Here’s how this is gonna go: First, you will step up to the rental counter only when I give you The Look. The Look is not markedly different from my resting face. In fact, it’s no different at all. But it’s your job to recognize The Look, so pay attention. If, upon your turn, you hesitate for one single second, I will call out “Next,” in a way that strikes fear into the hearts of God, everyone in line behind you, and this cardboard cutout of Hertz brand ambassador Tom Brady.
When you get to the counter, do not ask how I’m doing—I’m stuck inside a Hertz location for eight hours a day. How do you think I’m doing?
What you do need to do is give me your driver’s license and credit card within the first three seconds of approaching the counter. This is not something I’ll ask you verbally. This is something you must understand innately, while I stare at my computer and hold out my hand just enough to suggest I might be waiting for something, but not enough to make it clear what I’m waiting for. And I swear to god, if you start reading me your reservation number out loud, I will shut you down and send you out of here on a bicycle.
Since you brought it up, can you ride a bicycle? I ask because we have no cars.
Okay, now you’re getting upset. You’re getting upset despite the fact that we have strict rules against getting upset at this Hertz location. But tell me, honestly, when you reserved a rental car through Hertz, you thought… what? That we were going to set aside a special little car just for you? Seriously? Oh my god.
Let me put it this way: If we had cars around here, we would’ve given one to the man who was in line in front of you. Look at him now, crying in the corner because he “has no way to get out of here.” Does it look like he has a car? He doesn’t.
Wow. I can’t believe I even have to say this, but no, I don’t know “where all the cars are.” I’m not the keeper of the cars, okay? Jesus. I mean, really. Everybody expects us to have cars around here. Like that’s the only thing we’re good for. Like we also don’t have mini bottles of room-temperature water sitting out on the counter because we thought you might like that. Great, now you’re crying too.
I don’t think you’d be crying if you saw the situation from my perspective. Here’s what happened: You reserved a rental car. You paid for that rental car. I gave that rental car to somebody else. Or wait… did I? Haha, I honestly don’t know. I’m looking at your reservation now, and I’ve never seen this car in my life.
Jesus, fine. We have one secret vehicle in the garage out back. It’s a fifteen-seat, stick-shift passenger van. It’s seven hundred dollars a day, and I just put you down for it, and you agreed to take it by failing to interrupt me before I started this sentence.
Seriously? Now you don’t want the car? You come in here begging me for a car, I hand you one on a silver platter, and suddenly you don’t want it? I’m starting to think you never wanted to rent a car in the first place. I’m starting to think you wanted to take an airplane back to your hometown for Thanksgiving, but you couldn’t do that because your family wouldn’t stop sending you videos they saw on Facebook of terrifyingly long security lines at the airport during the government shutdown. Well, I’ve got news for you, pal. Around here, we respect cars. We value cars. We don’t fly in “airplanes.” You think Tom Brady flies in airplanes? Newsflash: He rents cars at Hertz. Yeah, that’s right. Tom Brady—a man worth $300 million—is a Hertz Head.
So, if you’re “so mad” that your “reservation didn’t mean anything” and if you’re just “too good” to “pay for a vehicle” you don’t “know how to operate,” you can take your sorry butt over to the airport and pay hundreds of dollars for a flight that’s going to get delayed by one hour every hour until it’s canceled at midnight. How’s that for a happy Thanksgiving?
