"Reginald P. Smithers III, Esq."
wrote in :

The DMV used to be a complete disgrace, standing in line for hours to
get a new license plate. The employees were worse than the average
civil servant, yet I still used their services.
Luckily in our area, they actually have become a well run organization
with a completely different system of spreading out renewals
throughout
the year, and making , using mail and online options for renewal.
Unbelievable in our county the civil servants now actually try to be
helpful.



The last SC DMV employee to renew my driver's license was the same lady
to gave me the written test and issued my SC driver's license in 1966
when the Navy sent me here.

After she handed me my license, I said, "Do you remember the last time
you issued me a new driver's license?" She looked at me a minute and
shook her head. "It was in 1966 over at the Pinehaven office, in
April.", I said, smiling. She was astonished that I remebered her from
way back that far and we had a fun conversation about the millions of
licenses she'd issued in Charleston over her career. She started in
1964, the year I graduated high school and avoided the draft by joining
the Navy. She has missed 8 days of work between 1964 and 2006, 2 of
them to have two children in the 60's, and the rest when her kids got
sick. She has never taken a single day, herself, to be sick in all
those years....the perfect employee. She's now, of course, a
supervisor, in her crisply pressed DMV uniform that looks like those old
photos of Soviet Army women, slightly fat with closely trimmed hair.

They'll find her dead on the floor behind the DMV counter, some day,
from old age when they come into work at 8. Of course, she gets their
first before everyone else as it is her home-away-from-home for 44
years.

I think DMV needs to name the office after her with a full bronze statue
out front by the flag pole. They've never had a more concientious
employee in state government. She waves at me every time she sees me
come into the office, now, remembering our little chat....(c; I get
first class service as the "lesser" bureaucrats think I'm friends with
the senior staff...(c;