Uncle Sam? I WIN!!!

Yesterday morning, I made a post from home, fretting… what was going to happen to me if I didn’t get my Social Security card? Would I have to miss another flight and find another way to Iowa? In my first post whining about my struggle with the guv’mint, I stated that I had to have my Social Security Card, not a W-2  for proof of my social security number.  So then I went round and round two more times with the Social Security administration about my lack of photo ID until I finally had victory, and they agreed to send me my card.  I waited for a week, and still don’t have my card.

Yesterday morning, in my fit of nerves, I decided to gather all of  my documents again and contact the DMV to ask if they would accept the receipt given to me from the SSA. I grabbed my W-2 , deciding any sort of documentation with my SSN would be helpful. Once at work, I went to the UDOT website. And I found hope.  I discovered that during my Wild Goose Chase with SSA, the law had changed in my favor.

To quote the DMV website:

“Effective November 26, 2008, the Driver License Division will no longer accept Social Security Number Printouts from the Social Security Administration as verification of your SSN.  However, the Division will accept a Social Security Card, W-2 Form, SSA-1099 Form, Non SSA-1099 Form, and a pay stub with applicant’s name and social security number on it. “

I rubbed my eyes and re-read the sentence. While I was busy fighting with SSA, they changed the law and were now accepting W-2 forms!!! I didn’t know whether to kick something or to dance with joy, because after all the hard work I went to so I could get my Social Card, I still hadn’t received it. But thanks to the change, I had a safety net, and all the required documents in my possession at that very minute.

Here is another moment when my stupidity was overridden by God’s faithfulness.  I called Irene, nearly squealing with happiness, and we went to the DMV after work. I waited maybe one minute, had all my documents approved, and a license printout.

It was so darn easy. Seriously, I was ready to be turned away, waiting an hour, fighting a zoo of an after-work crowd. But since it was icy, few people were out. That worked in my favor as well. I told the guy at the DMV it was the most pleasant experience working with the government I ever had.

So now I can go home with less worries. And for my next trick, I will get my passport. So I don’t have to through all this junk ever again.

 

Nerves

Even after the debacle I went through a little over a week ago, I still have not received my Social Security Card in the mail. I have two days left until I can get my identification, since my flight leaves at 7:07 p.m. Thursday.

I work until 4:30 every day this week to cover for my Friday. My job has such a schedule that if you work 40 hours one week and thirty-five hours the next, you can take a three day weekend and not have to take vacation. Since I didn’t have any to take Friday, just the next week, I chose this option.

So let’s do the math. Even if by some way I happen to get my Social Security Card on Thursday, I still need to go to the DMV and get an ID, and try to catch my flight. This would not allow me the suggested two hours check in time at the airport as needed.

This card really need to come tonight or tomorrow.

Then there is the matter of what I am going to drive and where I am going to stay. One of the many pleasures of being an old maid but still being under twenty five would be paying astronomical prices for a rental. I checked most rental places, and they require a utility bill (the utilities are in my roommates name) a major credit card (which I refuse to use) a deposit, a DNA sample, a retinal scan, a tracking device plunged into your scalp, and your signature in blood before they will rent to you. AND THEN they will charge you double for the rental. A rental car is going to cost me around $400 dollars. Ouch!
So now, I am waiting on a friend to get back to me on lending me his car.

I also am wondering where in the world am I going to sleep when I am back. For reasons I can’t explain, I am not staying with my mother. Let’s just say it is a physical impossibility. She has a home, yes, but one not many people enter into. My aunt Kathleen has no bare sleeping space, and my grandma has spare rooms, but has dementia and is bat-crap crazy. She constantly think someone is trying to break into her home. What would happen if I tried to get in after a late night out with my friends? I’d scare her half to death. She has been known to wield sticks and other stiff objects and attempt to hit people. I would feel unsafe with Granny.

My last option then is my Cuz. Anyway, that’s what I call him since he is 18, named after his father, and despises his childhood nickname, Fuzzy. Cuz likes to party and is thrilled to have me coming home.

But me? The nice little borderline Puritan I am? Staying in what may as well be a frathouse? Let the adventure begin!

But first, I need that SOCIAL SECURITY CARD!

Please pray…

Beauacracy: Rounds 2 & 3!!

I went to the Social Security Administration office last week for a second crack at getting my Social Security card so I could get a new Identificatin card so I can hop a plane to Omaha and see my mommy and my bestest friends ever as well as the random person Jesse I have been texting for oh, five months, and have Fredrichs, BeBop’s, The Machine Shed, go to a wedding reception and have a sunset overwhelm me, and WHEW!! That’s a lot to say, right? Are you as tired reading it I was writing it? I doubt it!!!

ANYWAY!! So I went back last week, having my school transcript and a copy of my immunization records in hand. Dude, all I didn’t have was a DNA  sample, and I may even offer that if they have a swab lying around. I just want my card, darn it! I figured this would be enough proof. It was exactly what they told me to have…

Except my immunization record was a copy and not the original. I tried for the originals, but they had been taken off the hosptial records since they happened back in 1989! I had my friend Dee go to the Waterloo Public School district offices in person to pay them to mail me immunization records. Yes, you read that right. I have friends doing my bidding. But that record, despite the time taken to get it to me, was not acceptable.

I also had my school transcript. The face of the administration worker lit up. The information had my mother’s name, my name, my birthdate, and social security number. This, my friends, is the golden information they seek from poor id-less souls. Was it going to be accepted?

Since I am so irony’s slave, it wasn’t… why? The document was too old. It had to be less than two years old.  Considering that my high school graduation date is pushing six years ago, well, this one was a no-go.

I was at a loss. I asked the administration worker what else I could bring. She advised I get a medical transcript. Being someone who is generally blesses with good health, I don’t normally go to the doctor. I asked my eye records would cut the cake. She said yes, as long as a note from the doctor confirming my identity was attached.

Woohoo!! A solution! I nearly skipped out of the office, thankful that I had another option available.

It took me a week before someone answered my call during normal office hours. A WEEK. Once I was able to talk to someone at the office, I explained my situation. I was advised if I came to her office after 3 pm I could pick up the letter. Perfect! I was off work that night…. so I went to her office in Murray and picked up the letter with my friend James. Today, my pastor’s wife, Irene, picked me up form work at 3 pm to go to SSA for round three.

At SSA, much to my delight, my wait was short, maybe only fifteen minutes long.  I presented my letter to the administrator, and eagerly awaited her assessment. As she sat and mulled over the information presented to her, my stomach tied up in knots. Would it be accepted?

“Let me show this to my supervisor,” she said, then left her desk. There I sat for ten minutes, while I overheard a man at the office attempting to obtain a SSN for the son he had recently adopted. “Hopefully, third time’s a charm!” he said as he sat with his administrator. He brought his own personal information as well as the adoption decree and his son’s birth certificate, BUT HE NEEDED A TEN MONTH OLD BABY’S MEDICAL RECORDS! Apparently, the previous administrator said all he needed to add was the adoption decree. Reasonably, he was frustrated. His son getting a social? Was a n0-go.

My administrator finally returned with my document. She had a look of regret on her face and apologized for making me wait. The document was rejected since it did not have my birthdate. If I could take the letter back to Dr. Green and have her add my birthday and her initials, they would accept it. I clarified with the agent three times, that YES, this EXACT PAPER, NOTHING ELSE, ONLY ADDING MY BIRTHDAY, would be accepted.

That better be it. Because if its not taken next time, I will attack them all with a spork.

So now, I had to go find Dr. Green and have her put my birthday on the paper. Unfortunately, Dr. Green was not at her office in Murray, but further south in Sandy. Irene couldn’t take me all the way to 101300 South State St.  She dropped me off at TRAX and I made the sixty block trip on the light-rail train system of SLC. After I made it to SouthTowne Expo Center, I walked another mile to rDr. Green’s office. It took two minutes for me to get my name written on a sheet of paper.  Then I went to the diner in the store to buy a pretzel and cappuccino to warm up, then off I went back out into the cold, to walk the mile back to TRAX and then hit the bus to 3300 south then hoof it to Chuck and Irene’s to pick up my laptop. The whole trip to and from Sandy? Two hours long

Dude, why do all my errands have to turn into time-consuming, cross-town treks?

Tomorrow, I am going back for round four. After I get my card, I can get an ID. Please, please please pray I can get it tomorrow.  Why? I am really tired of seeing the inside of the SSA.

The Endless Loop of American Bureaucracy

In the eyes of the United States Government, I may as well not exist. I cannot prove my own identity.

Why?

I lost my driver’s license.

The simple solution would be to get a replacement, correct? Of course it would! But it’s less simple if you have lost your Social Security card as well!

To obtain a replacement ID in Utah, you simply have to walk in with one form of Primary Identification, slip them $18, and they send a new one to you in the mail, since they have one of those creepy tracking devices in the licenses. (My theory anyway!) Seems easy enough, right? Well… um… I never changed my indentification from my Iowa Driver’s License to a Utah license. So, I need to have:

1) A form Primary Identification (Birth Certificate, which yay, I have!)
2) Two forms of proof of Utah residency (my bank and credit card statement)
3) A proof of your SSN, which cannot be a W-2 or 1099. It either has to be a social card or a temporary social card, certified by the Social Security Administration. (Which…. I don’t have. Yippee!!)

So my solution was to go to the Social Security Admin office, and get a temporary card, then go to the DMV and get a temporary I.D., then I could board my JetBlue flight and merrily sail off into the clouds to Long Beach, CA. I left work early on Wednesday afternoon so I could accomplish this purpose. Before I left, I carefully read the SSA website, and decided that my Birth Certificate and my health insurance card would be sufficient evidence of my identity.  I scurry off to the office, and wait in line for 45 minutes to complete my business. When it was finally my turn, I talked to a man sitting behind a glass partition. I felt like I was going to talk to some guy in jail.

He asked me my business. I told him I needed a replacement SS card, and I lost my I.D. I brandished my documents. Dude looks me in the eye, stating in a deadpan voice, “We don’t accept birth certificates as identification.”

What?

I stared at him.  I was speechless. “I went to the SSA website and it says you accept it.”

He swore up and down they did not. Then he asked me if I happened to have my a work identification, (we sign into my office of sixteen people with a pin) school id, (not in college anymore, medical records, a baptism record, or my school transcripts.. and well, no, like most people, I don’t happen to have those things lying around my house. He looked at me as if I had just touched down from the Planet Xenu and said, well, most normal peoplehappen to have medical records.  I dunno about you, but do you keep your med records lying around, sitting next to your old copies of People Magazine on your coffee table? Um. Yeah. Didn’t think so! And why, oh freaking why, does the SSA not accept a birth certificate as identifcation when ever other freaking government agency almost requires it?!? But a BAPTISM CERTIFICATE IS ACCEPTABLE? A church document is more reliable that a state-issued treatise on your birth?  Oh!!! My!!!!! WOOOOOOOOORD!!!

(Ok time for a deep, cleansing breath. Memory annoys me much too much.)

I told him I was sick of jumping through the fiery hoops of American beauracracy. They make everything such a Catch-22 it’s ridiculous. It doesn’t even seem to be about security. It seems to be about control. Mr. Smarty Pants tartly responded it’s not beauracracy, it’s the law.

Aren’t they essentially the same thing? An endless quagmire of inefficient rules that makes people spin in freaking circles, wait in lines for hours, spend day after day trying to get things done but not budging an inch, and cause deeply planted seeds of frustration?

This here? Is why I am pretty much a Libertarian.

In the meantime, I am probably boarding a bus to Cali tonight in lieu of flying. Unless Tucci’s or the laundromat happens to find my identification before 5:30 p.m. today, I will have a 13 hr+ adventure on America’s least favorite way to travel…. Greyhound! Why? They don’t require an ID to ride.

And if Worst Case Scenario happens, well… I am going to stop at a drugstore and self-sedate with Benadryl. Which seems to be the least frightening option of my impending overnight bus ride in a large metal tank filled with shady characters. (See All About Philly reference for previous references to shady characters and busses.