Went to the DMV on Tuesday to renew my license and get my tabs. Could've waited a couple weeks, but after I looked at my calendar I realized it was best to do it Tuesday because I had time.
I could've gone to the DMV attached to the Brooklyn Center library because it's new and fancy and expansive, but I found the customer service there to be awful -- you're just a number to be shuffled out of the sight of the people who are there just to punch in and punch out. I like(d) the one in Columbia Heights better because the women who work there are (were) folksy. Who cares if the suite they're in is so dingy and cramped they should close it down?
I take a number. I'm called up. I tell the lady I need a new license and tabs. She shows me the application to fill out for a new license. I then realize that there are piles of these applications everywhere, and there are also signs everywhere saying that everybody needs to fill out one of these applications if you need to get a new license. So basically I wasted time by not paying attention to my surroundings. When's the last time I needed to get a new license? I don't remember.
While being ordered to go to the back wall to fill it out, in walks a lady. She starts coughing. Loudly. Every single fucking second. It was a wet, phlegmy, I'm-sick kind of cough. There was a woman standing between us. When that woman went into another coughing fit, she gave me this look as she slowly walked away from her. Why the fuck are you walking around in public and endangering the health of strangers? Go fuck off and die.
And that's why I'm so pissed at myself for not filling out the application before being called up. I didn't know what to do after I was sent away; I was told to come back once I filled out the app, but did she mean that I could just cut in line and see her when I was done? I don't need the ire of strangers at the DMV of all places, so I just took another number ... which naturally was behind that of The Contagious Woman. I see her wheeze and hack her way to another teller, who was to the right of the woman I saw.
"Please, please, please don't be the teller I get," I thought as that sick bitch continued to cough as she was doing what she needed to do. But knowing my bad karma, it was going to happen. When my name was called, I went to the open teller ... who was the same woman who served The Contagious Woman.
What the hell was I to do? I didn't want to get sick breathing in all the germs she expelled right there. And I didn't want to inadvertently touch the counter and then my mouth. My Grandmother's old; if she dies because I gave her something given to me by some sick-as-fuck stranger at the DMV, I'm going after that woman.
So I gave one-word answers to this rep's (again, this is the woman to the right of the woman who first helped me). I held my breath as long as possible so I wouldn't breathe in the germs of that walking cesspoll of disease. And I lightly grabbed and held the pen when I needed to write "Anoka County" on the payable to line. She responded by being cold, dismissive and quick with me -- the same shit I think of when I think of the people at the DMV attached to the Brooklyn Center library. Or maybe she would've treated me like shit anyway.
It's Thursday early morning. I'm not sick, touch wood.
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