You win this round, bureaucracy

Since I live in Graduate Housing, my parking permit is handled by the university... or, rather, the University. Let me awkwardly explain why that is funny: a university is an institution of higher learning, but a University is an ungainly beast of a bureaucracy that occasionally secretes learning as a steaming pile of byproduct.

When your landlord is a nameless, faceless office, simple requests like "please let me park in my parking lot" or "please stop the flooding in Will's closet" turn into bushwhacking expeditions into the dense red-tape undergrowth. Today's task was to get a new parking permit.

I went in expecting the worst of the experience. The Parking office was recently relocated from the College Ave campus (a block away from the main Student Center, easily accessible by bus, car, or bicycle) to a new building in the middle of the bad part of town. There is no parking lot, there are no nearby bus stops, and traffic is horrendous.

Perhaps the most telling feature of this new setup is the configuration of the Parking office's building. One of the following two scenarios must have occurred: the architects were instructed by the University to design as counterintuitive an entrance as possible, or the architects and the University are grossly incompetent. In either case, the entrance is tucked away in a well-hidden nook, and all the doors facing the street are emergency exits.

Clearly, inefficiency was the order of the day. I brought the necessary paperwork for proving my association with and fealty to the University, and I brought a paperback book to help kill time in line. It took me 5 minutes to find parking near the building, and another 3 minutes to reach the office, all of which would be a drop in the bucket of wasted time as far as I could tell.

I stood in line. I handed the clerk my paperwork. I received a temporary parking pass and instructions on how to complete the process online at my leisure.

Total elapsed time, 105 seconds.

Goddamnit, University. I was ready for you this time, and my bitchy blog post was 75% drafted already. Then you have to throw me a curve-ball by actually being efficient, friendly, and convenient. What the hell, man?

Epilogue: For the comic adventures of a man fighting the insurmountable obstacles posed by the world's largest bureaucracy, please read GI Mark.