Good Bureaucrats
You can tell how topsy-turvy has become the world when the star performers are the people behind the counter at the California Department of Motor Vehicles and those serving at a local Social Security office. Both operations seem to run very smoothly, the folks treat their clients courteously, and the places are clean. Indeed, the service I received was so good that I would recommend that local retails should take a lesson. My, how times have changed.
I had gone to the DMV in August for my driver's license renewal. Little did I know but that for the past 18 months, they had been cross-checking their information with the SocSec folks, and my application got spit out like sand in a porridge. The problem was that when I moved to California, I put the name Tony Seton on my application, and it was accepted. It was later enough to satisfy the feds for my pilot's certificate and the investigators who say it's all right to have a concealed weapons permit.
My name on my Social Security card is that with which I dubbed at birth: Anthony Mitchell Seton. Kinda clumsy, never appealing, I've always been Tony, except for being called Anthony in a mellifluous Austrian accent by a delightfully engaging Viennese young lady.
Anyway, the gracious, professional and sincere ladies at the DMV couldn't have been more solicitous, ready and willing to get it done right. They said I could either change my name to Tony with the SocSec people or I could change my driver's license (and all the other cards) to Anthony. This latter direction would require a birth certificate from Connecticut, which would cost money, though she would be glad to make the telephone call for me on her dime. I worried briefly about Anthony's bennies not catching up with Tony, but the thought of tackling all of the other changes was too daunting.
So off I went to visit the feds. The wait wasn't very long, and the person who was to fix things seemed to actually care. But she was stumped. No one had come to her with such a problem without proof of being Anthony. Not having used the named in decades, I had no documents, except an old SocSec card but that didn't count. However, as providence was smiling this day, the fellow in the next cubicle said he could vouch for me. He recognized me from my radio days. That was enough. The deal was done.
I returned to the DMV with my letter of legality, and walked across the office to see the person I had met earlier. She was seated before a line of five people, three of whom walked out of a Gary Larson cartoon. But this noble DMVer immediately called me to the front of the line, shuffled my documents, said everything was taken care of, and sent me on my way.
Later, when I awoke....No, this wasn't a dream. It happened this way. And in cosmic terms, it suggests that if we only gave people a system that worked, loosen some of the regs, and gave sensible people reasonable authority, lotsa more could be accomplished.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
.