i went off to the county government ( ha!) complex yesterday afternoon to pay the property tax on my mom's house since there was some snafu with the electronic payment i had tried to make ( odd because the payment for my taxes went through an i did that online )...i had expected a dreary round of queuing and condescension from tenured bureaucrats but discovered a fordian assembly-line philosophy instead...this did not preclude any small indignities...simply sped them up...from the clearly bored county sheriff manning the metal detector ( who was rummaging around the tray people emptied their pockets into obviously searching for terrorist weapons or, perhaps, subversive tracts...pointless since the real terrorists and criminals were already at work in the building ) and who sullenly asked "you know where you're going?"...do any of us really know where we are going? what this whole business of existence is about? i am skeptical...but that wasn't what the deputy had on his mind was it? Yeah...i know where the treasurer's office is...when i arrived at my destination another bored worker examined my papers and asked if i was paying by check or cash...when i indicated cash she directed me to a longish line of people waiting to be attended to by two cashiers...i dutifully got inline to surrender the lucre and as i advanced i noticed that along the counter that ran the length of the cash line people paying by check were being expeditiously processed and released while the cash folks plodded along...as i neared the cashier's window i also noticed some arcane manipulating and arrangement of wads of cash taking place...screened by the people in front of me i could not exactly tell what was what...finally i arrived and plunked down a stack of twenties with the paperwork and the cashier arranged the bills in a pile with jefferson's portrait pointing all the same way...she then fanned the bills out in a semicircle so each bill was exposed and drew a line across them with a pen designed to detect counterfeit bills and the reason for the time consuming line became apparent...we were suspect because we had cash...checks ( cashier or money order only ) were safe and so was technology...but the herd are a wily bunch and cash can be faked...better safe than sorry...check the citizens' bills for fakery to save the county valuable time and money in tracking them down...wouldn't want the public to defraud an honest political system.
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