Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College, and rental cars

The lunchtime show at WITC on 9/15 went amazingly well. After the show, the organizers  made it sound as though we were the best event ever booked, which is always nice for the ego. After packing up, we ordered from the school's little cafe restaurant in which we had just performed, and received one of the best burgers I've had in a long time. Grass-fed organic beef with artisan cheese- from a college cafeteria! Oh, and the school gave us passes to the community rec center, where we could take yoga classes and exercise in a real gym rather than visit the typical treadmill and stationary bike in an empty hotel room "fitness center".

Let me back up a little to the previous day for a story involving picking up the rental car, (SUV in this case). We always reserve our rental cars ahead of time so that we don't get left high and dry at the airport with no way to get to our gig, and you would think that the reservation would make the process of picking the car up pretty quick. The rental agency already has all your personal information, including your credit card information; you would think you could just show them your driver's license and they would hand you your keys. Sadly, this is not the case. The rental car pickup experience tends to be at least 10 minutes of the counter clerk putting together some kind of logic puzzle on a computer screen while asking questions that you've already answered. It takes forever, and if there is a line, you might want to pull up a desk, because you're gonna have enough time to do your taxes. Can I hear an "Amen" from the frequent flyers out there?

Now there is relief, because Budget Rental Car has created a new program called "Fastbreak" that makes picking up your rental car as easy and quick as it should be anyway. Fewer than two minutes after you whip out that little plastic membership card, you are behind the wheel of a clean and shiny rental vehicle. No standing at the counter wondering if the agent typing rapidly into their computer is figuring out how many speeding and parking tickets you have across the world while they spit out small talk and pretend to care about why we are visiting their corner of the world.

So, Jonathan just got his brand new "Fastbreak" membership card and was looking forward to the fastest rental car pickup in history, but the world did not have that in mind for us on this particular day. This was the day when only one person showed up to work at Budget, and everyone renting a car ahead of us had the functional capacity of a hippie after a Phish concert.

There was the family covering three generations who had to have every car option described to them 4 times, the weird guy with the shoebox who was confused about where to leave his keys even after the key drop box was pointed out to him with clarity that required sunblock, and the angry businessman who thought he deserved to be in the front of the line, but the best story was the little old lady in the wheelchair who Jonathan let in front of us because he's too nice for his own good.

Now, this was a sweet old lady who was excited to be coming to town to visit her kids and grandkids for two weeks, and she was very proud to have gone onto the computer to make her rental car reservation (we suspect someone else did it for her and that she's never touched a computer in her life, but we didn't argue with her). When she got to the counter, the Budget clerk asked for her name and ID, and then had trouble finding her reservation. Old Lady explained that she made the reservations over email (evidence she had no idea), so the clerk asked if she had any confirmation papers. Old Lady proudly handed over the computer papers she had in her hand.

"These are football scores", responded the confused and exasperated clerk as she glanced at the line of customers, all of whom desperately wished to leave the airport.

"I know, I follow local high school football" responded old lady proudly.

"This doesn't help with your rental car".

It became apparent that we wouldn't be making it to the comedy club in time to sign up for the open mic that night.

It turned out that the rental car confirmation papers were a couple pages down after the football score printouts, and the reservation proceeded from there, slowly, but almost smoothly until it came time for payment details.

"Oh no, I already paid for the car, and the price is lower than what you just quoted me" insisted the little old lady.

The price that was in question was in the several hundreds of dollars, but the price difference in question was about fifty cents. It took about ten minutes to figure out what had happened, and how the car was getting paid for.

Our turn in line was as quick and painless as "Fastbreak" had promised, and we even got a big apology on presentation of the membership card for the long delay, but when it was all said and done, we had been in line for almost an hour.

"Fastbreak", hooray.