DMV

I have had the "privilege" of dealing with the Department of Motor Vehicles or its equivalent in 4 states and now 1 foreign country. There seems to be some transcultural features of this particular branch of bureaucracy.* Honduras offers its own permutation on the theme.

Because the country has run out of license plates, many cars (ours included) are forced to drive without them. However, one must have permission to drive without a plate so there is a form one must carry with them to establish the legitimacy of their platelessness. Now whether out of shortsightedness or optimism that the necessary plates will soon be produced, the aforementioned certificate of permission to drive without plates is only valid two months at a time. So every two months I have to go to DEI to have someone put a seal and a new date on the back of this form. For DMV type transactions it's fairly painless, but inconvenient to have to do so often.

Well I am due this week to renew but I observed earlier in the week that DEI had abandoned the offices that I was familiar with. (I've been told that the government does not own many or even most of the buildings it uses.) But I did not know where it had moved. Through a fortuitous phone call from a friend who works at the Embassy I learned that it had moved around the corner. I was fortunate enough to find a parking space on the street (the building has about 4) where someone would wash my car and resist stealing my mirrors for a mere $3. Upon entering the new DEI building (a huge improvement on the previous one) I was informed by the guard that the particular section of the department that I needed was no longer housed in the same building as DEI. He kindly offered directions. I don't thrill to taking down directions in Spanish so I tend to quiz the information giver just for my own security that I know what he's talking about.

In the end it was late enough in the day that I didn't think that I had time to make it to this new office before they closed so I will add it to my errands for Monday. The whole thing isn't really that bothersome. The only part about it that galls me a bit is that in their last location, from where I had to wait for my form to be renewed, I could see a room with shelves absolutely filled with license plates.

Can I have one of those?


*The one exception in our experience may be Nebraska. We did interact with plenty of the expressionless DMV type workers there, but had one employee track down a title problem with WI on our behalf, and actually had a few DMV employees casually joke with us while they processed our documents!