A piece of advice for my fellow Americans. If you carry your Social Security card in your wallet or purse, don't. That might be common sense in this age of identity theft, but my reason is even more practical than that threat. Going to the Social Security office to get it replaced will make you wanna just give up your citizenship. That'd be easier, actually.
I spent more than three hours there yesterday. I lost my wallet awhile back. Since I'm up for a new job, I need to show a SS card, so I had to go get a new one. "No big deal," I naively thought. I printed the form online, filled it out and thought it would be a quick trip downtown. Um, no.
I get there at 10:30. There are 200 people in a room that holds about 150. It's about 90 degrees in there (on a rare cold Phoenix day... it was raining and in the 50s outside). And there were only about 100 chairs. Now anyone who's been to their state's DMV knows this scene. I'm still thinking "This sucks, but the line will move quickly and I'll be out of here in a little bit." Boy was I wrong.
First more of a scene setter. So it's hot and crowded. Now for the people. At first I thought I'd gone in the wrong door and was at the Mexican consulate. Of the 200 people in this room, 180 were foreigners. Most of the remaining 20 were homeless... And smelled like it. One guy reeked of piss and worse so bad, the security guard kept making an apologetic face to others and spraying this equally-offensive aerosol to (ineffectively) mask the odor.
By the way, living in the southwest has given me a new perspective on immigration. Some of your opinions no doubt differ, but I have no problem with immigrants. However, this whole scene was taking place en espanol. All the signage at the SS office was in Spanish. All the announcements made were in spanish (then English). Every now and then you'd be jarred by a call out for "David Green, ventanna cinqo, per favor." The English names stood out, so I wasn't worried about drifting off and missing mine.
No chance of drifting off, by the way, because as I said, there were no seats available. Still, when one did open up, I was stunned at how many young toughs would jump into them ahead of pregnant women and old people. I guess chivalry and basic, 3rd grade manners went out the door with the dot-com boom.
So you walk in and stand in the first line for a half hour, just to put your name in. Then you're told to wait for your name to be called. That took another 2 1/2 hours. While you're waiting that 2+ hours, they keep making announcements that if you want to know the status of where you stand in the cue, you need to get back in the first line to ask? That wouldn't be necessary if the guy at the head of that first line, who puts your name on The List, simply told you "There are 170 people ahead of you. It will be about 3 hours."
I'm guessing he doesn't offer this info for the same reason my old agents at the Vanguard Airlines ticket counter wouldn't tell passengers their flight was gonna be 2 hours late... Passengers wouldn't find out 'til they got through security and all the way to the gate, then they'd be pissed (and rightly so). Nobody wants to be the bearer of bad news. Still, if the truth were known up front, you could leave, go get some lunch, come back in an hour or two... And everybody wins. It would mean a less congested waiting room and no stress waiting.
Anyway, once my name was
finally called, it literally took about 5 minutes to conduct my business. Of course, the civil servant ripped up the form I'd printed online and did another one on his computer (So why does the
Social Security Administration website even advise people to have the forms ready and filled out by the time they get there)?
Then, just to put the Seinfeldian ending on it all, I get out, walk into the rainy chill of freedom... And have a parking ticket on my windshield. The SSA's convenience store-sized parking lot was full, of course. All the other people parked where I was also had tickets.
I got home around 2:15 p.m. After less than 6 hours of sleep, I got to get up for work around 8:30 p.m. The fun never stops.
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