When Public Servant equals Public Master...

...which is something that happens more often than most of us care to think.

I remember visiting the DMV to get my eldest daughter's driver's license. She'd been through a lot to get it. Being extremely dyslexic, she'd had to take the written test three times to pass it. It was a big day.

There is, of course, a requirement that your parents sign for you when you're sixteen. So I did.

First problem: I'm not on her birth certificate, since she's adopted. I explained this.

"You'll have to bring me a certificate of adoption," said the person behind the counter.

Fortunately (back then) my office was only about ten minutes away, and I had a file on each of my kids in my desk. We went back, acquired the document, and returned. Same clerk.

"This is no good," she said. "It's a photocopy. Got to be the original."

"You didn't tell me that," I said, as I felt patience, tact, and all constraints on my trigger finger dwindling. "What difference does it make?"

"Got to be the original," she insisted. "It's in the regulations."

"Let me see the regulations, please," I said. The words were polite. I have no doubt that the tone lacked conviviality.

She lumbered away from her seat with a loud sigh, brought back a copy of the Delaware Code. The pertinent section said that in cases of adopted children, for parental consent, a copy of the certificate of adoption had to be provided.

I pointed out (it's funny how easy it is to talk between clenched teeth when you really try) that we had met the requirement by providing a copy of the document.

"Naw," she said, growing impatient with me. "That's just the State Law. We got DMV regulations, too. They say it's got to be the original."

"It's not in the law," I said. "How can you increase the severity of the law?"

"Mister, I said it was in the regulations."

"I want to see them. The regulations, I mean."

"Uh-uh. I don't have to show them to you. They're internal regulations, not for public dissemination."

"You're holding us accountable to a regulation you won't let me see? I want to see a supervisor, then."

"I AM the supervisor. You want this girl to get a license, you bring back the original."

Because it was more important not to completely ruin my daughter's big day than to gut a bureaucrat, we went home and got the original.

The problem is that it's almost always easier to give in than to hold your ground, and they know it.

The same daughter, prior to her formalized adoption, could not be placed on our insurance. She had Medicaid. She broke her finger at a skating rink. We went to the ER, got treated after the usual four-hour wait on a Saturday night, and were referred by the hospital to an orthopedic specialist for two appointments for after care.

Medicaid refused to pay the bill. Turned out that the hospital had set us up with a specialist who didn't take Medicaid, although his office somehow neglected to tell us about that until four weeks after the fact, when they sent us a combination bill/collection notice.

I called up the 800 number for customer support for Medicaid.

I quote precisely (the words having been burned into my brain): "You people never read the rules, do you? You're responsible for determining whether or not the physician accepts your insurance."

"Actually," I replied, "I checked the pertinent regulations. We're not liable for the bill if neither the hospital nor the care provider informs us that they don't accept our insurance prior to seeing her or referring her. In fact, the law says if they don't tell us, you can force them to accept your payment."

"I don't know anything like that. You're supposed to determine..." And she repeated the earlier phrase, word-for-word.

I gave her the exact reference, including paragraph and line number.

"You're one of those rules lawyers, aren't you? You want to make your daughter lose her insurance?"

The problem with these anecdotes is that they can all too easily be dismissed as just that . . . anecdotes.

But if you haven't noticed that so-called public servants really think of themselves as public masters, you haven't been paying attention.

And while the government has no monopoly on piss-poor customer service (just call Blue Cross/Blue Shield customer service sometime), the prevailing ethic of "I'm in charge here and you're guilty until I take mercy on your dumb ass" is so thoroughly engrained in our State and Federal bureaucrats that whenever the government tells me it's about to provide me a new service, say--Universal health care or The Fairness Doctrine--I cringe at the thought of all the petty Mussolini's who will be let loose on my life.

I bet you do, too.