Mother-in-law works at one. Under educated, under paid, not enough help, everyone is forced to go there and sees it as a watse of their time so the “guv’ment” can “steal” your hard earned money. At least in thd US.

I reject the premise. I’ve had three interactions with the DMV in-person, and all three were smooth and pleasant.

Their website was irredeemably broken (and poorly-designed even if it had worked as intended), but that’s a different story…

DMVs are sometimes where states will dump troublesome or underperforming employees they can’t outright fire.

On the other end, the DMV is one of the places where employees have a job interacting with the public for sometimes-complex transactions. And, generally speaking, the public is dumb, unpleasant, and unprepared. Especially when dealing with low-level government beaurocrats who are telling them something they don’t want to hear.

Post office too. Really any government office where the public is allowed inside.

Underpaid workers trying to explain bureaucratic minutiae (for which they are not responsible) every single day to people who are not versed in that minutiae, do not want to learn it, cannot learn it, and are preemptively frustrated that they have to have this interaction in the first place. There is no winning–mental health isn’t cheap, do the workers’ resilience only lasts for so many years/months/days before they default to hating the clients, and the clients don’t trust publicly available instructions, thus dooming themselves to the shitty interactions.

The only way to fix this is to take both people out of the equation–preprocess everything that might need to happen for everyone, to the point of turning every transaction into a single trasaction. That requires for every city, county, state, national, international agency to federate, so that you never have to file multiple documents to do a thing.

The why is by design. Politicians in the US’s first past the post voting system are there to enrich themselves. They enrich themselves by making sure that the people who paid for their campaign are getting the appropriate tax structure and subsidies they paid for. Because state level budgets are finite, anything that does not advance the goal of the donor’s is optional. In addition think tanks such as the heritage foundation, or the third way, or hundreds of others that are the same with different names, are on a mission to make sure that government is privatized. It’s a slow multi-decade process, but the post office, the TSA, security clearances etc etc are examples of their success.

It’s very easy to make government agency’s efficient, but making an efficient government means that a middleman doesn’t get paid, and thus in our hellish system, an efficient government cannot exist.

I dont want to run counter to the theme, but I’ve never had a problem with the DMV.

My DMV lets you make appointments though, so maybe thats why. Never gone in without an appointment.

Maybe if you just repeat what others say online. My experience isn’t like this.

I dont agree with that at all. I guess it depends on what DMV you go to. I also have nothing against the post office.

Got a new bike from out of state, fucking paperwork nightmare here. Went to bmv for the final step and there was a line out of the door and inside is packed. Almost left but said fuck it and got in line.

Moments later a staff member comes out and hands everyone a ticket. Went in and sat down, was done in 30. Freaking like clockwork. Never had an experience like that at a bmv before. Usually it’s a shitshow.

There’s a small group of the general public that goes in the dmv with a complicated niche case with no idea what they need to do.

I got stuck behind a lady at the post office who had the dmv on speakerphone while they were trying to get proof of address because she just never had her mail forwarded when she moved.

I go into the dmv they make the dmv counter people answer the phones. I had two people call in and essentially cut the line in front of me to ask basic questions that they could have looked up on the website. If it’s unacceptable for people to interrupt me in person, then why do they allow it over the phone? Hate that shit.

I won’t say where it is so it didn’t get ruined but a busy dmv near the city closed down and opened somewhere slightly further away. The new location is a lot bigger, but no one goes there.

Luckily it’s like a 5 minute drive from my parents house and when you go in and get your ticket to see someone, they usually call your number before you get to the window.

I literally went, forgot documents, went home, go the documents, went back, and renewed my license in less than an hour.

Just sharing this on behalf of dmvs everywhere.

I hear this from Americans a lot, here everything is pretty much online nowadays (although a friend of mine had her identity stolen so she has to get in person which is her biggest complaint about the whole thing)

My DMV switched to appointments recently and it’s been great.

I’ve never understood the DMV hate. I just make an appointment online.

I don’t think a person knows hummanity better than after working at customer service. I say that before sales and marketing because the as a service rep you are the filter for everything and the first one to interact with people. If they are angry doesn’t matter the reason, or any small inconvinience even if it was a result of the client themselves.