October 29, 2010

New transportation day. We got up early and Hélène and I worked hard to get everything ready while the kids tried to wake up. We skipped breakfast at the apartment to gain time, but this time we brought sandwiches, so we weren’t dependent on finding food at the airport.

DC rush hour was a nightmare. The GPS app wanted to take us straight through the center of town but we staged a mutiny and drove out to Virginia and made a half circle instead. That was probably what made us catch our plane.

Mandatory photo, Marius. Today we flew a Boeing 757:

and it had, ta-da:

Once we landed in Atlanta it was time for the hunt for baggage and rental car ritual. In Atlanta you need to first take a train to the baggage claim and then get another train for the rental car center. All while you need to count and recount the number of pieces of luggage and the number of kids and stay uncomfortably close to people you have never seen before.

We found the rental car desk for Alamo and I got my iPad ready as usual. I don’t want to neither kill trees nor carry a lot of paper around , so I keep all our tickets in PDF files on the iPad. So far that has not been a problem. In fact I have never needed the iPad until now. All I have ever needed to do has been to give my last name and a credit card. The new paperless world actually works! Well, until today, that is.

The woman behind the counter asked for my last name, driver’s license and a credit card. Standard procedure. Then she asked me for my prepaid voucher. Happy as a child I showed her the iPad, which was ready with the right page being displayed and everything. For the first time I actually got to use it. She was not impressed.

– Don’t you have a paper voucher?

– No, I don’t have access to a printer, so I only have it here on this iPad

– I need a paper, sir! That voucher is like money to me. I can’t give you a car without it.

– Well, how do I get my car then? Do you have a printer here that I can use?

– No, sir. I will probably have to send you back to the airport. You will need to find a solution there.

– But I had the same kind of voucher for Alamo in Washintgon DC and they didn’t need a paper.

I could tell by her body language that she was not happy with that remark. She jumped in her chair and snapped aggressively:

– Well, I need a paper here sir. Washington DC, that’s another city.

The last part was said with a stress and a sarcastic tone mostly found in movies when the hero finally gets his revenge and has a gun pointed at the bad guy. This was starting to get very uncomfortable.

Help would soon be on the way, though. Hélène serendipitously found the cultural key that would turn the whole situation around in a manner I have seldom seen at a rental car counter. What happened was that we started to speak in French about how hopeless this was and what we should do now. Héléne said to me “Il faut demander a parler avec son superieure.” In English: “We should ask to speak to her superior.” Only afterwards, when we were on our way in the car did we put the pieces together.

The woman behind the counter obviously understood what that last word meant and probably realized what a mess she was potentially getting herself into. The transformation was instant. Before our very eyes this mean duckling turned into a beautiful and fragile butterfly.

She said she needed to talk to her manager to see what could be done. “I don’t want to have to send you back to the airport.” She left and soon came back with a smile and took me into the back office. Here I got access to a computer and could log on to my email and print the voucher on one of the three printers they had. When we got out she upgraded us to a better car type for a symbolic fee. She even apologized that she had to take a fee, because of the rules she had to follow.

All this was done with a big smile and a friendly voice. If I had been blind I would have sworn that they had swapped her out with someone else while I was not paying attention.

But the miracles were not over. She gave us a choice of three different cars. Then she said, “you know what, I’ll come out with you and show them to you.” She then went with us all the way over to the rental car garage while she sweet talked with us and the children. “Oh, you’re taking them around the world for 7 months? That’s fantastic, it’s the best education in the world.”

This woman was hellbent on making sure we did not put in a bad word with her manager. She gave us a tour of the three car types. Opening up all doors, telling us about pros and cons and even moving one car so we could get a better look at it!

I have used the “May I talk to your manager” trick ever since my friend Haavard demonstrated it to me in a bank 22 years ago. But I have never seen it work like it did today. It does work better in a society where there is a very strong culture for hierarchical management and where it is relatively easy to fire people, like the US. But that doesn’t fully explain what we witnessed today.

Maybe the trick is to use a language they don’t understand and then sneak in a word that resembles a word for manager. Then they won’t know if you just said “I know her manager. He is a friend of my father, the French ambassador. If she doesn’t get her act together I can get her fired in a few minutes.” or something even worse.

We were very happy with our nice car and cruised the highways through Atlanta and up towards Chattanooga. We set a new personal highway record in Atlanta. Seven lanes in each direction, plus half a lane for emergency stops:

It was great to arrive in Chattanooga at the house of Gwen and Bob, my American parents.

They had put pumpkins out on the porch, one for each of the kids:

They are heavy.

We were then treated to an absolutely fantastic fish dinner with some of the best corn-on-cob I’ve had since I lived here 35 years ago (man, I’m old…).

Iseline claimed she didn’t like corn and refused to have any. We made her taste a little bit and then she only wanted to have corn. 🙂

The kids really needed to move after a day of transportation. First they attacked a tree in the garden

before Gwen and Bob brought us to downtown Chattanooga where we walked along the river and over a pedestrian bridge.

The kids burnt a lot of calories and only stopped running when they could climb statues:

Once we were back is was time to go to bed for some and time to blog for others.

See you around folks. We’ve been on the road for exactly a month now and tomorrow is the big day!

Eirik

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