Business Hours

I have absolute­ly lost every last smidgen of patience when it comes to deal­ing with inte­gral busi­ness­es and their busi­ness hours. Let me tell you about the title bureau. Pre­tend it is Andy Rooney speak­ing.

Last month I went to get my Indi­ana car title switched to an Ohio title. I arrived at the title bureau at 2:45 on a Fri­day, fif­teen min­utes before they closed and found out I had to get my moth­er to sign a pow­er of attor­ney to take her­self off of our dual title. Fair enough. Yes­ter­day, Tues­day, I went back to the title branch [at 3:15] with the appro­pri­ate paper­work and found that it closed at 1:30. I would have gone Mon­day, but the branch is closed on Mon­day. I would have even gone on Sat­ur­day, but the title branch is closed on Sat­ur­day. Appar­ent­ly the title branch is only open on the 2nd Wednes­day in the 3rd week of months with two gib­bous moons but only for as long as it takes a teacup poo­dle to piss on a fuschia fire hyr­drant. [and if the poo­dle has kid­ney trou­ble or the fire hydrant isn’t quite pink enough, well, you are just shit out of luck].

Of course, once I get the title switched over today [if that hap­pens, red tape might be the sub­ject of anoth­er rant.] and mosey across the street to the BMV I will like­ly find out that it is only open when Brit­ney Spears is con­sti­pat­ed.

Equal­ly on my nerves are banker’s hours. Banks should be open ear­li­er than 8 and lat­er than 5 [grant­ed some banks are stay­ing open till 5:30 now, and I bet their busi­ness has increased great­ly] I even know some banks that are only open from 9–4:30. Those banks prob­a­bly just sleep till the lunch hour and then work for 30–40 min­utes before nod­ding off or play­ing backgam­mon till quit­ting time.

About the only place that seems to be reli­able is the Post Office. They don’t close ran­dom­ly [all local gov­ern­ment offices close after noon on Thurs­days in my home­town] and are open after 5.

Busi­ness hours are sole­ly respon­si­ble for the prop­a­ga­tion of neo-con­ser­v­a­tive fun­da­men­tal­ist ideas of the fam­i­ly and also form the basis for the ‘domes­tic chat­tel’ occu­pa­tion of stay-at-home spous­es. One per­son must make the mon­ey and the oth­er per­son must spend the day­light hours try­ing to get to the title bureau while Fluffy Foo-Foo makes water, sprint­ing to the bank before the backgam­mon tour­na­ment becomes too excit­ing and an arbi­trary bank hol­i­day is declared, fill up their Haibat­su Plan­et Eater SUV before the gas prices jump up anoth­er dime [by the way; dear gas sta­tions, just round up the damn gas prices from 2.09⁹ to frig­ging 2.10, no one has ever been fooled] and still find time to get to the Sea­son­al 15 Sec­ond Sale at Hoity-Toity Out­fit­ters, Lim­it­ed ™®©.

The title bureau should be open from 11am to 7pm Mon-Fri and from 8am to noon on Sat. Banks should be open from 7am to 7pm Mon-Sat. SUVs should be destroyed, rail gun tech should be devel­oped into a maglev trans­porta­tion sys­tem, all cars should be destroyed and we should all live in peace and har­mo­ny in a land where it does­n’t take a good god­damn month to get a car title and reg­is­tra­tion switched from Indi­ana to Ohio.