The (Driver's) Licensing Office, aka, TOTAL SCAM

This will be my first post in a good long while. Lest the reader think that I had run out of material, let me reassure - to the contrary, the problem is that I have way too much to begin to sort through. Very literally, I have no clue as to where to begin. I can share my driver's license story from today as a teaser......

I went to Talpiot, a neighborhood of Jerusalem best known for being the end-all-be-all shopping destination of anything that is..........big. They have some space for manufacturing and garages and the like there, so pretty much one ends up going there to buy the "big stuff" (such as we already did for our furniture and refrigerator).

I had to go there to get my driver's license. It is the 4th stop in the process, having already gone to the eye test, my family physician, and a driver's office to get the form.

Going in I was greeted by, even by Israeli standards, very heavily armed guards. There have known to be some problems in the office. As a matter of fact, seems that they stopped giving the results of the final driver's test the same day - this is after one of the failed prospective drivers severely assaulted (in fact may have killed, I forget the punchline) the person administering the test. Now you have to wait a few days - something like the cooling off period to buy a weapon back in the USA.

Got there, and there were maybe 40 people waiting in line, sitting down, for their number to be called. And here the scam continues.......

Ya see, the number I got from the "deli counter line ticket dispenser" was about 140 numbers away from the number that was being called. I had a hard time figuring out how this could be - there were really not too many people there for all of these numbers to have been picked. Ah yes, the scam. Seems that people take multiple numbers when they go there - nobody is watching you. Might take, say, 10 tickets. And what do they do with them you may ask? Brilliant question.

Let's supposed your cousin, we'll call him "Ibrahim", shows up. You say to them "keef halak" they say "al ham dulillah", give him a kiss........and a ticket. You earn brownie points for setting up your friend with a choice number.

Now I should not complain, as I was on he receiving end of a nice young woman who had an extra ticket that she had not yet given away - she simply asked what my number was, and when i told her, she gave me the "hot" ticket. Seems that she any I were of the same "camp". I only ended up waiting 15 minutes max. It works for the Bnai Avraham as well!

Best part is this fairly sketchy driving teacher who is known to "help" (aka accept what seems to be a payoff) new immigrants comes by to pick up my paper that I just got signed. Not that he should say hello or something nice to me for giving all this money to him for essentially nothing. Nah. He is the one doing me a favor. He grumpily took down my phone number and will apparently call me when everything is "ready". In all seriousness, most crack cocaine purchases are probably less sketchy that this whole thing.