Using Seinfeld's Line

While traveling this week I arrived at the counter of a well-known car rental company only to be told there were no cars. I was fortunate to have been near the front of what became a long, slow, angry line.

My travel agency had made the reservation two weeks before, yet when I stepped up to the counter the lady whose nametag read "Sunshine" said, "We don't have a car on the entire lot."

"I'll take an economy. Down-grade me to your worst."

"No passenger cars at all," she said.

At this point I heard a woman with kids at the station next to me say to her attendant, "You're kidding!"

"Not even a tiny, old, crumpled car out back?" I asked.

Sunshine told me that all the sedans and SUV's on her lot were already reserved for their premium customers. I asked her if she had my name and confirmation number in her computer, and she said yes.

Then I employed a favorite line from an episode of Seinfeld: "Obviously you know how to take the reservation, but you don't know how to hold the reservation."

The comment got me nowhere. Had I not been so unnerved at her reaction at that moment, I would have snapped a photograph of Sunshine's stormy expression with my cell phone camera.

They got me into a mini-van a short time later, but I have to say that I was the only person who found humor in that great line from Seinfeld.