Municipal misery

One thing I hate doing is dealing with local government employees. After two parking tickets, I decided today I needed to brave Boston's City Hall to get a residential parking permit.

Unlike San Francisco's City Hall, which is beautiful, ornate and spacious, Boston's City Hall is a huge, boxy structure from the with an interior that typifies local government: dark and run-down.

I made my way to the "parking clerk" area which had a huge line feeding into four windows where frumpy, grumpy women served Boston's citizens. And like local government employees everywhere, these women did plenty of eye-rolling, sighing and took their sweet time between transactions.

When it was nearly my turn, something happened at one of the windows which required all four women to huddle around the single customer. Something about having two cars or something. Needless to say, it was an ordeal that seemed to take forever, even with the mighty brainpower of all four employees.