Time for a pet peeve that actually disappointed me (in a good way) this morning...the DMV. My license is expiring soon, so I chose to take a day off from work today and get the renewal done.
The county where I live has three small cities, but the county government is in a small historic village far away from those population centers. The main DMV office is in the county building, and they operate satellite offices in each small city. The last time that I went to the main DMV office about 10 years ago, the staff were all grouchy old-timers...counting their days until retirement and in no hurry to do work. I went into the building this morning expecting this same old scene.
Let me tell you about a miracle. After my last visit, there was a hurricane that passed by our area and flooded the county building's basement. The county decided to make a federal claim to get a new county building, by creating some faux emergency and evacuating the building for several years. All of the old DMV staff were transferred to the satellite offices, where they either retired or died.
Long story short, when the main DMV was re-opened last fall, it appears that they hired all new/young staff...and taught them customer service skills!
I walked in the door looking for the "take a ticket" triage machine, but there was none. The sheriff deputy by the door said that for license renewals I just needed to go to Window #1 (where there was no line) with the mailed form. Yup, walk right around the huddled masses waiting to plead their case about why their licenses should be un-suspended and straight to a live clerk! The clerk was asking me for stuff faster than I could pull out my old license and debit card, read the top line of the eye chart (sadly not H-R-V-N-O-P-F-T any more like it has been for years), and out the door in literally one minute.
Anyway, it took a hurricane to do it, but our local DMV is *not* a pet peeve of mine any longer!!!!!