Sometimes you feel like a nut . . .

For background, I must explain what evidently prompted this. In my Town Car, when you remove the key, the radio keeps playing until you open the door. This can be very handy if you want to finish listening to a song, but don’t want to leave the car running. Also, I have the numeric keypad, and the code to lock the door is the same on pretty much all of them. You may know where I’m headed with this …Before training today, I was finishing listening to a song on my iPod in the Crown Victoria I have as a rental car. In this car, you have to leave the key turned to listen to the radio, so I just left the car running. After my song was finished, I took my iPod, exited the car, and hit the door lock code. Oops.

Not only were the keys in the car, but it was still running (it’s a quiet car). Now if it was my car, this would not be a problem. But with this car, I didn’t know the code to get back in. Not only that, but I couldn’t get any of the necessary phone numbers off their website, and my paperwork was in the car.

So I called the general customer service number, and explained that I couldn’t get the number for roadside assistance, or the number for the location I rented from, because my paperwork was in the car, but I locked my keys in the car, etc. So she asked, “did you call roadside assistance or the location you rented from?” If I could have smacked her for inattention to customers I would have.

So she gave me the number for roadside assistance. I called them and they said it’s not covered anymore, so I would have to call AAA or someone local to get me in. I didn’t want to pay for it, so I asked them for the number of my Budget office. Once I got ahold of them, and they decided that I was who I said I was, and they decide they wanted to help me out, they gave me the code to the door.So, I may be an idiot, but at least I didn’t have to pay for it. And I’m hanging on to the code in case I need it again …