Having spent several weeks away from cable internet, JM and I have started catching up on missed tv shows at hulu.com. Last night we caught the episode of the office called "casual friday," in which one of the subplots features Michael discovering what fun it is to fake fire people, wherein he gives the worker the bad news, watches her face fall. Then Michael's own face fills up with air, and he explodes with laughter. The worker is of course appreciative to find out that she still has a job, but only partly so. That shit is not funny (though watching it kind of is in an outrageous "The Office" sort of way).
Today, JM and I experienced our own little taste of a real life Michael Scott, and he works at the DMV. The DMV is outside of town in a little village called Peru. It's a nice drive that takes you past the (s)mall and Mt. Nittany, then past the prison and into Peru. When we first arrived there was miraculously no waiting, but of course we were told we didn't have nearly the proof of identities and addresses that we needed. We needed passports, social security cards, our Illinois licenses (the only things we actually had), and two proofs of our new address. So we drove all the way back home to get these items--past the prison, Mt. Nittany, the (s)mall, and back again, and presented them to the same guy. The DMV guy took one look at JM's passport and said "this won't do." My shoulders fell. I looked at JM, panicked. Then the DMV guy burst out laughing: "I'm kidding! It's great! Funny, huh?"
Good to know that I need all that stuff, and that there's a jerk working at the DMV for whenever I get around to getting my PA license and registration (September at the latest, since that's when my Oregon plates expire).
Posted by: Michael Faris | 09 June 2009 at 08:42 PM
Here's another tip: it's closed on Monday, which means Tuesday it's crammed with teenagers who had weekend birthdays.
Posted by: dhawhee | 10 June 2009 at 08:25 AM
JM ran into no end of trouble when he tried to get his IL license and registration in Champaign last summer. The web site asked for a very specific list of things. When he brought those to the DMV, he was told he needed a totally different very specific list of things, and they refused to acknowledge that this was a different list from the one on the web. And at some point in there there were also phone calls, which of course produced a different list of requirements.
Posted by: caraf | 10 June 2009 at 11:56 AM
hey, there's a Mt Nittany?! That explains the mysterious "nittany lions." At last.
Posted by: Z | 11 June 2009 at 04:08 PM