Barnabas Monkeypants

I have to go get Henry’s birth certificate. The Bureau of Vital Records is only a few blocks from my office, so for the past couple of weeks I’ve trudged over there to see if the line is short enough for me to wait in it. And every day I’ve gone, I’ve left soon after. It’s not just that the line is long — it is — it’s that office (like most government offices in Chicago) is so mismanaged that it nearly kills me with frustration.

First off, it’s closed between 1 and 2 in the afternoon. The first day I went, during my lunch hour, I saw a darkened office behind locked doors. I quickly asked myself, “Is it a holiday?” No, no holiday. “Is it a Saturday and somehow, in my sleep deprivation, I’ve lost all track of the days?” No, because while I had been very sleepy that day, I had gone to work and everyone else was there. So what was it? They were closed for lunch.

Now let me get this straight (as I stand on my soapbox): a government office, one whose hours mimic those of most working people, one that is not open on weekends, one that is closed on every possible holiday (Casimir Pulaski Day? Oh, yes), also has a lunch hour? It’s not like there’s only one person in the department. There are several people there who could, very easily I might add, stagger their lunch times so that the office would not close. This enfuriated me. I can get indignant about things (don’t even get me started), and this went to the front of the list.

Second is the aforementioned line. The next day, I return, making sure to go during an hour in which they chose to be open, but when I got there, there was a line out the door. And not only was there a line, but it seemed like everyone in line had their newborn with them, each sitting in a stroller larger than the last. I’m not sure why, exactly. Did they think they needed proof? And how could they even prove that was their baby? Ask them?

“You want a birth certificate?”

“Yes.”

“And you say this is your son?”

“Yes.”

“Alright, let me ask him. Boy, is this your father?”

Drool.

“Well, I’m convinced.”

I waited in line for about 45 minutes, the line barely moving, until I had to go back to work. There are a few readers here who live in Chicago, and they can back me up on this. The women (it’s 95%) who work at any one of the dozens of city, county, and state offices in this city are all staggeringly slow. Sloth-like would be a compliment. Most government workers here cannot get fired unless they are grossly incompetent. That means they have to actually do something that a) causes some physical harm, b) steal a lot of money, or c) just stop showing up. And even then, they get to hang around for a few months before their firing goes through.

(This may sound like I’m some crazed conservative railing on the failings of our bloated government. In fact, it’s just that I’m constantly amazed that anything can get done at the pace these people perform their menial labors. It’s frustrating more than anything.)

Although quite annoyed, I returned on two other occasions, and still nothing.

Now you’re probably saying, “Why don’t you just get it in the mail?” I would, if they wouldn’t charge me $12.45 (on top of the $15 for the birth certificate) for “VitalChek Express Processing”. This enraged me even more. I’m paying nearly twice as much for them to process my check? And even then, it likely would take ten to twelve weeks, and not getting it person would likely mean that there was something horribly wrong. A misspelling of a name. A wrong birth date. Perhaps saying that my son is, in fact, my daughter.

So what I’m going to have to do is waste a day off and go down there in person. Because, as it is, I have no proof that my child is actually alive and, in fact, that he’s my child at all.

Except for his very persuasive drool.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 26th, 2008 at 4:26 pm and is filed under Barnabas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.