Another story from Lake Worth Utilities Customer Service...

Usually I like to share first hand accounts of what I have experienced during my travels around the bureaucracy that is the City of Lake Worth. This story comes from a good friend who visited the Lake Worth Utility Customer Service office in the City Hall Annex late last week. I consider this person a very credible source of information, so it is worthy of sharing here as it highlights the sorry state of customer/resident service as performed by one of our more important city departments. It's also timely in light of the public comment taken at the last city commission meeting.

Apparently there was a crowd of about 12 people there - either waiting, being helped or paying their bills. My friend immediately took a number and then waited his turn to be called. After a while, a rather long while, one of the clerks had finished with a customer. She looked at the "tote board" that displays the ticket number and called out "91" as the number displayed was "90." The people waiting there looked at their tickets and looked at each other. They quickly determined that none of them had "91". The clerk repeated "91" and one of the group responded that no one had "91". The group that was waiting quickly figured out that the lowest number amongst them all was "96." The clerk then insisted that they must be wrong and that the next number was "91". She then accused the group of taking more than one number and somehow not understanding that she was there to serve the next number - "91" and really wouldn't hear anything different. This went on for about five minutes where those assembled were accused of being wrong and somehow "out of line." All the while wasting time and irritating those that had already waited for a considerable time anyway. I guess they finally convinced her that the next number was indeed "96" and that was the person who should be served next.

To top it off, it turns out that one of the people waiting there - who experienced this hostility - worked for the city. At the end of the episode, he commented, "And we wonder why everyone hates to deal with us?"

The inset picture is an image that comes to me through a search for "Indian Bureaucracy."