There’s Something About Mary
10 min read
We all, from time to time, have strange things happen to us that just go beyond our sense of logic and creep into the Twilight Zone. It’s just a fact of life that not everything is going to go your way. That, however, does not mean that when life doesn’t go your way that you should just roll over and let it crap on you either. After all, sometimes right is right and wrong is wrong. The question is, why do the strangest things always have to be connected to rental car facilities and the people that they hire? Granted, I’ve had some good experiences and I’ve also had some not so good, but my experiences are usually based around incidents that make sense. For instance, if you bring a rental car back to a facility and they discover an undocumented scratch, the chances are fairly even that you will be held responsible. Sure there’s always that chance that there was not a thorough check and you may not have been the one to have made it, but ultimately this is a part of one’s due diligence as a renter to make sure that you are not in such a hurry that you don’t make notes of potential problems. And this, in the end, is all a part of the rental game that you must sometimes play in order to travel. We accept this.
The crazy thing is that this article was originally going to be a kind of flowery article about how technological advancements have made traveling long distances much more bearable than they used to be. After all, when I originally picked up the car it was actually a routine, if not pleasantly painless, process. This was actually coupled with the fact that I wasn’t prepared to actually like the car that they gave me. As it turns out, I loved it. Have you driven a new Ford Festiva? For an economy car it is amazing. It gets 37 miles to the gallon. It syncs to your mobile devices. It has Bluetooth. And did I mention that with gas prices being insane these days that it gets 37 miles to the gallon? Yes? Well it bears repeating. This car and my entire music collection streaming from Google Music made this one of the most relaxing and enjoyable business trips I have ever had…until “Mary.”
Now you may think that I’m using quotes to protect the guilty. I’m not, but this will make sense soon enough. Mary was the agent that greeted me on my return to the Avis rental facility up in Northern California on a rainy June day. Yes, apparently in Northern California it sometimes rains in the middle of June. Sometimes it rains really hard. I should have known that this was going to be one of those days. As I was nearing the end of my San Diego to Fairfield trip little did I know that the eye of the storm would be right above this Avis Rental facility near the mall. All that was left was a quick stop to the gas station near the mall to make sure that I returned the car with a full tank of gas. I’m a couple of gallons from empty. I should fill it up, it’s the right thing to do. It’s the only thing to do. After all, it’s in the rental agreement for heaven’s sake. I’ve done these things so many times that admittedly it’s like being on autopilot – fill it up, return the car, sign a piece of paper and go home.
When I arrived to the facility Mary was, initially, pleasant enough. She takes my key, thanks me for returning the car and goes to do what I considered a routine check. A few minutes later she returns with the key in her hand, but appears as though she wants to hand it back to me. “I checked the car; you did not return the car on a full tank of gas.” She holds the key in the air.
“What?” I say as I’m scratching my head. “Of course I did. I was just around the corner. The gas station down the street was my last stop before I got here!” I then reached into my pocket and proceeded to show her my receipt. “Here’s my receipt!”
Mary looks at the receipt with contempt. “I don’t know if that receipt is legit.”
“What? It’s time and date stamped and tells you how many gallons along with the address of the of the gas station!”
Mary gives me an accusing look. “That could be for anything.”
“Are you telling me that I went to the gas station, filled a different car full of gas and am trying to present you with a receipt for that other car? What kind of sense does that make?”
“Sir, I checked the gauge and it is not full. It’s just below the line.”
At this point I started to become angry. “I filled it with almost ten gallons full of gas. I even pulled the trigger on the pump a few more times just to ensure that I fill it as much as it can reasonably be filled. What is the capacity of the tank?”
“I don’t know sir.” She says.
“Can you look it up?” I ask.
“No. I can’t. I don’t have that information.” She responds.
“Can you look it up on the internet?” I ask.
“That information isn’t available.” She replies.
“Are you telling me that Ford has not published this information anywhere? It’s literally impossible to find out what the capacity of the gas tank is?”
“That’s what I’m saying.” Mary responds smugly.
At this point I’m beyond confused, I’m beyond angry, and looking for some sanity in this rain storm. “Can I speak with a manager?”
“No sir, you may not. The manager is not here. “She says. “And if you don’t want to take the car and fill it up, I will refuse the return and you will be charged for another day.”
“What? I can’t fill it up any more. I pulled the trigger on the pump bunch of extra times. I watched gasoline spill out of the side of the car! It’s full.”
“It is not full.” She responds stoically.
And it goes on like this for several minutes like a bad Abbott and Costello routine. As I argue, I even ask another employee who works for Sears, if he knows the capacity of the engine of a Ford Festiva. He says he doesn’t but offers that maybe the owner’s manual might tell us. So we all march into the rain until he finds it in the glove compartment.
“It’s 12.5 gallons.”
Mary turns to me and says, “See…it’s not full.”
I try to say something, but words won’t even come out of my mouth. It’s just my finger in the air. Trying to make a point that it’s entirely possible that there might be a half a gallon, but that sinister car will not allow capacity to be reached. I now hate Ford Festivas – these wretched little economy cars with a predisposition of stopping any pump from filling it up to the now notorious “full” line. Evil car. Evil lady. I can’t say any of this. I’m sounding like a crazy person even to myself. I just take the key from her and go back to the gas station. It’s raining and now I’m pumping gas to an already “full” tank. Gas is literally not even being accepted into the tank at this point. I just experience clicks. Press the pump. Click. Press. Click. Gas isn’t going into the tank anymore, it’s just pouring out of the gas tank. I’m spewing profanity now. “Take in more gas, you stupid evil, wretched…I’m not trying to save money! You take my money! You guzzle this gas the way cars are supposed to!” But the pump with the built in safety mechanism is laughing at me. Click. I press. More gas spills onto the cement. I look at the amount of gas that I’m going to have to pay for while rain falls on me, some of which never even got into the tank is now at .3 gallons and I’m livid. “Is that it? Drink you mother f@&%er, drink!” When I get into the car, the gauge moves that extra nanometer up and all I can think is, “What a b#$%h!”
Anyway, when I return to the facility I’m in better spirits. I’m even prepared to accept whatever penalty they want to impose on me because I know that she cannot possibly refuse the car because I will just take my ding on the bill and leave and then I will file a complaint to AVIS. I am returning with a smile and a plan. I even take the business card on the counter which lists a man’s name, probably the nice guy who originally rented me the car, and I just laugh inside since it says manager on it. No worries. This is going to be fun. “And what is your name?” I ask.
“My name is Mary. And I’m the corporate manager.” She responds. I feel like I just got slapped in the face…with brass knuckles.
What? The corporate manager just treated me like a complete felon? Not only am I angry, but I’m confused as I say to myself, “All of this because of .3 gallons of gas, more or less. This has got to be the weirdest thing to ever happen to me. Forget Avis. Never rent from Avis. I will tell everyone I know that they should never rent from Avis. I will tell everyone I know to tell everyone they know. I will Tweet it. I will Facebook it. I will beg that people help this story go viral and help spread the word.” I mean if this is a representative of their corporate management, then I really am not going to win this fight. But then again, we don’t fight to win as much as we sometimes fight because we must. There is a point that must be made. We fight for what’s right because there is a greater good. And we don’t necessarily need to be a part of a great movement to have the activist in all of us find our voice. With that being said, we also don’t necessarily have to experience tragedies of epic proportions to have the Jerry Maguire in us want to just jump on a desk and demand that the world notice them. This was my conclusion as I wrote my Jerry Maguire-like mission statement of a letter to the Avis corporate headquarters recounting every detail revealed here. As I signed it, I did so smugly. In the end at least my Twitter followers and Circle Six readers would follow this story and be able to laugh with me. At least they would know that I fought the good fight. They would know that I was fighting for better treatment of customers. That’s something, right?
This is where it’s supposed to end. I write. I send a letter. I make a phone call and then I move on. Maybe people on Twitter pass it on. Maybe people on Facebook help me publicize this. Maybe not. I will never know until I try. If there was anything I did know it was something about Mary who was one mean person that I would never want to meet on the street for fear that that woman would beat me senseless with a gas pump. As I recounted this story to my friend Ryan he mentioned that I should have asked for a free rental, but as long as I had already Tweeted my dissatisfaction he was going to call Avis in Fairfield and ask for Mary and give her a hard time. I mentioned that I just wanted my three dollars back and apology. Ryan laughs and says he will call me back.
Ten minutes later when Ryan calls me back, he is laughing.
“What’s so funny?” I ask.
“Well…I just talked to the owner. His name is Rick. And the lady you talked to yesterday, her name is not even Mary. She’s not a manager. She’s not even a corporate anything. She was just someone who worked there. So the owner apologized for what happened, mentioned that he saw the note that the employee left and was going to investigate the incident further until I told him that you tried to give her a receipt that she refused. And now he says that she will no longer be working for him.”
“What?” I say.
Ryan goes on to say, “Yeah, call him he wants to make this right.”
I hang up the phone and sit there. I’m confused. “Her name wasn’t Mary?” I am vindicated. When I eventually speak to the owner of that AVIS facility, he is apologetic and gives me a discount off my trip mentions that Mary ( who isn’t really Mary at all) was let go. Now this really makes sense. I was dealing with a crazy person! I laugh. A few hours later the corporate AVIS sends me a written apology in the form of an email and adds an additional 50 dollars off my next rental. And this is how the story ends. Thankfully. It doesn’t end in the middle of the movie where Jerry Maguire loses Cush. It ends the way it’s supposed to end…it ends at that point in the film where a teary eyed Jerry Maguire points to Rod Tidwell as Tidwell gets his big contract and we all know that it’s a happy ending. That’s how I feel. I feel like the little guy who prevailed. And while it feels good to win a moral victory from time to time for sure. I feel good for Avis too who did everything they could to respond to this situation and make things right. It could have been worse, right? It’s a happy ending that can only be described in the end as something about Mary.
