The Black Hole: My Morning at the DMV

According to http://www.dmv.ca.gov/vr/checklists/outofstate.htm, the first step to transfering an out-of-state title and registration to CA is to get a smog test. I highly recommend the California Smog Test Station at 1425 Lincoln Ave. There were two friendly women working in the office who helped me through the process and gave my mom and I Jolly Ranchers before we left for the DMV. They mentioned that we would need the sustenance for our next step in the registration process, but we naively shrugged off their warnings as comical banter. If only we'd known.

When I spoke to Southern California AAA, they mentioned that the DMV recently suffered from staff cut-backs, but did not mention that there are certain DMV offices that you should never go to unless you are a masochist. The office I went to on Normal Street is one of those offices. It was a handy location just across the street from the smog test station, but that was where the convenience ended. We spent 3 hours waiting with a lobby full of customers in order to switch my TX drivers license and plates over to CA; a process that should have taken half that time. There are three other locations in the San Diego vicinity according to http://www.dmv.ca.gov/fo/regions/sandiego.htm. From that webpage you can click on a location and it will show you the current wait times as well as the wait times of nearby offices. What it does not say is that the wait time is from the time you get a ticket to the time your ticket number is called. The wait time just to get a ticket at the Normal Street location in San Diego can last much longer, thereby doubling the time it actually takes to get served. This is no fault of the remaining staff at the DMV, which seemed to consist of only a handful of individuals who were running from station to station trying to fill in wherever needed, thereby leaving their stations un-manned and forcing someone else to leave their station, etc., etc. It was a viscious and unavoidable cycle that somehow finally resulted in my receiving CA plates and a promise that my CA drivers license would arrive in the mail in 7-10 business days. It was an exhilerating moment and all the frustration leading up to it made me feel like I'd accomplished a great feat, but I won't hold my breath for the license.