As birthdays go, this was the worst: 3½ hours at the Registry of Motor Vehicles, waiting to renew my license.

It was expiring Monday, so my only option was to “celebrate’’ at the Braintree RMV. Turns out my 3½-hour wait was something of a birthday present — some people were stuck there for more than four hours. Others were turned away because they didn’t have the documents needed to get a new Real ID license. Still others spent the day going from branch to branch, in search of a shorter line.

RMV lines have been long since late March, when the state debuted a software system to issue the new license. It or a passport will be required to board domestic flights or enter federal buildings, starting in 2020. Getting a Real ID license requires various forms of identification, and it can’t be renewed online.

Charlie Baker told us all to be patient and to give the Registry a few weeks to work out the kinks. Before the new software, RMV wait times were averaging less than 30 minutes, a point of pride for our governor. With the new system, the state has temporarily reset its RMV wait goal to serving most customers in less than an hour.

I could live with an hour in line, but 3½ hours? C’mon, I could have flown to Chicago in that amount of time. Where’s our Mr. Fix It governor now?

Barbara Almond stopped at the Watertown branch on Monday but ended up sitting next to me in Braintree. There were people everywhere, jammed into benches, sitting on the floor, or standing around.

Almond said the scene seemed orderly, compared with Watertown, where the line went out the door.

“You’d think they were giving something away,’’ she said.

When you go to the RMV, you expect to wait. But the problem now is no one has any idea about how long it might be.

“Don’t even ask’’ is the response Almond overheard from a Watertown RMV worker when someone inquired about wait times. I got a similar answer from a Braintree staffer.

Sorry to be a bother, RMV employees, but some of us have work to return to, kids to pick up, places to be. In my case, I had a 3 p.m. physical therapy appointment, which means I needed to be out of there in two hours. At 1:20, I had already been there for 30 minutes, and by my count, there were about 50 people ahead of me. I decided to cancel my PT appointment — a wise move, because I didn’t get out until close to 4:30 pm.

I met others who waited four or more hours for a license renewal. For Colleen Blanchard it was even worse — seven hours over two visits.

Blanchard waited for three hours at the Plymouth RMV on Friday before she had to leave to pick up her daughter at school. On Monday, she decided to try her luck at the Braintree RMV. Once again, she was brushing up against a pickup deadline, but this time her mother-in-law was on call to help.

“Damn it, I’m not leaving this time,’’ Blanchard told me, as we stood in the hall stretching our legs.

Blanchard’s license expired in May, so she really needed to get the job done. The RMV closes at 5 p.m., but a worker told me the branch keeps processing until 6 p.m. As I walked out, I told Blanchard to keep waiting. I texted her later to learn her number had been called at 5:50 p.m.

I sat next to another Gemini, Beth Cannon, whose license would have expired on her birthday Thursday. The Quincy resident walked into the Braintree RMV at 10:30 a.m. Monday and then promptly walked out. She needed to retrieve her passport to get her Real ID ­license.

She was back at the RMV at 11:30 a.m. At 2:59 p.m., her number got called. Ten minutes later, she was done, waving good bye and practically skipping out of the building.

My transaction also took only 10 minutes. So why the inhumane waits for such quick business? Especially since the state added staff to deal with the transition to the new software and anticipated backlog.

After my column was posted on bostonglobe.com Wednesday morning, Erin Deveney, the registrar of motor vehicles, called to apologize and explain.

“I regret that you had that experience,’’ Deveney said. “How we are going to grow and improve as an organization is to get the feedback.’’

Deveney proceeded to spend about half an hour trying to diagnose what went wrong in my case. I’m not sure if she got any insights, because I filled out my forms online before I arrived and the Braintree staff appeared to do their jobs. The only mistake, she pointed out, was not being upfront with me about the wait time, since the RMV has that information and even posts it online.

Since installing the software, the agency has been experimenting with different ways to speed up service, such as adding extra greeters at the door and moving knotty cases out of the regular queue. The RMV has also been sending out a checklist of documents with renewal notices, and it has enlisted all 34 AAA locations to handle Registry transactions.

I told Deveney that the AAA option was the top tip I got from readers. If you’re an AAA member, get your license renewed there, because lines have been reliably short.

Despite my horrible experience, the RMV was able to serve nearly 80 percent of its customers in under an hour last week. That would mean many transactions are rather short — maybe five to 10 minutes — but others take much longer, producing 3½-hour marathons like mine.

The new Real ID requirements introduced complications for RMV workers, who now have to vet a dizzying array of documents — from a foreign birth certificate to a W-2 form. I might have gotten stuck behind a customer who required more than an hour to process.

Deveney also suspects I just hit a very bad day, a confluence of being the first Monday of the month that followed a holiday week. Based on historical trends, the Registry knows the busiest times tend to be Mondays and Fridays, the first and last days of the month, school vacation weeks, and weeks in which one day is a holiday.

Still, Deveney doesn’t want to make any excuses.

“It’s about achieving a consistent customer service experience,’’ she said.

Did I get my license renewed? Yes, I finally made it to the counter at 4:15 p.m. Monday. Then I realized I had to pay $50 for this experience. On my birthday. That really takes the cake.

Shirley Leung is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at shirley.leung@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @leung.