My only experience, thus far, with a consulate was the Indian Consulate here in Houston. My buddy was getting married there and I probably had it the easiest....the consulate was about two blocks from my office.

They were decent. But a short time later, I brought my parents in to drop their passports off in the afternoon and they would not BUDGE. We had to go in the next morning and drop them off.

One cool thing: I've got the green Ben Franklin passport so when the lady went to look through a stack of US passports I told her to look for the green one and I probably shaved 20 minutes off my wait time.