Seriously, it’s mandatory now.

So it seems I needed some information from the federal government. I was filling out a whole bunch of electronic forms for the University regarding tax this and income that and how many hairs (adjusted new growth, Schedule B) were in my left armpit, on and on, ad nauseum. Actually, the nausea arrived rather quickly into the process, but I think you get the idea. At any rate, I get to the end of this whole involved process, and in order to make it all official and give it an authorized electronic "signature", I needed a special PIN that had previously been issued me by the feds.

Naturally, I didn’t have this information at my immediate disposal, the scrap of paper in question being securely locked in a file cabinet at home 65 miles away. "No problem", I thought, "The PIN was originally requested over the Web, so the government site must have some form of electronic retrieval." Lo, I was right! The site did have a quick form to fill out to send me my all-important number, right to my e-mail address. So I filled it out, and waited for it to appear.

And waited… and waited… and…………..waited.

At this point, I was about to chalk it up to some random system failure in a government server farm somewhere, or whatever factors exist that comprise those tiny time/space vortices where e-mails, like socks, car keys, and my company ID badge get sucked out of our universe, never again to appear.

I was just about to close the "send me my PIN" browser window, when I noticed that the form mentioned that, once the electronic request had been processed, they would send further information out in an e-mail telling me where to actually retrieve this PIN. This information would be sent in "1-3 days". My best guess is that once you submit it, somebody has to actually type the request up in triplicate, have each copy stamped by the appropriate departmental supervisor (with the exception of goldenrod copies every third Tuesday in even-numbered months, excepting December), then a request to confirm the request inquiring as to the viability of the user request can be sent out.

Seventy-one and a half hours later, I got a message advising me of a second site I could visit to retrieve the data, so let no man accuse the government of shirking on its promises, no matter how lame. Luckily, I had long since driven the 65 miles to retrieve said information, so my time-sensitive work got completed. Jeez.