An Outstanding Experience

This morning I had an appointment at the US Embassy to get some pages added to my passport, seeing as how I only had two blank pages left and I'll be traveling for Christmas.

The only problem was that I had the page with my appointment information marked on my laptop, which I currently can't use since my power cord is broken.

And in typical Bruner fashion, I didn't write down the time or date of my appointment.

So I thought, "well...I think that 3 weeks ago when I made the appointment it was for Nov 13 or something like that. I guess I'll just show up and see what happens."

Now keep in mind that usually the way things work in this country when you have an appointment at any official gov't office is quite...inefficient, to say the least.

Usually even if your appointment is at 10:30am and you get there at 10:15 you still have to wait inline until 10:45 or 11.

Usually you have to make an appointment to go wait in line so that they can give you another appointment on another day at an inconvenient hour in an inconvenient location to give somebody your papers and then wait for a letter to come in the mail telling you that you had an appointment yesterday to pick up the papers and take them to another office, but since you missed that appointment you have to go make another appointment to wait in line so that they can give you another appointment to go pick up the papers and....do you see where I'm going with this??

And I'm not even exaggerating. No lie.

So since I didn't even know when my appointment was supposed to be, I was expecting to show up, wait in a long line, and then have them tell me I need to go home and make another appointment through the website. OR at best, wait in a long line for a few hours until they could attend to me, and then leave them my passport and pick it up in 2 weeks.

What actually happened was far beyond AWESOME.

I walked up to the gate and a security guard asked me what I needed. I told her how I *thought* I had an appointment but wasn't sure. She let me in.

Somebody gave me a ticket with a number on it, and I sat down to watch Sarah Palin on CNN until my number appeared on the screen.

After only TWO minutes my number popped up on the screen.

Just two minutes? Cool!

I walked up to the desk and was greeted by, "Hi, how are you?"

I just about FLIPPED.

Somebody asked me how I am??? And she seemed genuinely interested??? A complete stranger actually cares??

I told her about my phantom appointment.

She looked at a list and saw that my appointment was for 9:15am. It was then 11am.

She said, "okay, just fill out this form and hand it to me when you're done."

When I finished she said, "Do you mind sticking around for half an hour and we can do it for you right now?"

Do I mind if you do it now??? Of course not!! Only half an hour??? AWESOME!!

So I sat down and read a chapter of Harry Potter until they called my number again.

This time a kind gentleman handed my passport back to me, and he said very sincerely, "We're sorry it took so long."

I assured him that it was completely okay. Seriously. I only read one chapter. It wasn't that long.

Not once in the past year have I experienced such a combined effort of efficiency and sincere courtesy, with the exception of my friends at the local Starbucks (however it probably helps that I'm a repeat customer and I bake for them).

Not only were they there to do their jobs and do them well, but they did them with smiles on their faces and the well-being of the "customer" in mind.

It was incredible. It's almost tempting to lose my passport just so I can go back there.

Untimely death and natural disasters aside, nothing can ruin my day after a morning like that.

:)