Thanks Ksand! I thought it was apropos. 
And that is REALLY weird. I've never been to the US embassy for anything so I've not experienced that. I have dealt with normal 'take a number' situation and they work their way through in numerical order, which is fair in that everyone is just as royally delayed as everyone else. The DMV where I lived was terrible. If you weren't there when they opened you would wait for a stupid amount of time.
Yeah, I think what they do at the US Embassy is divide the applications up into visa type and then each immigration officer is given a pile and they work through that pile.
I was applying for a 'special circumstances' visitor visa (due to having a DUI), but it meant my application was in a separate pile to all the other visitor visa applications, and they worked through them so slowly that it took all day (hence the reason for scheduling the appointment time at the beginning of the day). I saw all the student visas being issued, and the work visas, an all the other visitor visas, and all the while, I just sat there for hours, waiting for my number, while everyone else had their interviews and went home.
Even worse, there are no electronics allowed into the Embassy, so you can't listen to music, or read an ebook, or play online games or surf the internet. You just have to sit there and either watch the news on the TV screens, read a book/magazine, or stare into space/at the numbers. And you can't let anyone know how long you will be because you don't have your phone on you (you have to either leave it at home or pay a fortune to store it nearby).
