Fun With Bureaucracy: The Brooklyn Social Security Office
Posted: May 7th, 2009 | Author: miconian | Filed under: Miconian At Large | Tags: bureaucracy, social security, SSN | Comments
So it goes like this. I lost my social security card, and I let my passport and my state ID expire. I need my state ID to open a new bank account, and to get that I need a social security card, and to get that, I needed a passport. I was pretty sure for a while that I was royally fucked, and had asked my mother to dig my 20-page birth certificate (I was born on an American military base in Japan) out of the safety-deposit box, and I wasn’t sure that even that would be enough, because of course it doesn’t have my picture on it.
As it turned out, my expired passport was good enough to get a renewed passport, which I did. So I downloaded the necessary forms to get a new SSN card, and went down to the office, only to find a huge line. The line wove up and down the lobby and went through a metal detector, all so that a few of us at a time could get onto the elevator and travel up to a cavernous room right out of a low-budget 60s sci-fi movie.
Interesting thing about the abbreviation “SSN.” Can you think of any other situation in which a bureaucracy abbreviates the word “number” with an actual “N” instead of leaving it implied, or using “#”? I think that “SSN” must be a clumsy attempt to avoid using “SS#” or “SS Number,” which, after WWII, might have rubbed some people the wrong way. Especially when it represents a mysteriously powerful government influence in the life of every citizen.
If you live almost anywhere in the US, you can just send your form in the mail to get a new social security card. There are only a few places in the country where, if you are a resident, you have to show up in person. Brooklyn is one of them. Phoenix and Orlando are others. Manhattan is not.
After all this, they gave me a piece of paper that said I would get my new card in the mail in two weeks. We’re talking about a flimsy little piece of paper here that doesn’t even have an address or a picture on it.
Malcolm Gladwell has a surprisingly good article in a recent New Yorker about situations containing an obvious gap in process that should be closed, but, mysteriously, never are. The social security card acquisition process is one such process. If nothing else, they ought to think about installing a miniature golf course between the line of waiting people and the window, so that at least they’re making better use of the space.
When I had to go, I got there half an hour before it opened and still waited in line. And they gave me the wrong document. The government is a beautiful thing.
I KNOW that SS office. I’m surprised they let you take any pictures given the rigid and controlling nature of the people who manage the lining-up process. It’s like they get a huge kick out of giving people a hard time because it’s the only thing they can control….