Serving Bread

Dealing with government is swimming (rather drowning) in bureaucracy. Whether it is trying to get through to someone in LAUSD (4 phonecalls and still waiting for a response) or trying to get a passport, government leads me to conclude that it is an entity that we have to try to fight to get what we want.

I woke up at 4:30am this morning to pick up a student in Pasadena and then headed to the Federal Building in Westwood to renew her damaged passport. We arrived at 6:30am and I thought I would have some time to pick up a cup of coffee before making our way to the passport office that opens at 7am. But when we arrived, there were somewhere over 300 people already in line.

Most of them did not have appointments (we didn’t either), which means that we had no chance in hell to renew our passport. (By the way, we tried to get the appointment, but the system was jammed and had nothing available for the foreseeable future)

We had two choices: quit or stand in line and try our luck. At that point, the student had the idea of calling her congressman to see if he could pull some strings. She got through to a secretary who said she’d take care of it. Within ten minutes, we got a call back that the student was placed on a Special Handling List. Within half an hour, the security guard came outside with a list. She was on the list. She went from the back of the line to the front of the line.

She made it inside the building and renewed her passport. Now, she did stand in 4 to 5 lines and finally picked up her passport at 6pm (11 and 1/2 hours later).

The passport system is a mess, and some of the training that the In N Out people get could go a long way in this instance. (Condy, my services are available on a part-time basis) I was surprised how quickly putting a call to the congressman worked. I am convinced that without that phone call and without the advocacy of government officials, the student will never have gotten her passport renewed.

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