A note to the Social Security Lady

To you Mrs. Social Security Lady,

First let me say that it was great meeting you at 9:00 am with a cranky 15 month old who should be nappng. It was great to wait for 15 minutes in the cold (Jenny did) , because we live in a town where NOBODY wants to work and EVERYONE wants to claim they are disabled to receive a free paycheck from the government. So there is a line of capable workers standing outside at 15 minutes to 9 . None of these people are capable of working, but hey are capable of standing outside in the cold to see about their benefits. thanks for letting me state this first before I get to your short comings.

Ok now to your short comings...when we give you ALL the necessary paperwork to get a social security card and you look at us with a baffled look and say, "I think I am missing something." Then you proceed to ask another genius employee what you need and they say ID. You then say I can't use her passport....to us, but you ask your genius coworker, who says, "yes we use it for adults why not children." You then study her passport to tell us that it is expired. When I point out that it is good for a year...read this line if stamped passport is good for 1 year from issue date, which is June 26 2008 and ours was stamped. Because you can't read or that line or it is somehow invisible to you, you insist that it expired, because another line reads expires on December 26 2007. However, that line means that the Visa expires if it was NEVER stamped. You insist though that it is expired and of course I am not the genius you are and apparently I have special X-ray glasses to read that special line (that you cannot read) on the visa so we are back to square one.

You then ask us if my 15 month old has ID or better yet state issued ID. Yes, Mrs. Social Security Lady I forgot her driver's license at home. So back to square one. Then Jenny asks, "well can you use her adoption paperwork?" OH YES like the answer just came out of the sky and like you didn't know that the HUGE pack of adoption paperwork sitting on your desk wasn't always sitting in front of you. You then read (or pretend to) read the paperwork and then you say, "I need to have someone who speaks Spanish translate it." Even though the English translation is behind the Spanish paperwork and is authenticated by notary you take 15 minutes to do that while my now VERY cranky 15 month old yells in the waiting area and everyone is staring at me and shooting daggers at me to shut my kid up. Oh and lets not forget your ever so friendly "security guard" who just looks at me with disgust while my child yells. During this 15 minutes though I got the joy of playing peek a boo with a 4 year old girl who was dressed in clothes that were too small for her, smelled like cigarette smoke, had dark pink circles under her eyes, and was starving for adult attention. Well, we played peek boo until her dad yelled, "GET OVER HERE." She then scurried away.
Then you appeared back at your window. To tell me we had everything and after our birth certificate was verified we "should" have her social security card back in 4 weeks.

Thank you Mrs. Social Security Lady for living up to my standards of how you as a government employees cannot do your job.
Gwen