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Sorry, sir, your license has you as a woman

 
Published Oct. 21, 1994|Updated Oct. 8, 2005

People always say their driver's license pictures don't look like them.

For Shan Treanor, it's true.

The engineer has received his driver's license by mail with someone else's photograph three times in five months.

The first was a man with a mustache. The second showed a woman wearing earrings.

After he went to have that one fixed, he was sent another license showing the same woman.

"I keep getting other people's pictures," Treanor, 27, said wearily. "They just want me to come down there and take picture after picture.

"And I still don't have my own license."

State Department of Motor Vehicles managers said photos get out of sequence if drivers come to the counter in the wrong order.

Clerks and computers are supposed to check, but sometimes both fail.

"It's okay after one or two excuses," Treanor said. "But after that, I just can't buy it. The clerk was telling me about all the different codes they have, and I'm like, "Just take my picture. You're wasting my time.' "

Spokesman Evan Nossoff said the mistake happens to 1 of 60,000 licenses statewide _ about one a month.

"It's so rare that they don't keep track of it," Nossoff said. "They just chuckle and fix it and go on."

What bugged Treanor, he said, is that no one was very apologetic at the DMV office.

"Even after they've made mistakes over and over again," Treanor said, "they still make you go to the back of the line with the rest of the customers."