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Gaffer Variety:
She Sure Showed Me! V058:
By Willie Gaffer:
This is the update of the ongoing saga with my old adversary, Terri Lynn
Land the
After the first time, I marked my calendar for the renewal date so they could not set me up again. Sure enough, when the time came last month, there was no notification from the state. That was in spite of the fact that I had gone to the local office of SOS and asked them to correct my mailing address. They had assured me it was done and I would get my notification. I was sure I was being set up again. It turned out I was right. I suspect these people have a basement full of returned documents that could not be delivered because they screwed up the address. Maybe they get so many that they just shred them at the end of every day.
I was wrong about one thing. At first I was convinced the ASS was involved in the prevention of my getting notified. That proved to be a misjudgment on my part. I doubt that she could manage a conspiracy like that. I am sure now it was just the general incompetence of a carelessly run bureaucracy which caused the bungling. I was wrong about another thing too. In my "Revenue Cops" essay I made the case that the SOS office in Grand Blanc, MI was more competent than the one in Trenton, MI. Wrong again, Gaffer!
The truth is, the people in the Grand Blanc office are more polite and perky
than the people in
On
On
So the woman at the office filled out the forms and took our money, but I got no driver's license. At that time she gave me a temporary permit. She told us I would get a new license in the mail in three or four weeks. She assured me that the correct mailing address was in the computer and the license would be mailed to the correct address. I am sure that was not true but I could not get her to understand that. They had the address in the computer alright, but it did not print out because it was on the wrong line. We tried several times to point the discrepancy out to her, all to no avail. Unless you are JC, there is no way you can make blind people see or stupid people smart.
These people just don"t get it because they are not properly trained or
supervised. The people who should be their mentors and leaders are just power
players in a corrupt system. Most of the good things the previous SOS, Candice
Miller, did have been now undone. Land has decreed that the voter registration
address and the driver"s licenses address be the same. Then the people in
her branch offices refuse to get it right. They won"t change it. What we
have here is studied stupidity caused by mental laziness. Mental laziness is
the most pervasive disease in
After being frustrated in the local office I went on line to try to change the address. Of course I was not allowed to do it. In fact, I was not allowed to do anything. There are so many qualifiers and conditions that the customer service part of the site is useless. As I said Land has regressed the office of the SOS to the good old BM (before Miller) days. In the BM world, you had to go to the SOS office and stand in line to do anything at all. In the BM days we counted on losing at least one day just to get a license plate.
After being frustrated on line I tried to think of what to do. I had one more shot because the SOS website did have a change of address form. I could download that and fill it out and hope. After filling out the form, I did a bit more than hope. I begged. I sent the following letter along with the filled out form.
Willie Gaffer
P O Box xxx
Dear Person who reads this:
Please fix my mailing address so I can get the things you mail to me. I have tried several times to get the people in the Grand Blanc office to change my address to the PO Box. Every time I have asked they say, "It's already in the computer." Of course it is, but it is entered on the wrong line.
What you have in the computer is:
Willie Gaffer
xxxx Myroad RD PO Box xxx
When that is printed the printer prints:
Willie Gaffer
xxxx
The people at the Grand Blank office printed my address 5 times on 3 different forms and the PO Box was not there. They simply refused to notice the dichotomy between what they said is on the computer and what was actually printed. I could not get them to put the PO Box on a separate line so it would not be dropped when it was printed. Please put my PO Box on a separate line like this:
Willie Gaffer
PO Box xxx
xxxx
If you do that, the address will print correctly and I will get my driver's license and forms when you mail them. The way it is now, the USPS will return whatever you mail to me marked "No mail receptacle" or "No such address."
I have been trying for over a year to get this fixed. Please help me!
Willie Gaffer:
To my utter amazement, that worked. Somewhere in the huge bureaucracy resides a human being with a mind who thinks and understands. I was overjoyed when my driver's license actually arrived in an envelope with my correct mailing address. If I knew how to thank that person, I sure would.
Now I can get to the joke. After my experience with the SOS staff I realized
a person who would empower people like the assistant SOS should not have the
power to do so. Land has no right to occupy a high office in the great state of
Not only could I not find a SOS opponent, I had difficulty
finding the dumbocratic party of
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