Yesterday I went to the local police department to purchase a night parking pass for the next 3 months. This process usually involves filling out a small sheet of copy paper with your name, address, and car information, and paying the cachier — usually a 1-2 minute process. Upon arriving at the station yesterday, I was greeted with a sign which said “Night Parking Permits to the Left”. “To the Left” meant “Use the New Vending Machine”.
There were 5 people in front of me trying to figure out how to use the machine. Shortly after I got there, the first person finished his business with the machine and the next person stepped up to the plate. After reaching the last step and as she was about to insert her check as payment into the machine (I wonder how the machine can tell the dollar amount on a check??) she encountered a “Communication Error”. One of the officers called to “Reset” the machine. While the machine was resetting, the normal cashiers were taking the old forms and handing out passes in the old fashion, but after they handed out the forms to fill out, they stated that they will only help the first person in line and the rest had to use the vending machine. Everyone got back into the vending line and waited as the machine was being reset. The machine first posted a Dell logo and then, to my surprise, a SUSE logo! Milwaukee County has been a Novell shop for as long as I can tell (only 7 years), but it was good to see them sticking with Novell.
When it was finally my turn to use the machine, I was not impressed. You had to click through 2 confirmations before you could start. “Are you sure you want to Renew?” “Are you sure that you are sure that you want to Renew?” Finally. I had to type in my license plate number, but the touch screen keyboard gave me a keyboard which went A-Z and not a QWERTY display, making it harder to find the letters and numbers to press. Then you wait for it to communicate with a central server somewhere, insert your money, and out comes a night parking pass. This whole process takes about 5 minutes and I know that it will cut down on administrative work entering the paper copies into a data system, but the whole process and an end user is just a bear. This will be hell when it becomes the end of the quarter and everyone on the East Side will be trying to renew.
