Commentary

This is a story about some bad service from a government agency.

Nothing new there, but I promise to make a point that doesn’t get much attention. It’s a point about the many times that a government agency makes a mistake and one of their representatives decides to rectify the error by giving some poor taxpayer a part-time job—and an unpaid position, at that.

Here it goes:

I recently promised my wife that I would replace a burned-out headlight on her car—and then forgot to take care of the matter. Sure enough, a traffic cop wrote her a fix-it ticket a few days later.

So I fixed the headlight and took the car down to the official inspection station on the 1900 block of S. Hill Street, arriving on the final day allowed for me to take care of the ticket.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy on duty had a look and signed off on the job, collecting a $15 fee for his effort, which took all of 60 seconds or so.

I had to present the verification of the fixed headlight to the Metropolitan Branch of the Los Angeles Superior Court, which is just up the block from the inspection station. I got back in the car and looked for parking on the street. There was none, so I had to pay $7 to park in the underground lot at the courthouse.

I waited in line to enter the courthouse, and then joined another line of about 50 other individuals who were there to take care of tickets.

I finally got to the window—and then came the glitch. The lady behind the counter told me that there was no record of the ticket.

Oh well, I decided. Everyone makes mistakes. I’m sure this one can be straightened out.

The lady behind the counter gave me an official-looking document to verify that I had appeared as ordered by the Superior Court. She told me to send the document, along with the other paperwork on the ticket and a check for $10 to the courthouse via the U.S. Mail.

That sounded good, but I wanted to make sure that my wife wouldn’t get pulled over and accused of failing to appear on a citation for a fix-it ticket. The inexplicable lack of any record of the ticket gave me the creeping feeling that the paperwork could just as inexplicably show up again—marked unpaid, with a Failure to Appear addendum.

I asked the lady behind the counter how I would know that this matter is finally settled.

“You need to check back every two to three weeks,” she barked.

Then she gave me what apparently passes for a break in her professional world, informing me that I would be able to perform my new part-time, unpaid job via the Internet.

I had no choice but to accept the lady’s order, of course. Those folks at the windows can get you kicked out of line on whim, and by this time I had enough time and money into the deal. I just wanted to get out of that courthouse and back to my day job.

So it’s only now that I’ll write what I really wanted to say to the lady:

“Excuse me, Ma’am, but I have met reasonable expectations to resolve this matter. Someone on the government’s end of this deal did not. I think someone from your office should notify me when this matter is settled, or let me know if there is some further problem. I know that there’s a good chance that such capacity does not even exist within your organization. I would appreciate it, however, if you would at least concede the error, offer a brief word of apology, and inform me that, due to the unusual circumstances, I will be responsible for covering the gap in government service that swallowed up the record of this ticket.”

That would’ve been nice, but instead I had to settle for the curt “you need to do this” routine.

And I suppose I do, as long as the almighty government says so.

Meanwhile, I join the many others who wonder if government workers ever hear themselves in these situations.

Because they really need to.

—Jerry Sullivan, Editor & Publisher