The DMV is a great example of efficiency, they're just optimizing for monetary-cost-per-transaction instead of client-time-per-transaction. You could move peopl

The DMV is a great example of efficiency, they're just optimizing for monetary-cost-per-transaction instead of client-time-per-transaction. You could move people through quickly, fill out the forms for them, and provide helpful and polite service, but all that costs money: it's just cheaper to make clients do all the paperwork and have massive lines so you maximize the work you get out of the few DMV workers by never having them sitting with the line empty. There are certainly ways they could make the DMV more efficient, but don't mistake the almost universal unpleasantness of DMVs for inefficiency.