I was glad I went to this branch compared to the others in town because they do more limited business than a full office. The waiting space wasn't too big and the atmosphere was a bit prison-like after having been searched and every pocket of my bag opened to look for weapons by a poker-faced security guard that gave an expression of "don't even try to nice." We had to ditch our water: not allowed. You can't talk on your phone and have to read or stare at the wall in calmness, which we all did being nervous as hell for anticipation of possible confusion and stress. I brought my Mom since my Dad passed and we had to get her on his SS benefits; in other words, a necessarily and painful life event.
Luckily we were taken care of by Allen who was the one employee who stood out. Everyone else had their number called from to a jail-cell looking window but Allen came out personally to greet each person he was there to serve, and led us back to be seated. He started off by talking to his computer a bit before telling us "I know why you are here" which made us feel a little better, he was nice in giving condolences. He had all the information we needed. We ran into some computer issues when he cancelled an appointment we made (which was too far in the future, so we just decided to walk in) so we couldn't process the whole claim on the spot, but he took our information and called us back later to put it in the computer, and it all came through beautifully the next week. The whole thing was less painful and more friendly than I expected.