So… I have a new found appretiation for the Department of Motor Vehicles in the state of Michigan. For my entire life, everyone has always talked about how horrendous it was go have to go to the DMV. How it was crowded, the people were rude, the lines were long and you had to wait forever. To all of you Michiganders who think they know the deal… F’koff. First off, I never had any of those problems in Michigan. I never made an effort to go at times when people wouldn’t be there, I was too lazy and unorganised for that. There were never more than 6 or 7 people and I never waited more than 20 minutes. Half the time, I walked in and the person behind the counter told me not to bother grabbing a number, and called me right up. As for rudeness? I’ve never been treated rudely at the DMV, and in fact, have always been treated very nicely. You do your thing, get a temporary paper license, and your card is mailed within 2-3 weeks.
And secondly? Screw all that. Flordia’s DMV is unbelievable. I’ve never seen a more rediculous concept in my life. They’re not open five days a week, which I can understand. But, not every one of them deals with driver’s licensing. So, within a 50 mile radius, (and mind you I live in Orlando… which one would think could be considered a failrly large city, but not enough to warrant a large enough supply of these places apparently…) there are three facilities. Everyone says, “Make an appointment.” So, figuring that it makes a lot of sense, I get the number and call. And call, and call, and call… I call for a week, and get a busy signal every time. Now… In the info I read online it said that if you have a current license from a certain list of states, MI being one of them, that all you have to do is go in and they give you a FL license. My MI licese expired on my birthday (I turned 21, that’s the first time you have to renew MI licenses, because your birth date is red when you’re under 21 and black when you’re not.) and the all the info said “valid license” and an expired license isn’t valid. So I was under the impression that I had to get in there before my birthday and get this taken care of. (And since I still hadn’t managed to get ahold of anyone on the phone, I had no way to verify.) So… figuring that I didn’t really want to spend Valentine’s day at the DMV, I made the decision that if I hadn’t gotten an appointment by Tuesday the 12th, I was just going to drive out there on Wednesday. And yes, Tuesday came and went. So we left at 7am on Wednesday to get there early. We got there in plenty of time, there were only 20 or so people, the check in line was fairly short. And while I was waiting, I got all my stuff together so I would be ready when I got up there. But, of course not. We had gone out to a club the previous Friday to hear a friend of Nickie’s spin, and I managed to leave my ID in the pocket of those pants and not realise it until I was next in line. AND instead of staying in line and asking if my passport would work OR staying in line and getting a number (Nickie: “They’ll call your number before we get back.” Right.), we took off for home. By the time we got back (which was only 45 minutes later…) and got checked in, I was handed number 60. They guy asked if I wanted to make an appointment, but I said no, since the earliest was the following week, and I needed it done by Saturday. We sat down to wait.
At 10:30, they called number 19.
People around us were talking about the previous day, and how after a certain time, they told everyone else waiting to leave, because they weren’t going to have time to get to everyone. I realised that I would probably get arrested for murder if we waited there all day and then got sent home. I joined in the conversation, offering up my plight as another story for discussion, including the whole thing about my license expiring and some woman across from me says, “They’ll honour it for 10 days after expiration. You should go make an appointment.” What? I sat there for about 10 more minutes. (Nickie and I were in the middle of a playing that game anyway… the one where you make a bunch of dots on paper in a sort of grid and take turns putting lines between the dots and whoever ends up making the most boxes wins.) Then I got up and walked over to the counter and asked about the grace period. Sure enough, it was true. So I made an appointment for Wednesday the 19th. And we left.
Now… the guy seemed a little out of it… or like he was having trouble understanding what I was asking with regards to the license expiring… And I was not about to have to take a driver’s test and whatnot… So I decided to call one of the other places to see if I could get in that day. (This one was almost an hour away, but if it meant not taking the test, it would be worth it.) Again, the number was busy, but then I actually got through. First she thought I was asking how long I had after moving to FL I had before I was supposed to get a license (which is supposed to be 30 days, but no one enforces it) but then she figured out what I was asking. “You have 6 months after it expires.” Oh.
So I went on the day of my appointment and waited for about 10 minutes. I wasn’t treated rudely, but wouldn’t say nicely either. It took about 10 minutes to get everything into the system and about 2 minutes for them to get to taking my picture. The only neat thing is that they make the card that day. That took about 2 more minutes. And we went home.
So… In conclusion… The only thing FL DMV has on MI is that you get your card that day. And the only way to conquer the Florida DMV is to think months in advance and make an appointment.
The picture turned out pretty good too.