Welcome to the Zoo

DOB = Zoo = Jumanji. That pretty much wraps up my experience....but a bit more detail is deserved.

I showed up this morning at 7 AM to claim my spot in line. Of course, there were 3 people ahead of me, all expeditors. One guy (Steve) was very nice and chatted with me a bit. He was impressed to find out that I was a homeowner filing the paperwork on my own and offered to look it over to make sure it was all right. He found 2 little mistakes (initials) but nothing that couldn't be fixed. After waiting 1.5 hours, I was in the maze. It started at pre-filing, an area of bullcrap where someone looks at the scope of work you are doing, your estimated costs and magically calculates how much you have to pay for filing your plans.

The slippery slope began here. The pre-filer didn't like my estimates and decided she needed to almost double them for plumbing and general construction. Crap. While this made it slightly more expensive, it meant that I had to go back to the office and change the diskette for the PC filing process. Leaving the DOB at this hour was like jumping out of the front of the line for tickets to your favorite rock band that you've been camping out overnight for. All this just because the city wants to suck more $ out of me.

I made the quick change on the amazing PC filing software (DOS is still cool, right?) and headed back into the mayhem of the filing room at 10 AM. It's like your typical government office where you need something. Take a ticket, wait for it to come up on one of the 10 windows.

The scene was not good. There were about 150 people there by the time I got there and 27 people ahead of me for the window I needed. I grabbed a ticket and thought "How long can it be?" Well, never doubt the inefficiency of government agencies. They had one (yes, one) older woman working on filing applications (aka Rosario). In the meantime, I checked with my buddy Steve to make sure I had everything in the right order. Another nice young lady helped me out too so that I wouldn't tick off Rosario and screw up the system for everyone else behind me.

After 4 hours of waiting (including an hour and a half lunch break for Rosario) it was finally my turn. I waited nervously, hoping that my paperwork was in the right order, my forms were filled out correctly and that the window attendant didn't think I pulled any funny business (I didn't look shady enough to be an expeditor and I didn't have their cool ID).

After a few "you shouldn't place the stickers here" and odd looks at the computer, my credit card and I got out with a payment of $160.60 for filing the plans (don't ask me how they got to that number, it's a magic Jumanji formula). I think that's cheaper then paying $2k for expeditor...but maybe my math is off.

Now I have to sit back and wait until the plans get approved....or rejected...but hopefully approved.