Routine car rental, except for the car part. And everything else.

The whole scene was unlike anything I’ve ever encountered, though it’s completely plausible, so that makes it kind of unnerving.

We’d arrived in San Francisco on a nonstop flight from Philadelphia at around 1:30. This was all according to plan. San Francisco, like a number of airports, has a little train system that takes you from terminal to terminal and to parking and rental cars. It also meets up with BART, the mass transit system, so it’s all very handy. Unlike Miami’s execrable system, which requires you to walk the entire length of the airport in order to access the train, this one is just up a couple of escalators.

Its a pretty long ride to the rental car center, which in turn is almost shockingly poorly designed. Or maybe it was perfectly designed and somebody just misread the scale. “Oh, that was 1:100? I thought it was 1:10!” The train dumps you by this room that is about the length of the train and about the depth of it as well. This would work perfectly if there were nobody there when the train arrived, but that doesn’t seem likely, does it?

In this case, it drops us in a room 200- something feet wide, with about 20 feet between the entrance wall and the counters. When we arrived, it was completely filled with people. All of the companies had those awful but inevitable back and forth lines set up but with another line twice that length waiting outside the velvet ropes. Every car company had this.

I had Ronnie and Celia stand in line because although I thought I might have signed up as a so-called Fastbreak customer, which is Budget’s version of preferred service where everything is all ready for you when you arrive, I wasn’t 100% sure. That counter was on another floor. Another marvelous design element. There were not many people there, either on line or at the counter. I stood in line for a while. even though there was nobody in front of me, and by the time I got to the counter, I was starting to suspect that something was amiss. 

First, the the agent asked if I wanted a Mercedes. I said fine, as long as I didn’t have to pay extra. He responded, “How about a Mini Cooper?’ Much as I love the idea of a 150 mile freeway ride in a toy car, I said no. Finally, I asked what was going on and he replied that they pretty much had no cars. None of the people who were supposed to return cars had done so, so those people upstairs were all waiting for nothing. 

Finally, after quite a bit of scurrying around, they found something for us and pointed us out to the lot. We went outside and saw, well, a empty parking lot the size of an entire city block. There were literally no cars on the entire floor of the lot, except of course for a Mercedes and a Mini Cooper. They really had no cars. This is Budget and Avis combined, since they’re the same company. We walked to where the car was supposed to be parked, but nothing was there. Finally, someone drove up with our car, and off we went. The car was wet and had pretty clearly just been returned, washed, fueled, and sent back out.

We spent most of our drive to Sacramento wondering what was going to happen to all those people upstairs. There were at least 200 people on a line that wasn’t moving (I guess lines get long when none of the people at the counter can be served). I was still wondering this morning.