PennDot: or where you want to lay down and die

I've been back in Philadelphia for four and half years. In those four and a half years I have clung to my California driver's license. It was a safety net that could carry me back to sunny SoCal. But it was also a foot out the door and today I pulled in that foot and shut the door - for today I exchanged my California driver's license for one from Pennsylvania.

The experience was far more dreadful than expected.

Fact:

• People who work at the DMV actually hate you. No, really, they do. They must - because civil and polite behavior is met with grunts and rudeness.
• When there is a line out the door they decide that three special needs employees (I'm not being mean -they really are special needs) taking license photos is one too many. So they then have only two employees helping one hundred people. 
• You are constantly getting a new number to put you in a new longer line. 
• The people sitting next to you - not the creme de la creme of society.
• These may not, in fact, be facts, per se.

Do:

• Make sure that you have plenty of time to spare. For example two to three hours. 
• Bring reading material or be content to stare at the grimy floor.
• Do have all the forms already filled out - it may just save you some mind-numbing wait time.

Don't:

• Bring cash. They only take check or money orders.
• Expect the man next to you to actually bathe or clean his long yellow fingernails.