Whenever my mother and I travel to Louisiana together, we always manage to run into some transportation issue. The real problem stems from the fact that there is one car rental company in Louisiana that rents handicapped accessible vans.
One.
As you can imagine, with absolutely no competition, the quality of the vans isn't great. The customer service is pretty sub-par. One time we had to wait four hours to have a van delivered to the airport. Another time there was no seat belt for my mom. Oh, I can't forget the time the battery died. We don't have a great track record.
Whenever this kind of thing happens, I'm furious. I fly off the handle, and if it wasn't for my sweet, calm, composed mother, I would let this rental company have it. However, then we would have no rental car. She usually smoothes things over.
Today, we flew into Jackson, Mississippi. A driver from this same company was coming to pick us up, and the deal was that we would drive this woman back with us to Ruston, Louisiana. (See, already this is sounding like something a normal rental company would NOT do.) Well, the woman offered to drive back, which I thought was very nice. We had a two and a half hour drive ahead of us. About an hour and a half later, I glanced up from my book and saw a sign that said...
It turned out that the woman didn't actually know she had been driving East instead of West the entire time. My mom had been absorbed in her knitting, I in my book, both of us completely confident that the driver actually knew where she was going.
I was ready to let her have it. I had a whole speech prepared. It may or may not have been full of choice expletives.
Then I realized that we had to spend four more hours together in the car. And that we have no other rental company options. So I bit my tongue.
But you can be sure that as soon as we made a lunch stop at McDonald's (the only place around for miles, that offers grits with every meal for only $.99), I insisted on taking the wheel.
One.
As you can imagine, with absolutely no competition, the quality of the vans isn't great. The customer service is pretty sub-par. One time we had to wait four hours to have a van delivered to the airport. Another time there was no seat belt for my mom. Oh, I can't forget the time the battery died. We don't have a great track record.
Whenever this kind of thing happens, I'm furious. I fly off the handle, and if it wasn't for my sweet, calm, composed mother, I would let this rental company have it. However, then we would have no rental car. She usually smoothes things over.
Today, we flew into Jackson, Mississippi. A driver from this same company was coming to pick us up, and the deal was that we would drive this woman back with us to Ruston, Louisiana. (See, already this is sounding like something a normal rental company would NOT do.) Well, the woman offered to drive back, which I thought was very nice. We had a two and a half hour drive ahead of us. About an hour and a half later, I glanced up from my book and saw a sign that said...
It turned out that the woman didn't actually know she had been driving East instead of West the entire time. My mom had been absorbed in her knitting, I in my book, both of us completely confident that the driver actually knew where she was going.
I was ready to let her have it. I had a whole speech prepared. It may or may not have been full of choice expletives.
Then I realized that we had to spend four more hours together in the car. And that we have no other rental company options. So I bit my tongue.
But you can be sure that as soon as we made a lunch stop at McDonald's (the only place around for miles, that offers grits with every meal for only $.99), I insisted on taking the wheel.
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