This past week, just as summer arrived the air conditioner on my work van would only blow hot air. Since I use it to travel to various sites throughout the day I could not just leave it at the service center without another vehicle. So company Fleet Management set up a rental car for the duration. It should’ve been easy, the rental company was just across the street from the service center. I suffered through the next day since I had to leave early, before either the service center or the rental car agency were open that morning. I received a call from from the rental place saying they had a reservation for me, and we agreed that I would give them a call when I dropped off the car at about four o’clock that afternoon. Everything was set. As you may have guessed, this is the car company that picks you up.

I arrived at the service center and before I went inside I called the rental agency, said I was onsite and was ready for my pickup. I went inside, gave the service agent my phone number, he looked up the vehicle, took my keys and said he would have it diagnosed by about lunch time the next day. Luckily, the place was not crowded or I would not have had a place to sit, there are only three chairs, one of which is outside, due to social distancing. I check emails and take care of a few things for work, watching each car that drives up to see if it’s my ride. Not my ride for twenty five minutes. Next I see two people ambling in at the door, both wearing the rental car company logo on their shirts, so I get up and ask if they are my ride. They said, Oh, if you need a ride, the car is out there, gave the description and went to talk to the service center representative. I head out to a small sedan, (Fleet management had reserved a mini-van for me) and a young woman, with no face mask, is at the wheel. We drive the few blocks to the car rental place, where she drops me at the front and drives around to the back.

Due to the pandemic, apparently the office is closed to customers, but the employees, who all appear to be between the ages of twenty and thirty, are walking in and out, girls dressed in workout clothes and sandals, guys in khakis and golf shirts. Five customers are standing, one older lady is sitting in one of two chairs outside on the sidewalk. All are maintaining social distancing. I stand apart, thinking because I have a reservation, made almost twenty four hours before, that I’m ready to go. Not so. Customers came and went, the line slowly advanced. The girl who picked me up came out and got in a mini-van and as she drove past me rolled down her window and said, I’m just going to have the van washed, it shouldn’t take long, and went around the side of the parking lot. A couple of other cars had to be washed as well, so it took twenty more minutes for the van to reappear, dripping wet. The girl came up with her iPad, or whatever brand she was using and said she had walked around the car to check for dents or scratches and saw none, that I could walk around it if I wanted to, which I did. Nothing to speak of but it’s hard to tell when the car has water all over it. And then, the most surprising thing of all, she (she never told me her name so I don’t know it) asked me for my debit card. Now this was an instant red flag. I’ve rented enough cars personally to know that a car rental with a debit card puts an instant hold on potentially several hundred dollars in your account. Plus, this was a fleet rental, I was not personally responsible for the charge, nor should it have been made to my corporate credit card. I gave her my corporate card, she said for a deposit and initialed the iPad where indicated, and left.

I remember when this same company, instead of sharing cars around the region so that the employees spend all of their time shuffling cars back and forth between the various sites, each had their own fleet of cars. One location might have several Priuses for driving in downtown or passenger vans for large groups. Another might have big SUVs for family vacations. And I remember too, when working at a downtown office in Atlanta, that the manager of the branch close by would drop off my rental vehicle, sit in the reception area to hand me the key, and have another employee give her a ride back. The paperwork was already taken care of, they had all of my information on file and appreciated my business. That was right before the change to sharing vehicles occured, and I’m sure that manager is no longer with the company.

Things have certainly changed. From a business woman, professionally dressed dropping off a key to the vehicle parked in my office parking deck, clean and with a full tank of gas, to waiting for an hour, half of it standing in a parking lot while a bunch of young kids wearing casual, to say the least, clothing, walk around with iPads pushing buttons. When they’re not shuffling cars around the city that is. I took the van home and cleaned the inside of the windshield, which has become standard procedure. But not before I stopped and bought a bottle of water, which the youngsters were drinking themselves, but never thought to offer to their customers.

Progress.