Tennessee woman renews driver’s license online, gets ID with photo of empty chair

HICKMAN COUNTY, Tennessee — A Tennessee woman came up empty after she renewed her driver’s license online.

Jade Dodd, of Hickman County, said that instead of her photo, her renewed license depicted an empty chair, WKRN reported.

Hickman County woman renews license online, gets new ID with picture of empty chair https://t.co/bBdpyPFDBO
— Nikki Burdine (@NikkiBurdine) August 11, 2020

“I was with my Mom and we were going to eat lunch and I said, ‘You need to see this, this isn’t right,’” Dodd told the television station.

Dodd said when she went to the Department of Motor Vehicles, the clerk was skeptical.

“The lady at the DMV did not really believe me when I was like, ’Hey, I need my license fixed,‘” Dodd said. “Then, she looked it up in the system and goes, ‘Oh, I need my manager for this.’”

Dodd said her boss and co-workers are enjoying the gaffe.

“My boss thinks it’s funnier than anyone,” Dodd told WKRN. “I was at work Friday and he pointed to a chair outside of his office door and was like, ‘I thought this was you, I waved at it this morning’ and I was like, ‘Thanks.‘”

Dodd posted about the mistake on her Facebook page and as of Tuesday afternoon, there were more than 18,000 shares.

“People have been sending me memes that they made and telling me happy late birthday,” Dodd told WKRN. “It’s been weird.”

“When the customer visited the Driver Services Center a few years ago, during the transaction, an examiner made an error by capturing and saving the wrong photo (of an empty chair) to the customer’s profile,” Wes Moster, of the Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security, told WKRN in a statement. “When the customer recently renewed her driver license online, she received an image of a chair because that was the last picture taken on file. When the Department was made aware of her situation, we immediately made things right with the customer and provided her with a license with her actual photo and have addressed this situation internally.”

Dodd received her new license Monday morning. One of her co-workers suggested she frame the erroneous license.

“One of my co-workers was like, ’Keep it in a picture frame, you can use it as a wall decoration and it’s a conversation starter when you have dinner,‘” Dodd told WKRN.