk-ins in the afternoon. I told them my sad story, and they were very nice but unyielding. I could wait in the parking lot for two and a half hours till they allowed walk-ins, or I could come back the next day after noon. 

When I asked them about making an appointment and how the internet told me there were no appointments available, they explained that appointments were booked up 90 days in advance. And so, piled on, a Catch-22: Have to make an appointment; no appointments to be had. Frustration No. 6. 

I thanked providence for my cool Norwegian blood and I didn’t explode at the poor clerks. They were only doing their job. The policy wasn’t their fault, and at least they weren’t going full Selma and Patty and blowing cigarette smoke in my face. They sympathized, yet, there was nothing they could do. “Come back tomorrow,” they said. “The line for walk-ins usually begins about 11:30 a.m., so I should make sure I get there early enough not to get so far back in the line I get closed out once again. I smiled the kind of smile you do when the only other option is thrusting a knife into their throats, and turned and walked back to the car and drove home. 

Nightmare: Part 2

OK, so the next day I planned to go the the DMV a half-hour before they were supposed to allow walk-ins to enter the building, hoping I could finally renew my license. I drove around the detours over the 12 miles to the office and got there at 11:30 a.m., to find a line already formed, with about 25 people in it, standing in the cold outside the building. I got on the end of the line. The temperature was in the low 40s, but the sun was shining. The line got longer behind me as we waited. At exactly noon, exactly nothing happened. The doors didn’t open. We all stood in the numbing cold for the next hour and a half. 

Then, a guy from inside told the first 8 people to go inside, and we all moved up in the line and at the head of the line there were chairs with their backs up against the front window of the building, and I got the last seat. After standing in the cold for hours, my knees were stiff and the seat was quite welcome. Unfortunately, the chairs were under the canopy and so we sat in the shade. The breeze picked up and it got colder. Much colder. Nothing moved for the next 90 minutes or so and I sat shivering — literally — and getting colder and colder. It was torture Guantanamo level, and I was ready to confess. “I am willing to name names,” I thought. “I’ll tell you anything. I thought the Geneva Conventions outlawed this kind of torture.” I half-expected them to come out and spray us with cold water, just to amplify the misery. 

Several times I thought to give up and leave. But, it is the torturer’s trick to let to expect relief will arrive soon, so you keep waiting. I kept putting off the leaving and sat in the progressing hypothermia like a frozen lump. Face turning blue, fingers now numb. At least it wasn’t raining and they didn’t bring out hoses. 

Eventually the same guy came out with a clipboard and began taking our names. We signed in and explained what service we were there for, and then he went back inside and we heard no more from him. Several of the people ahead of me, sitting in the cold shade got up and walked back out to the parking lot to stand in the sunlight for the illusion of heat. I was afraid of losing my place, but also afraid that my knees, already throbbing from all that standing, would give way if I tried to stand up again. 

The guy eventually let three more people in and we shifted chairs to move closer to the door. A rebellion was brewing: The woman seated next to me got up a few minutes later and said, “I don’t care what they say, I’m going in where it’s warm and stand,” and she went in. Another followed, then I did too. Inside the door was another queue, in front of the admission desk. The man there chased us all back outside, but we had seen the promised land, and had seen a half-dozen empty waiting-area chairs and decided they were doing it on purpose. We went back outside and sat down again. Then the guy with the clipboard came out and started calling off names from the clipboard and my name was the last one he called. We all trundled finally in to the warmth, where we formed another line to get registered and be given a number. I was E473. 

The DMV is has all the architectural grace of an old supermarket, with the back area walled off and a set of 11 numbered desks ringing the waiting area. Four — only four — of them had examiners working them. I sat in the waiting area, still shivering involuntarily, with my core temperature dropped somewhere into the orange sherbet range. There were probably 60 people in the waiting area waiting for their number to be called. 

It was now after 3 p.m. and I watched the call board ring out numbers. A1, then A2. Where does E473 fit in, I wondered. I dreaded. Turns out the letter in front of the number signified what the person who held it needed from the DMV — a new license, a chauffeur’s license, etc. “C123 now being served at Window 3” came the announcement. Number after number came up. Finally some E numbers “E465 is now being served at Window 7.” 

Waited and waited. At 4:30 p.m., the guy with the clipboard stood up and told the waiting masses that anyone who needed a driving test would have to go home and try again another day. They stopped giving driving tests for the day. A handful of people got up and left the building, looking grumpy but as played out and exhausted as a late-round boxer. I had no watch, and there were no public clocks, but I could feel we were getting close to 5 p.m. closing time and maybe I would have to go home empty-handed and try again another day — I had already resolved to give up and drive without a license and hope just not to get caught. A fine would be preferable to suffering another day at the DMV. 

Then “E471 is being served…” then “E472…” My hopes went up. The “C346 is being served…” and I lost all hope. It was DMV hell. Finally they called my number and I went to the desk, answered a few questions, had my picture taken and paid $38 and was given a printout temporary license and told the real one would come in the mail next week. The ordeal was over. The sun was setting and I drove home in the twilight. A day I will never get back. 

When I got home and ate dinner with numb hands, it was then almost 7 p.m. and I was still cold to the core. It would take some time to warm up again. This was a trial by ordeal. But at least the new license will carry me through 2030. 

Afterword

It took till nearly 10 p.m. sitting beside the gas-log fire wearing a sweater, with four lap blankets over me and drinking hot tea before I felt that my inner core was finally warmed back to normal, or nears enough. Getting cold on the outside is one thing, feeling the temperature on your skin, but it’s a whole other thing when the cold penetrates into the bones of your fingers, arms and into the core of your torso so you feel like you’re a refrigerated ham.  

For all the misery, I don’t hold it against the DMV staffers. They were each as calm and helpful as they could be. Even at the end of the day, after dealing with an exasperated public for eight hours, my examiner could still make pleasant conversation and help me get through the paperwork quickly. (Five minutes it took, after an icy, information-starved wait of more than five hours — a ratio that feels imbalanced, to put it diplomatically). 

I’ve known several public employees and they all wanted to do their jobs as well as possible. It is the system to blame — if you can call it a system at all. I hardly seems planned. The website is a mess. The process is incompetent. The office understaffed by at least half. Little information shared with the victims, and what there is is often incomprehensible.

No doubt, in the Pleistocene, when the protocols of license renewal were first established, an era, no doubt, of dial-up internet, and before the designated-hitter rule, the procedures may have been state of the art, but it seems as if nothing has been updated or rethought. What they are stuck with is not up to the task. 

We often make fun of government bureaucracy and its inefficiencies, and in the case of DMV, any shaming we give is truly deserved. I don’t know why we don’t all march on Raleigh with pitchforks and torches and demand action on the part of state government to make the DMV more humane.