I have been around on this good green and blue planet for a few years now, and if there is one thing that everyone around me knows to be the single most consistent 'universal truth' in life, it is that the roads and transport authority (RTA) is directed, operated and maintained by a strange race of beings totally lacking any soul, charisma and personality, a strange race of beings that are the bastard offspring of mangy chimpanzees and dull grey snails.

It is unfortunate, but rather unsurprising that the RTA is a government run organisation. No good private company could survive in today's world by treating its customers like cattle, forcing us to take a number then sit and wait in cramped uncomfortable conditions for an hour, while we watch a grand total of 4 RTA workers serve 100 customers with all the speed of a disabled and mentally retarded slug.

Then when we get to the counter, we get patronised and abused by overweight sweaty middle aged men whose lives didn't exactly turn out the way they had imagined as children.

Today I filled out a form upgrading my riders licence, and accidentally ticked the wrong box. There are around 100 boxes on those bloody forms, and I ticked 1 wrong. So technically I got 99% on that test, which is a High Distinction as far as I am concerned, but apparently I was mistaken.

The sweating overweight man looked through the form while he was holding my licence, stopped and looked up at me, then looked back at the form, and slowly tilted his head up towards me with a condescending look in his eyes.

"So, you can't read right?"

"Sorry?"

"Do you need reading lessons or something?"

"Why?"

"You filled out the form wrong... they run reading classes at TAFE, I suggest you enroll in one."

I was a little thrown... but there was my mistake, all light up in blue biro. To answer a question asking if I had held a NSW licence before, I had ticked NO, confusing it with all the other questions about drug convictions, cancelled licences and disabilities that could affect my driving. So I made a mistake, did I need to be abused for it?

Later in the conversation he had another shot at me. Pig.

"Uh, looks like there is a fee on that licence"

"Of course there is... nothing is for free nowadays."

"Yeah, some things are still for free... the library for instance... oh wait, you can't use it because you can't read."

In my head I visualised squeezing through the security glass and beating him to death with his stapler, then pinning his stupid little RTA name badge (which said 'carl' for the record) to his tongue along with what I am assuming would be a very short educational transcript.

But because I didn't feel like getting arrested, I didn't. But let me just end through the power of an open letter...

Dear Carl from the RTA at Hornsby,

Will.