Friday, May 28, 2010

Did they hire an inefficiency expert?

Incompetence, thy name is the City of Houston Municipal Court.

I had two cases I needed to place on this afternoon's Annex docket at 3pm. So I amble into the room with the attorney windows about 2:45pm - after I returned from Conroe. Forty-five minutes later I was still sitting there waiting...

And why was I still waiting? Because both of the attorney windows were being used by attorneys and clerks attempting to post bonds. For those of you who don't understand the problem, while it is painfully slow enough just resetting cases (and why does it take longer and is more of a hassle than resetting a felony case?), multiply that by, like, infinity and you'll have an idea of how long it takes to post a bond.

Despite the number of attorneys who were waiting to reset cases, no one brought in a supervisor or made any kind of arrangements to aid us in resetting our cases as we sat, and sat, and sat...

And, to top it off, when I finally gave up and left I asked the man out front wearing a badge that identified him as an employee of the Municipal Court who was in charge of this fiasco. His response? Call 311.

I am convinced that the entire purpose of designing such an inefficient system is to discourage people from contesting their tickets.

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