I don’t mean literally… or maybe I do? But in American movies or people sharing their stories online they seem to spend a bizarre amount of time at the DMV (department of motor vehicles), like enough for it to be a notable part of a characters experience, that they had to queue up at the DMV for a significant amount of time, or they met the love of their life there, or they died in line, or were reunited with an estranged sibling…
If you are not from the UK or US, what’s your country’s equivalent?
Edit: I know what the DVLA is but you don’t literally spend so much time there like Americans seem to in movies (like the fact that we even know what the DMV is, is weird, no one outside the UK knows British public services lol)
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DVLA my friend based in Swansea
The literal UK equivalent is the DVLA although that’s in Wales and you generally don’t visit it – everything is done online or via post.
People these days spend most of their time queuing for coffee or at the post office.
The post office maybe. Always a frustratingly long queue there to do something very simple.
The DVLA. We don’t do everything in person though. We do it all online or by post. Imagine the DVLA had offices you had to go into to pick up your license etc. That’s what the DMV is.
I’d say our cultural equivalent is the job centre or A&E. Or maybe the post office……
The DVLA is the actual equivalent of the DMV.
But I suppose the equivalent in that sense could be the Job Centre, where you go to deal with social security payments and assessments. It depends though, because if you never claim any benefits you might never set foot in one. So it’s not a universal experience like the DMV is for the US.
Or maybe waiting to be seen by a doctor in A&E.
the UK equivalent is the DVLA, and we don’t need to physically go there. Licenses are issued via mail applications and theory testing is outsourced.
I’m pretty sure OP knows what the DVLA is. I don’t think many people have read this correctly.
To answer the question I would say used to be the Post office, probably less so now they have mainly phased out benefit payments to post office accounts. Whoever said the jobcentre was a decent shout but everyone has had to queue in a post office not everyone’s been in a jobcentre.
Literally googled the answer.
DVLA, but the US has a weird system where you have to “go to the DMV” much more often than you’d ever interact with the DVLA.
We don’t even have an office in each “state”/town. Because there’s no need.
Licensing tests can be handled without needing a full “DMV”.
The US makes their freedom loving citizens queue up at the “DMV” regularly to re-tax the damn vehicle, where we’ve just outsourced that to a technological solution.
The US actually has a load of weird bureaucratic quirks like this, that they never talk about. Even things like parking tickets, if you want to contest it here, you send an email.
They turn up to a fucking court
The US is stuck in the 80s. Queueing at a government office to see someone in person is just archaic. Eventually they might discover post or the interweb.
Passport control! Took like 2 hours for me recently during eurotunnel, although you don’t really nip there like you would a post office