My adventures at the NC DMV trying to get my CDL LP

Great God what an effin nightmare...

Now I attend CDL school Mon-Thurs 7:30am-6:00pm and the battle Charlotte rush hour traffic for 32 miles getting home. Then I work 12 hours Fri-Sun...not alot of spare time.

So I tell the boss I need to leave at 10:00am Friday to go to the DMV to take my written tests. He's a good guy and said no problem, come back when you're done.

So I get there at 10:30 to see an enormous charley-foxtrot in the parking lot and I think "aw crap, I'm gonna be here awhile." This turned out to be a monumental underestimation. Go inside and wait in line to put my name on the services list...this took 30 minutes and there were only two people in front of me. A very ...oh what's a word that won't get asterisked out here...rude female dog...yeah that's about right...informs me it will be a three hour wait. Well, I gotta get this thing done, I'm supposed to start road work Monday morning, so I bite my tongue and move away to call the boss and let him know that I'm caught firmly in the jaws of the bureaucracy and there's no real telling when I'll get done. He laughs and says just go home when I get done. This was the last positive occurrence until about 10:00 am the next morning...but I'll get to that later.

Well I came prepared for a little wait, I had my school CDL guide and the NC DOT CDL Handbook and I set about studying material I already knew. Folks, I could've brought Tolstoy's War and Peace to read and would have had enough time to get at least halfway through that meandering tome before anything relating to me happened and when it did, I wished it hadn't.

About two and a half hours into my wait in this purgatory, I became aware of people who had been there only a short time being called back...in a foreign language. I'm not going to be any more specific than that for fear of being branded a xenophobe. You see, I've learned that if you're a white guy, especially a white guy from the South, the slightest criticism of anyone other than another white guy from the South, automatically makes you a racist, xenophobic, sexist or any applicable combination thereof. So no specifics. At any rate, I hadn't hit the three hour advertised sentence so I went back to my books, which by now I could quote, chapter and verse. from memory. At the three and a half hour mark I decided that I had been patient enough and I decided to ask about my position in the waiting order. I was told it would be another two hours, they were busy with people who needed an interpreter. Through a herculean effort of self control I went back to my seat muttering loud enough for several people to hear about volunteering my services to build a wa....well anyhow, I was starting to get pretty well p1ssed off but I went and sat down and continued to wait...no choice, remember? After five and a half hours of waiting the gates finally reopened to those of us born here and who pay taxes to keep such monuments of bureaucratic efficiency in operation.

My name was called...

General knowledge...aced it.
Air brakes...nailed it also.
Combo vehicles...well now it gets interesting. Six questions in the screen flickers and for a couple seconds goes blank. Then it picks up right where we were and I continue...until an examiner taps me on the shoulder and says the following. "Sir, you're going to have to stop now, the computer is reporting you as taking the test twice today and you can't do that."

Dumbfounded look, I'm sure. "Huh?"
"You have to stop and come back Monday to retest the Combination vehicle portion." She says.
"Like H3ll I do. Your telling me your computer screwed the pooch and I gotta pay for it? I don't think so lady."

From this point on there's no real way to communicate what came out of my mouth other than to say I'm ex-navy and I can string together expletives with the best of them and that's exactly what I did. Had the entire room of people still waiting cheering me on. Highway Patrol Sergeant comes running out of the other side of the building to find out what all the yelling is about and being completely off my nut at this point, I let him have a little taste to.

Turns out he's a pretty cool guy and after getting me calmed done enough to figure out why I'm in the process of inciting a riot, he reads the examiners the riot act and let's them know in no uncertain terms that I will be allowed to retest and I'm going to do it right now. Guess what? Turns out the examiners had the ability to reset the computer and allow me to restart the Combo vehicle section.

Nailed at as well.

So six and a half hours after I arrived and after a meltdown that would make Chernobyl look like a brush fire, nearly inciting a riot and making a new friend out of a HP sergeant, I now have my CDL LP. I don't recommend the experience.

 

Think I heard the same broadcast...Shame on us tax paying Americans

#### Wing Wiper

You tell him!

 

I'm glad it gave you a chuckle. At least I didn't have to endure your prolonged proctoscopic exam.