The Great Boot Debacle, or how to get a free car rental

The Great Boot Debacle
So about a month ago, I rented a car to drive down to Springfield. Because I was going down to the Southside the next day, I kept the car for two days (on the rental agreement). Tuesday was awesome, but super long - I drove to Naperville, picked up the boss, drove down to Springfield and back in the same day. Only to get up the next morning and drive down to the south side for a 9am meeting.

At noon, someone pokes their head in the conference room I was holed up in. "Hey, you arrived just after me, right? They just put boots on 4 cars in the parking lot, and yours was one of them."

So Hertz rented me an illegal car. Basically I got the boot because of prior tickets on the car and parking in a CPS parking lot in a legal spot. Cool. This lead to about a week of hassle - calling Hertz Roadside assistance multiple times and trying to figure out what was going on, after they told me 1. they couldnt swap out the car for me (fine, I was returning it later that night anyhow) and 2. telling me I could return the keys to any Hertz location... and then not closing out the account. I think I had 3 separate reps tell me they were taking care of it before I finally got put in touch with the Manager at O'hare who ACTUALLY took care of it.

But the rental was  free, in the end. And I asked the manager for a free rental for my personal hassle of calling them repeatedly. I got a few $25 vouchers and a handwritten note (that arrived on Valentine's day) "Thanks for the smile in your voice while dealing with all the hassle we caused you". Awww. I'll accept that.

Things I don't miss:
The "Online Ethics Test" - basically, in a big corporation, there are online ethics tests. I don't miss them. People just expect you will be ethical when working for a medium sized non profit. I'm ok with that. The online ethics tests were always sort of a waste of time - important, but hokey.