Government Center

Had to renew my driver's license. So, I got up early, got to the DMV at 7:45 - 15 minutes before the doors opened. There were 25 or 30 people already in line. After the doors opened, it took me 30 minutes to get to the check-in desk to get my number.

And they called my number at 2:17. Took 13 minutes to do my paper work and I was out of there in a quick 6 and a half hours! It could have been worse.

This is a known problem.

Drove over to the Social Security Admin office because I needed a replacement SS card. That took five minutes.

So, let's listen to Modern Lovers!

the MODERN LOVERS "Government Center" 1972

You're welcome.

7 thoughts on “Government Center

  1. Mark Low

    Great song.

    But wow. Speechless. All NYC DMVs – you make an appointment online. We have this thing called “Express DMV” – it’s on 34th Street and its for really simple tasks – like renewals, plate surrenders, etc. You make an appointment online, get a barcode. You show up, scan your barcode, they call your number. I had an appointment at like 11:30 for a renewal last year. I showed up at 11:26 and was out the door by my actual appointment time.

    1. cleek Post author

      you can make appointments at NC DMVs. right now, they’re booking for late October. but my license runs out well before that, so i had to wait.

      the problem is statewide, and they’re blaming the wait on the time it takes to process everything for RealID (only took 13 minutes to do it for me, though). i blame it on the fact that there aren’t enough offices and the offices we do have are short-staffed. there is only one DMV office in my entire county, and only two people work there.

      and they could use some more chairs. i spent 4 hours sitting on the floor.

  2. HinTN

    Tennessee went to Real ID when it first came out. I recently renewed through 2025 completely online. Hard to believe we’re ahead of NC.

    1. cleek Post author

      i don’t know when NC started offering RealIDs. licenses last 8 years here, so it’s been a while since i had to go down there in person. but it’s still optional; you can get a non-RealID NC license, if you want.

  3. joel hanes

    Would have been less than two hours in California, without an appointment.
    Would have been half an hour with appointment.
    And there are plenty of chairs.

  4. ChrisR

    I just moved from California to Washington so I had to do the DMV thing as well last week. Waited about 3 hours. Went to get my plates after that, and of course I needed an emissions test, so I gave up on all that for the day and will do it this week instead. This DMV had a lot of staff, but there were also a LOT of people waiting, like 60-70. So much fun.

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