Red Tape, Red Faces

Hello. Welcome to the Weekend Gene Pool, which has been fast-tracked for sainthood by the Roman Catholic Church. Today, as in all Weekend Gene Pools, we seek your personal anecdotes in return for entertainment. Our subject today is your dances with bureaucracy. More details to come.

Here are a few of mine:

The first time bureaucracy and I came into combat it was at my instigation, and I won magnificently. It was 1978 and I was a reporter at the statehouse bureau of the Detroit Free Press, in Lansing. My editor got a tip that the state licensing exam for auto mechanics was a “Mickey-Mouse multiple choice test” that anyone could pass, and that as a result the state was licensing complete incompetents to work on your car. How would we report this?

“Well, I’m a complete incompetent,” I said.

“Splendid,” said my editor, Steve Landers. The plan was launched. I would take the exam. Any walk-in was eligible. No qualifiers.

I was one of those guys who was utterly ignorant about cars. I never even changed my own oil, because I was afraid of pouring it into “the wrong hole.” But what I was good at was taking multiple-choice exams. A PSAT and two SATs and an SAT prep course and natural nerd affinities set me up well.

I don’t remember much about the test, but I do recall one question. It asked what the “taper” of a piston meant. I figured that if a piston operated anything like a pair of trousers, the taper would be the difference in width between the top and bottom of the piston, and chose the appropriate answer. Right I was.

Etc.

I took two exams in succession — the first, to be a basic, run-of-the-mill auto mechanic, and a second to be an even more impressive, exalted, specialized auto mechanic, one with a license to deep-repair engines themselves. I failed the first exam, but passed the second. Three days later, I was informed of this incongruous result, which the state of Michigan did not seem to think was strange at all. I had my license.

My story ran the following day on page one of the Free Press, along with a cartoon showing Mickey Mouse examining a car engine that was belching fire and black smoke, and diagnosing: “I think the tires are a little low.”

My first paragraph was one of my all-time best. It read: “Yesterday, I knew almost nothing about what a car mechanic does. Today, I am one.”

The story humiliated the state. But remember, the state is a bureaucracy, so the tale doesn’t quite end there. A year passed by, and then, in the mail, I got … my automatic license renewal! Another story in The Free Press ensued.

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In my second encounter with bureaucracy, I lost … big time. It involved a kiss — a peck on the cheek — between my car and a city tow truck. I chronicled it here, in this column, which you should read, because it is a hoot.

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My third tale is ongoing. Just happened yesterday. I tried to renew my car registration online in the District of Columbia, but the website informed me that I had an outstanding ticket, and that I cannot renew my registration until I clear that up.

So I called the DMV and they confirmed I did indeed have an outstanding speed-camera ticket, and that was the only blot on my record. So I paid it, but only reluctantly, since the speed camera in question was notoriously unfair — there are two posted speed limits on the road, one reading 25 mph, and the other 50 m.p.h, side by side, and you usually can get the ticket expunged if you take a day off from work and go to court. (There are outraged websites devoted entirely to this one speed camera.) I had successfully challenged tickets from this camera in the past, but now I needed my goddamn registration right away.

(The city could have solved the problem anytime in the past eight years by taking down either the camera or the 50 mph sign, but they still haven’t, probably because that camera is a major source of revenue.)

Anyway, I paid the outstanding ticket, then tried to register again, and the computer told me I still had an outstanding ticket, despite what the lady on the phone had said, and I began to wonder if the outstanding ticket was in a different category — “minor moving violations.” Could it have been from the kiss incident I referred to above? I had paid that ticket, but, you know, this is the District of Columbia DMV. I have no record of that violation, since it happened almost four years ago, and I never got any notice that it was unpaid. And I was allowed to register two years ago with no problem.

Still, I went online to check that. And the website was perfectly willing to tell me if I had an outstanding minor moving violation, but only if I told them the ticket number of the infraction. Which of course I have no record of.

More on this ghastly mess as it develops. And it will develop because this is the District of Columbia DMV.

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Important Gene Pool Gene Poll:

Good. I hope plenty of you said “yes,” because that is your question for today, which I will address next week: Tell us your story of your interesting/ funny / ghastly interaction with bureaucracy. For the purpose of this question, I am defining “bureaucracy” as government.

Send your stories here:

And please, if you are feeling generous, send your pittance here. $4.15 a month. You can’t get this kind of crap anywhere else on the Web. It’s an even cheaper laugh than a knock-knock joke: