Officially a Washingtonian

So if you're keeping track, WA would be the 4th state that I've had a driver's license in. The 3rd in the last year or so. And seriously, this was hands down the worst DMV experience ever. Well, I guess that would be experiences since we had to go twice.

Trip 1: Check in at counter to get our number. Double check list of documents needed and sit down. We had proof of identity (CA license) and proof of residency (car insurance policy.) After and hour we finally get called to the counter and it turns out that the car insurance policy I brought (with all the info on it) wasn't good enough. Apparently my lovely friend behind behind the counter thought it should have more pages. (What?!) So we leave and decide to come back once we've gotten a utility bill in the mail to use instead.

Trip 2 (two weeks later): Decide to get to the DMV right when it opens (8:30am on Saturday) to avoid the crowds. We get there right at 8:30 and there is a mile long line wrapped around the parking lot waiting to get it. So we wait in this line and get to the counter to get our number and we show the guy what we have - to make sure we aren't waiting for nothing again. Ok, utility bill is fine, but the CA license isn't enough to prove identity. After all, didn't we read the fine print on the list of documents saying that the CA license would need 2 other proofs if we decide to use that? Nope, we did not see this even though we read the list about 9,481 times. So we go home and pick up our passports - the ultimate proof of identity. Go back, wait in line again for a number, and then proceed to wait about an hour and half for our number to get called to finally get our stupid licenses.

It turns out that apparently getting a license is about as low on the totem pole as you can get in WA at the DMV. If you are there because you screwed up and need to pay them big fines you get to move to the front of the wait.

Oh and these were perhaps the rudest civil servants (and I use the term servant lightly) on the planet. After all, the guy keep telling us if we had been patient and read the list (which we DID) then we wouldn't have had problems. They also commented on Doug's California attitude. Ya know, because we lived there for like 6 months.

I guess its hard for the DMV workers to know everything about everything.