Always Up: Quiet Miles
A few weeks ago, I had a 9:00 a.m. reservation at the Hertz on NW 57th Avenue in Miami Gardens.
I’d been renting from that location since April, so by then I barely thought about it anymore. Return one car, pick up another, extend it if I needed to, and repeat it all over again the next week. After a while, you stop feeling like a random customer walking through the door. The people behind the counter recognize you, you recognize them, and it starts to feel familiar.
That morning started like every other one until I reached for my wallet and realized I’d left it on the dresser at home. My first thought wasn’t even about the wallet. It was, “Do I really have to go back?” I’m there all the time. My Gold Plus account was tied to the reservation. They’d scanned my driver’s license plenty of times before. I understood they needed to physically see it, but I couldn’t help wondering why someone who rented there every week suddenly had to act like he’d never been there before.
So I asked if I could take the car and bring my license right back. The answer was no. I remember thinking, “Okay…I guess that’s just how it works.”
I’d already taken a Lyft to Hertz, so now I needed another ride home and another one back. Three Lyft rides before I even got the rental car. At that point I was wondering if I should’ve just rented the Lyft.
Before I left, I walked over to the employee I normally dealt with. I told him I’d forgotten my wallet, was heading home to grab it, and asked if I’d still be okay when I came back because I was rushing to a meeting. He told me to go get it, so I figured I’d be back in thirty or forty minutes, show him my license, grab the keys, and we’d pick up where we left off.
When I got back, he was helping another customer, so I ended up with the other employee. If you’ve rented from that location before, you’ve probably seen him. I don’t know if I’ve just caught him on bad days, but every time I’m in there he’s explaining to somebody why something can’t be done.
He pulled up my reservation and told me the vehicle I’d reserved wasn’t available. I said, “Okay, what do you got?” He had another vehicle that was an upgrade. I said, “Great let’s do it.” He said it will be an additional $100 for the week. I said, “I can’t do that.” He said because reservations are made within twenty-four hours, rentals aren’t guaranteed. I figured this was the part where we’d start trying to figure it out.
Instead, we kept coming back to the policy. I asked if there was another vehicle in my price range. No. Another location? No. Every road somehow led back to the same place.
I remember telling him I’d been renting from that location almost every week since April. I’d had one rental for over two months. My Gold Plus account was sitting right there on the screen. My rental history was sitting right there on the screen. None of it seemed to matter.
I kept asking different questions because I thought eventually we’d land on another option. Was there another car? Another location? Anything close to what I’d reserved? Every answer eventually circled back to the policy. After a few minutes, I wasn’t looking for a different answer anymore. I was hoping for a different conversation.
The whole time, I kept looking over at the employee I normally worked with because before I left, I’d asked him if I’d still be okay when I came back. I kept thinking he’d look over, recognize what was happening, and jump into the conversation. Maybe he’d remember we’d already talked before I left. Maybe he’d know another option. Maybe he’d just say, “Let’s see what we can do.”
He never did.
Eventually, I changed the reservation to a one-day rental because I needed to get to my meeting. The rental I thought would cost around twenty-two dollars ended up costing over fifty dollars, and there was another charge on the receipt that I still don’t understand.
By the time I got on the Palmetto, I wasn’t even thinking about the extra money anymore. I kept replaying the conversation, then I’d catch myself replaying the conversation again. Somewhere around the second or third time, I caught myself thinking about my bank.
A few days later, I filed a complaint with Hertz. Not because I expected anything for free. I filed the complaint because I wanted to see what would happen. About a week later, I received an email asking for information they could’ve asked for the day I filed the complaint. As I’m writing this, it’s still unresolved.
Over the next few days, I caught myself thinking about it more than I expected. Not because I forgot my wallet. That part was on me. It was everything that happened after that.
By the time I got home, I wasn’t replaying Hertz anymore. I was thinking about my bank. Then an airline. Then an insurance company. By the end of the week, I realized I wasn’t really thinking about Hertz anymore.
When I was writing Everybody Hides, one idea I kept coming back to was that the pandemic didn’t create who we were. It revealed who we already were. I’ve caught myself wondering if customer service belongs on that list too. Maybe nothing really changed. Maybe this is how it’s been for a while, and I just never noticed because I never had a reason to.
I’ll probably rent from Hertz again. But I don’t think I’ll ever walk into that building expecting anything more than a transaction. For a while, I thought I was becoming a regular. Looking back, I think I was just another reservation.
About the Author
Brian B. Turner is the author of Everybody Hides, a book exploring the quiet truths about human behavior that often go unnoticed. Through his Quiet Miles series, he shares ordinary experiences that quietly change the way he sees the world.
