- 6295 Edsall Road
Alexandria, VA - Social Security Administration
- "cripples use the side door, we don't want to see you"
- Yes yes.. "No guns, please don't shoot us." I get it.
- faint hint of the "decepticon" sticker on my rear windshield
- several different air fresheners... that's a skull peeking out on the right side.
- inconvenient fence that makes crippled and able-bodied alike have to walk 30+ feet just to traverse the 10 feet between the car and the door.
beareucracy in action! - handicapable people, park here. that way you can wheel all the way around the stupid fence we've erected.
Social Security Adminstration building on Edsall Rd - 100-0027
LONG COMMENT, WORTH READING(?):
This is where I had to go to get my new social security card. After I was already in line, I was reading their guidelines on acceptible identification, and they don't accept birth certificates!. And that's what I'd brought! SHIT! [I lost my wallet twice that year, goddamnit! But this was the first time...] I can't deal with this! I have no identity!
I had already been to the D.M.V., who wouldn't give me a license without a social security card, and now I was at the social security administration, learning that my birth certificate was totally fucking useless so I wouldn't be able to get the social security card I needed to get my license! fuck!
(I paid $55 to the commonwealth Virginia to send an official "certificate of live birth", and I that was not accepted by social security office! WTF, Virginia! You should tell me the shit I'm buying from you is useless!!)
So anyway, there I am standing in line, and in my folder of stuff, I notice a UPS envelope. I open it up, expecting my certificate of live birth that I just found out was useless...and.... wtf... there's my damn passport, which I had ordered 4-6 weeks earlier (non-expedited)!
By some bizarre twist of fate, I had accidentally included what I thought was the envelope to my certificate of live birth, but was really the envelope to my passport. The two had come in the same envelope. I had not realized that I had my passport. I HAD NO CLUE I was walking around with it. This turns out to be what I need to re-establish my identity.
So in one visit to this building, I went in thinking that I had what I needed, progressed to realizing that I don't have what I need, then finally discovered that Hey, I DO have what I need, but it wasn't what I thought I had when I came in here! WTF?!
It was the best moment of bureaucratic serendipity that I've ever had.... If you can really call it that.
Two weeks later, I lost my wallet again. Three months later, that wallet was found. Of course the $60 wallet gets found; the $500 wallet doesn't get returned. Bastards.
Not to sound racist, which is not my intent... but I sort of blame the Hispanic groundskeepers at the hospital on Carlin Springs Rd (the one my grandfather died in). They were the ONLY ones around, and it was an empty parking lot. It was not the primary lot for parking. It was the lot where some duct-tape carrying dude (me) stops for a second to duct tape his smashed fender back to his car.
I came back an hour later, and there were no cars in this parking lot. They were the ONLY ones that could have noticed a 4-inch wallet in an empty parking lot.
I wish I didn't have to cancel my credit cards, cause I would have liked to track those bastards down and hit them with my mini-baseball bats that I carry. Which are collectors items! I got them at yard sales!
Comments and faves
Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos (ClintJCL) (71 months ago | reply)
McNeeny, this one's for you (this is the first time I've ever written this much in a caption)
JennyBabyLove (71 months ago | reply)
Great story
Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos (ClintJCL) (71 months ago | reply)
Because I'd gone to the ATM the day before, and never withdraw less than the maximum amount.
Scurring to kiosks to push buttons for rewards is way too much like being a lab rat -- and I feel sorrow, pity, and contempt for people who have to say "just let me go to the ATM" everytime they need a pack of gum.
Now, tho, I keep the other $400 stashed at home. Fuckers.
Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos (ClintJCL) (71 months ago | reply)
The move towards a cashless society is actually something the powers that be want, so that everybody's purchases can be more closely tracked. I've now heard of people getting their driver's license xeroxed only becaus they used cash to buy beer or cigarettes...
And I still go to places that don't accept credit or checks.
Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos (ClintJCL) (65 months ago | reply)
Since my last comment, Vicky & Dave have also posted stories about places that only take cash. Yay, they still exist. Keep cash flowing. Cash is power. Cashless society is bad.
Roger Krueger (60 months ago | reply)
Forget the government using debit/credit card records to track my purchases, I'm FAR more worried about them being tracked closer to home.
When my wife came across the charge for my 400/5.6 I just about washed up on the beach.
Bars aren't a good thing to have show up on the statement either, At least I don't screw around, I hear paying for a hotel room with cash is getting pretty hard.
Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos (ClintJCL) (36 months ago | reply)
And that sucks. Cash is legal tender. That means it's supposed to be legal no matter what. Yet, the right for places to take payment in whatever form they want trumps that. I can see the issue from both sides...