City Hall shenanigens

I skipped over to City Hall. I was in a good mood. I had just registered to vote and after I bought my downtown parking permit, I would have no more bills to pay for at least two days.

But sadly, City Hall was aware of my euphoria and ready to crush my spirit with the weight of bureaucracy.

I walked through the glass doors of this fairly new building that screamed efficiency, but whispered, "but not for you." And I was hit with a wall of sage, which I think is the new beige.

A plasma screen told fellow citizens what was going on and a soft female voice randomly came over the P.A. saying that everything would be OK. Well, that's not what she said. She was usually looking for someone, but I felt that the subliminal message was that everything was fine.

For some reason, City Hall feels like some futuristic bus station. I could imagine the soft-voiced woman telling everyone the next train was arriving: "Southbound bullet train with a final destination of hell with stopovers in purgatory and limbo leaves in five minutes."

Crap, that's my train.

Anyway, there was no line for turning in my parking pass, and after about three minutes, I was approved to park three blocks from where I live.

But I had to go to a completely different line to pay for my sparkly parking pass - the cashier line.

Now, this was a line. It snaked past the cubicles and into an open area. Finally, I felt like I was in a building staffed by public servants.

For this gargantuan line there was one harried-looking man trying to appease everyone. Sadly, judging from the growing volume level of the woman at his window, he wasn't accomplishing this goal.

But still I was in a pretty good mood, just growing increasingly bored. Thankfully, the woman in front of me talked for a good 20 minutes about different friends of hers and how they were horrible people. She then went into great detail about their faults, their horrible style (this from a woman in an orange-and-yellow-striped, blue turtleneck) and about how her friend Mandy (names have been changed to protect the badly dressed) was pretty but not really pretty.

The harried man was still with the loud woman, 15 minutes had gone by and the friendly city workers behind lineless windows I swear were laughing at us in line.

Another five minutes crawled by. I started imagining my escape route in case there was some catastrophe I kind of wished would have occurred.

After staring at the harried public servant, I realized that there was a good chance he had a slight case of OCD. All of the objects on his desk were precisely lined up, and with this information, I started plotting my revenge. I had big plans to move around all of his stuff once I made my way to his window.

I finally got to the front of the line, my petty revenge in the forefront of my thoughts, when a woman sat down in the seat next to my nemesis and said, "Next please."

Oh hell no, I waited in that long ass line so that I could mess with this man, and she would not take away my one little shining light of joy.

"Next please."

Damn it, could I play off the deaf thing?

I felt a tap on my shoulder; I turned and glared at the impatient soul behind me who also let me know there was a window open.

I moped over to the lady who had foiled my plans, hating her for making the line go faster. But, City Hall beat me again because this was obviously her first time at this window as my quick transaction took another 10 minutes as she asked everyone around her how to take my money for my parking permit.

I guess you really can't fight City Hall.