Having had more than a couple of bad turns with the U-Haul boys in my day, I am wary as I enter their rental office and make my way through their extensive stock of rope, boxes, and moving tools. I am unable to discern what the function might be for all of them. There are clamps and accessories for moving things that I suspect very few people ever really require for their move, but no doubt they find customers by the thousands or U-Haul wouldn't bother stocking such items. Some
would seem to be there solely to impress easily intimidated fellows like myself, but I cannot imagine what monetary value such fearful leverage could ultimately bring to the U-Haul Corporation.
Naturally, I am forced to stand and wait my turn even though there is not one other soul in the U-Haul rental office besides me and the office manager. I assume he is the manager because he appears old enough to be, although for all I know this is his first day on the job and he is stalling around fearful of my discovering his own lack of rental and towing expertise. While I am waiting, and due to my unemployed standing in the community, my mind immediately turns to questions regarding how this manager fellow got the job, what were the posted requirements, and (always!) whether U-Haul is currently hiring. This last has nothing to do with interest on my part or qualification either one, but is simply built into the unemployed apparatus. I can't see a guy standing out in a gorilla suit with balloons in one hand and waving to kids with the other without wondering about the interview process, qualifications required and possible current openings. Being unemployed is a separate life and those who have never experienced it cannot truly be said to understand the uniqueness of the experience.
And while I am on the subject, I should address another issue, namely the difference between being
without work and being
unemployed! I have been without work, which is to say "between jobs," and I have been unemployed - and the difference is quite palpable. The
without work category is a temporary and fleeting state of being, like
The Night They Raided Minsky's. Unemployed is a statement of an enduring and unchangeable new nature, more like
Gone With The Wind. Whether it is time, realistic options, or mental strength that makes the difference, I dare not say; but the difference is all the difference in the world. Indeed, being unemployed, though hoped to be a temporary ailment, is very much like so many other more permanent features of American life where if you are not a member of the group, you are incapable of understanding what it is really
like. Perhaps it is like being bald. If you aren't bald, such a state of affairs doesn't really seem so meaningful.
"Hey, so you don't have hair on your head, what's the big deal, dude?" I feel this way when folks nod casually as I tell them of my unemployment situation. They see me as bald, but I feel like I have terminal cancer, so their casual and unemotional reaction to my plight is always rather traumatic for me.
Finally, the U-Haul manager summons me forth to the excessively high counter that holds a computer screen facing away from me and very obviously situated for the manager's eyes only. Thus do we begin our conference on the particulars of my moving equipment rental request.
When I make clear the details of my desire to rent an automotive tow dolly, the U-Haul clerk looks solemnly into his computer screen and sorrowfully tells me that towing my little Japanese SUV would not be any problem,
if only it were a two-door and not a four-door, which mine in fact is, and just as I have informed him only moments earlier. The U-Haul clerk looks down from his elevated position and peers deep into my soul and, sorcerer that he is, easily intuits the darkness that is present there this evening. Somehow he seems to immediately recognize the obvious risk that I will only go to the next closest U-Haul place and tell them my broken car is really a legally acceptable two-door. That is, that I will only exchange my selection of U-Haul dealers and he will not have diminished any unsafe towing practices at all, but merely lost some profitable rental income for his particular location. Obviously, since no U-Haul representative will ever see the car I want to tow to my house, I could tell them anything and they would never know for sure one way or the other. Well, that is, they would never find out unless something actually went wrong while I attempted to tow the Statue of Liberty on a dolly only approved for two-door vehicles and it broke loose to slaughter hundreds of innocent bystanders. Of course, in that event it should be noted that the standard U-Haul paperwork undoubtedly covers such blatant customer misrepresentation and the legal verbiage in the agreement surely is in place to keep their corporate liability hovering only slightly above zero.
And anyway, I am not sure that is what I would really do at all – simply go to another U-Haul location and lie. Nonetheless, the manager taps the computer screen twice with his pencil and his reticence to rent me the two door capacity tow dolly disappears as quickly as it arose.
“We'll get that hooked up for you right away, sir,” he says, as though our death grip standoff a moment before had never taken place.
Rental challenges remain, however, as they always must, for next there arises some trouble for the young gangly kid hooking up the signal lights for the tow dolly. It seems the wiring on my wife’s big American car is not working for the dolly's left turn signal for some reason. The young man begins to patiently explain the electrical challenge to me, but I am not listening very closely because I am struck by a strong sense of U-Haul déjà vu. From my many previous experiences through the years, I have noticed that if you took all of the U-Haul
“hook-up” employees and lined them up across the Golden Gate bridge, you could not tell one from the next. They are absolutely identical human beings. I do not remark out loud about this marvelous insight, of course, as no one wants to hear that their individuality in this world is approximately that of an electron. Still, you have to ponder whether U-Haul doesn't do some strange cloning experiments in the rental trucks at night after hours when no one is watching. How else could they possibly have 7,000 hook-up guys nationwide who are all essentially the very same human being?
“That left turn light isn't a problem, don’t worry, we'll only be making right turns,” I jokingly tell the U-Haul produced humanoid hooking up the tow dolly for us, but he looks at me with that
you-are-so-fortunate-that-I-am-here-to-save-you-from-yourself look, which they no doubt teach all the newly cloned employees at U-Haul University. He is, of course, probably correct in some vague traffic accident statistical sort of way, but the least of my worries at this point in my automotive saga is a slightly dangerous left turn. My real and now all consuming concern is whether my wife and I together are strong enough for this. Strong enough to get my car that won’t start pushed up onto the base of the U-Haul tow dolly is what I mean. I wish I could remember if I left my car facing downhill or not, but that whole breakdown and then coasting to a stop episode seems more dreamlike than real to me now. Oh well, mine is a rather small Japanese SUV and that seems to somehow bode well for getting it pushed up onto the dolly. The fact that it’s small, I'm saying, not that it's Japanese.
Just as I start to tell my wife how much it means to me that she is so supportive in this somewhat quixotic evening adventure, the gangly replicant informs us that we are
“good to go.” I don’t dare ask if he finally fixed the turn signal, or if he finally realized it wasn't really that dangerous, or if he finally just remembered that he really didn't care one way or the other. I say something inane like,
“Well, we'll be taking off then,” like you do when the party is a complete bust and your one burning desire is to quickly find yourself breathing air somewhere else.
My wife and I pull out of the U-Haul parking lot as the dolly clangs rather loudly behind us, so I pull over right away to check and see if there is any deducible reason for all of the racket that our newly attached tow dolly is making. Everything looks to be in order, although I have to admit that I wouldn't necessarily be the one to say so. Still, we head out again presuming that the noise when we get up to speed on the highway will be even more horrendous and we are not disappointed. In truth, it sounds as if the wheels have been removed and we are dragging the dolly along on its axles. People driving past us give us a very wide berth and I laughingly realize that we would be safe enough with no turn lights, left or right, because we have the road respect normally reserved for an ambulance or fire truck. Or Bonnie and Clyde!
