Breaking news: The RMV still sucks

Do you remember how the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles used to be?

There were these long lines snaking endlessly through dark, cheerless rooms, hours spent staring at the flakes of dandruff on the back of the person standing in line in front of you, your face a pale green reflection of the grimy, institutional paint on the walls and the fluorescent bulbs above. And when you finally got to the front of the line, the cranky clerk, with her torpedo-shaped boobs, cat's-eye glasses hanging from a gaudy chain around her waddled neck and towering beehive hairdo would look imperiously down at you, announce that you were standing in the wrong line, slam her window shut and go off to the back room to smoke cigarettes with all the other psychopaths who worked there.

Well, that's all changed. Nowadays, the RMV is modern and well-lit and automated and efficient. And it is staffed by friendly, well-coiffed people who love their jobs.

Yeah, not so much.

I spent a couple of hours at the Beverly RMV recently. You no longer have to stand in line -- instead you get a little paper ticket, with a number and an estimate of how long it will be before your number is called, and you sit on benches and wait for your turn. The estimate is, of course, a lie. And there is still mass confusion. And the people who work there are still cranky old broads who seem to loathe their jobs. There was one who called everyone under 40 "missy." As in "stand over there in front of the screen, Missy, I haven't got all day."

Seriously, who says missy anymore?

But most of all, a sense of injustice still permeates the atmosphere of the RMV. Maybe the employees can no longer get away with slamming the window shut in your face (in part because they don't actually have windows anymore), but they have other ways of making you feel abused.

When I was there, two windows were open in the licensing area. It was the one night of the week when the branch is open late, so it was crowded with people who were bleary-eyed from work. Some of us had started to chat a little bit -- bonding in a superficial way, like people do at a Red Sox game or when taking public transportation or at some other natural disaster.

Out of the blue the woman who kept calling everyone missy announced she was forming a special line for all the people who'd just passed their driver's test, abandoning the system of paper tickets, numbers, and mis-estimates. It was every newly-permitted pimply-faced teen for him- or herself.

So now there is one window open. Window 2.

"B192 at window 2," the automated voice purrs over the loudspeaker. For a moment, it seems almost utopian. Everybody looks at their ticket and sighs.

"B-192!" the registry lady screams from behind her windowless counter. "B-192!" And a young woman re-checks her ticket, realizes that is her number, leaps from her seat and hustles over to window 2.

"Jesus Christ," the registry lady says. "What are you, deaf?"

Those of us left on the benches look at each other and laugh nervously and roll our eyes, whistling past the graveyard. We look at our tickets one more time, as if the answers are printed there beneath the numbers and the lies, as if the tickets will make things go any faster or more pleasantly, as if the tickets have the answer to the questions that everyone is asking themselves: What the hell am I doing here? Would it have been worth it to drive to Reading or Melrose after all? Why the hell didn't I just keep my maiden name in the first place?

And why didn't I just renew my license online?
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