Tuesday, March 8, 2011

I Love a Good Government Office Error

I was thrilled yesterday when Samara's birth certificate arrived. I tore open the envelope excitedly and surveyed its contents. There was her name, the hospital she was born in, and her time of birth: 10:07 am. Wait a second, I thought to myself, that is completely wrong. She was born at 8:06 pm. 10:07 is not even close.

My friend Josina pointed out that this must happen a lot, errors associated with birth certificates, because The Department of Vital Records encloses a correction form in the envelope with the birth certificate. In fact, there was an error on her son, Nelson's, birth certificate.

Okay, I thought to myself, I'll just fill out the correction form and send it back, no problem. But then I noticed that the good old Department of Vital records was asking for a processing fee of $15. $15 to fix their error, not mine? I don't think so.

I had two more cognizant individuals supervise me fill out the birth certificate form after I had my baby so that a situation like this would not occur.

I appreciate the fact that people make mistakes, and I'm sure the workers at The Department of Vital Records fill out hundreds of forms a day. But what am I paying $15 for? Someone else's mistake? Printer toner and paper to print my official document with?

Plus, getting the post office to mail the form back is going to be so annoying with a newborn and a 2 3/4 year old.

Tell me about your last governmental office experience!

4 comments:

  1. i don't know if i told you this, but when we came back through customs, our customs official was falling asleep! He was at the computer and going to stamp our passports and literally, he was dozing off. I had to keep coughing to wake him up! Then he forgot to do our thumbprint thing and photo that everyone else had done but whatevs. I thought about telling someone, but didn't want to get involved in what that would entail...I was just shocked at the level of homeland security. Let's fall asleep while people are coming into the US.

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  2. That is hilarous! Leave it to the United States government to have someone falling asleep on the job!

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  3. That would drive me insane enough to call and yell at people. The government takes WEEKS to do anything! You would think that in that time they could make sure and get things right.

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  4. I intend on yelling at people. Starting tomorrow!

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