10 DMV Employee/ Driving Test Administrator
There aren’t many words that can induce pure terror with just a mention of their syllables, but a 3 letter acronym has been causing panic attacks for years: DMV. The Department of Motor Vehicles is the notoriously poorly run government agency in charge of issuing licenses, administering drivers tests to get a license, and dealing with issues related to suspect use of a car. If you have a 5 minute errand to run at the DMV, you better not schedule anything within 2-3 hours of your arrival, just to be safe.
The lines are always long, the employees surly almost without exception, and the people who have to visit the DMV, with the exception of the 16 year old getting his first license, are usually in some sort of trouble and are not happy to be there. All of these factors make the tension and misery in the air at your local DMV palpable, and it is suffocating even for those with the smallest amount of time spent in the building.
I do not even want to imagine what it would be like to be immersed in this environment on a daily basis as an employee of the Dept. of Motor Vehicles. We do not know whether the chicken came before the egg or vice versa, and it is hard to tell whether DMV employees are inherently crabby or if years of verbal abuse at the hands of people who have had their licenses revoked because of road rage incidents turned them that way.
Either way, it is clear that riding in the passenger seat with nervous 16 year olds while they hit speed bumps like they were Evel Knievel’s ramp over the Grand Canyon is not the best way to put a smile on your face. Government employees often feel very little ability to get promoted without seniority, and this can be a stifling notion to a young, ambitious employee.
Modest salary of $23-30,000 make this one of the least attractive jobs in the country in spit of high job security.
