It isn't just GA. I watched a guy go through exactly the same scenario at the DMV a week ago. It was worse. He'd been waiting over an hour and the place had "closed". The clerk tried to help him out by quietly motioning to the Security guard to let his wife go outside to get his passport from the car.
Once the DMV supervisor caught wind of this, she started YELLING that "It's not allowed! If we're past closing time and someone leaves, they are not allowed back in those doors! Push the button and take the next person, he's done!"
Only by lucky timing (and the rest of us waiting thinking the DMV supervisor was an idiot, since we'd have all just stayed in our seats and let the guy finish), did they pull off the "caper" and his wife brought the briefcase with the passport to him just as the supervisor was about to ask the security guard to remove him from the chair at the window.
In fact, it was because the security guard was at the door letting the guy's wife back in, that the supervisor couldn't do anything about the situation from behind her little bulletproof glass window.
(Kinda explains why they need bulletproof glass to begin with, I reckon.)
Everything today is about "procedure" and how to get around it ("Don't show the Driver's License", "Don't let your AME download your medical application until you've discussed it."... etc.) more than it is about being a reasonable, thinking, human being.
We are so accustomed to it, I drove home wondering if the good clerk or the security guard would be "written up" for their so-called "insubordination" toward the waste of human flesh that supervised them.
(I also thought, "What a terrible job, working for that B****.")
If we hadn't all been so shocked at the supervisor's nasty behavior, it might have been fun to start a round of applause for the co-conspirators who got the guy his Driver's license or ID or whatever else he'd been waiting for.
Same DMV visit, saw a guy who lost it and started yelling when the clerk said he couldn't renew his State ID card. The reason? He had both an ID card and a Driver's license, and "that's not allowed".
He pointed out loudly that he'd happily surrender the Driver's license but that he needed to renew the ID because it was about to expire. The clerk couldn't take it. He then asked to talk to same supervisor who reiterated the rules. He loudly protested, "But it was you guys who ISSUED both of these to me in the first place!" They didn't care.
He then started yelling to the assembled crowd waiting, "I'm sorry if I'm taking a lot of time up here, but these idiots issued me both a Driver's License and an ID and now say that's against the rules and won't take one back. They say I have to re-test for the Driver's license renewal and they won't issue an ID. I've been homeless with no address or phone, so unable to find out any of this information for six months, and they apparently can't fix their own mistake. And I sure as hell don't have a car to take a driving test in." He broke down into, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry" as he realized he was making a scene and left. I'm sure, given time to think and react, at least four or five of us would have handed him a set of car keys and said, "Just take the damn driving test for these dip****s. I'll ride in back." Or if he'd have asked.
I'm so looking forward to the day these people are running healthcare. It'll be the beautiful utopia they all say it will be, I'm sure.
And before anyone gets huffy, that's not a political statement. It's a reminder that everything government touches ends up like this. The fastest path to hell, is by making a bulletproof window with an old cranky government clerk sitting behind it for 20 years, in charge of whether you get what you need or not.
My thoughts here are that the folks holding out the idea that a passport will fix the problem are the equivalent of the good clerk and Security guard. They probably don't know you don't have one. They're just holding the closed door open to the simplest solution to get around the rediculous bureaucracy. They don't know it'll cost you $135 and that you'll have to wait for it to be processed.