Question: What do you get when changes are made in the processing of a governmental service that, even in the best of times, doesn’t really function all that smoothly?
Answer: According to this Lisa Falkenberg/Chronicle column, a real mess:

The scene at the George Thomas “Mickey” Leland Federal Building in downtown Houston resembled a soup kitchen. Outside, tired-looking people crowded benches and sprawled on grass. Inside, State Department guards kept teeming hordes at bay in the lobby so they wouldn’t add to the lines, snaking through hallways outside the fourth floor passport office.
“We started out in a line to get in a line to get to the elevator so that we could get in a line to get a number to wait in another line,” Prothro told me.
Applicants, from El Paso to Oklahoma City, waited like cattle in holding areas, clutching suitcases, gripping manila envelopes of itineraries, some frantically calling congressmen for help. Even those with appointments were shooed by guards to the rear of the line.
The nationwide passport backlog ó prompted by a federal law that took effect in January requiring U.S. citizens to obtain passports before flying to places such as Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean ó was exacerbated this week in Houston by two days of computer system failures, said Eric Botts, assistant regional director.
The crowd grew so large, it presented a fire hazard.
“I can certainly understand people are frustrated,” Botts said.
Botts said his staff has worked overtime, doing “everything humanly possible” for the past two years to meet surging passport demand. Each day, the office may get 500 e-mailed or faxed congressional inquiries about cases, and 800 from the national passport information center. He said his office has a backlog of 90,000 passports.
By midday, passport purgatory quickly deteriorated into passport hell. Around 3 p.m., a worker delivered grim news to an outside line:
“If you’re here trying to get a passport today, that’s not going to happen,” he said. “I don’t know why they sent all of you here. As you can see, they sent thousands of people here. There’s no way an agency this small can handle all this work.”
Inside the stuffy office, more than 250 people, including screaming toddlers, waited in line or in plastic chairs, staring at Fox News, sharing gripes in every language and glaring anxiously at passport agents behind thick glass windows. Many went several hours without eating or drinking, for fear of losing their spots in line. [. . .]
Occasional applause erupted when someone emerged with a passport. These lucky few adopted a distinctive swagger and a wide grin as they coveted their hard-earned treasure.