Astute readers may recall that Pete and I joined a car-sharing service a couple of months ago, which I reported on with not a small whiff of smugness. We eventually ended up using our rights to automotive transport by booking a car on an otherwise quiet, pre-snow Saturday morning, in order to drive out to a shopping center on the eastern side of the island and pick up an electric oil-filled radiator. (For whatever reason, the electric heat in all of our other rooms works just dandy, but our office is slow to warm up.) This was, I reasoned, the kind of thing that would be difficult and unwieldy to carry home on the bus. (Though, speaking of unwieldy, I’ve been charmed by the number of roommates and families I’ve seen walking down the sidewalks, slinging a tied-up Christmas trees between them, or with a smallish conifer slung jauntily over one shoulder. Much more attractive than bringing your holiday tree home home tied to the top of your SUV, I think.)
Anyway, that one November Saturday has been the extent of our car usage thus far, and the annual winter deluge of snow means that I’ll probably be even more selective as long as driving requires copious amounts of snow-scraping and shoveling. So I was surprised when I opened up our first monthly bill and saw that we owed the service $54.
“That seems like a lot,” I said blankly to Pete, as I scanned through the account. Our multi-hour trip had cost us $10. But then there was also another trip on our bill, taken two days later, plus a $40 service charge marked “Car Taken Without Reservation.”
“The hell…?” I muttered, and wandered off to my computer to check my Google Calendar. Sure enough, it seemed that we’d made a reservation for Thursday, the 20th, and taken the car on Saturday, the 22nd.
Pete called the customer service desk to confirm. “Ah, okay,” I heard him saying from the office. “That makes sense. It’s embarrassing, but it makes sense.”
I am thoroughly chagrined. Because, apparently, I cannot correctly read a calendar, despite double-checking the dates. And because that means that we stole a car. I mean, no harm (it seems) done; the person who had our car legitimately booked on that Saturday would’ve called the office and been hooked up with another vehicle.
But still. We stole a car. And I do not at all feel like a badass.