JUNE 24,2021 – (Cont.) “Once you pay,” Steve said, “go directly to DPS (department of public safety) four blocks away, and for 20 bucks, your son can get his license re-instated immediately.” I wondered what Steve knew about the bloody history of the Committee of Public Safety during the French Revolution.
Instead, I thanked Steve—too soon. What he’d left out, as Cory and I learned yesterday on our first visit to DPS was that after handing over the requisite cash to DOR, we needed to drive to the Hennepin County Government Center in downtown Minneapolis and obtain a court-administration-issued receipt for our DOR-issued receipt.
Getting the receipt for the receipt required five intermediate steps. FIRST: observing en route all traffic laws—to avoid the irony of a ticket in the course of dealing with a ticket. SECOND: fighting an automated parking meter, the main function of which was to make me feel like a hopeless idiot before I went utterly insane. THIRD: following the wrong directions provided at the “[Dis]information Desk” where the laconic woman in charge pointed to the wrong flight of stairs, which led to the “DMV Service Center,” where we had to wait in line to learn we didn’t belong there. FOURTH: finding where we should have been directed in the first place (“VIOLATIONS[!]”). FIFTH: getting past security staffed by no fewer than five guys, each with a beer belly in uniform (we were the only suspects in line).
At “VIOLATIONS[!]” we waited for a patient clerk to explain things to a young Somali man who then translated for his elder, who seemed so baffled by the operation, he had to take a seat in the waiting area and wipe his brow. Cory and I then stepped up to the window and presented our receipt from DOR. The clerk stamped it hard and wrote in the date. As she did this, I had a flash-back to India in 1981, where a bureaucrat stamped the hell out of my visa. The clerk smiled, wished us well, and sent us on our way—back to DPS in St. Paul.
As we joined the end of the queue of mostly Somali (why was this, I wondered), a kindly shepherd solicited our story, then gave clear instructions as he opened a notebook and had Cory scan a bar code. “Hang out in the lobby. When you get a text, proceed to the service area.”
Done deal. Minutes later a cheerful clerk inspected our receipt of the receipt, tapped on her keyboard, took our $20 bill, tapped again on her keyboard, pulled a printed sheet off a nearby printer, gave the paper to Cory, and told us to enjoy the rest of our day.
Kafka in a nutshell.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
