We-Haul, mini-series, part 1 (Patreon)

“The rental charges come to $24.99 per day, plus tax, and miles driven.  So…”

The clack of keys and scrolling of a mouse interrupted the otherwise humdrum silence.  Then came the waiting.  The god awfully slow waiting.

“Fucking computer…” he muttered.  Still not loaded.  He didn’t dare press refresh; it always worked that it would decide to work just as someone finally got fed up of waiting.  Closing some extraneous tabs helped some, he hoped.  Finally, the screen rolled over.  “Ah, all right, technology limps across the finish line, once again.”

“What?” snapped the man across the desk.

Apparently there was no call for good humor.  “Technology.  It’s a wonderful paper weight, isn’t it?” he continued, completely unphased.  His eyes returned to the screen.  “Here we are.  Daily rate, taxes, environmental fee…”

“Environmental fee?” interrupted the customer.  “The heck is that?”

“The cost for the emissions put out by the equipment during use,” he explained.  “I think it’s a crock of shit too, but I’m not upper management.  I’m just floor management.”  He kept going.  “Ok, and with the number of miles your total equals… $108.23 sir.”

The man, Jameson, balked.  He didn’t make it a point to try and remember first names.  Contracts, nametags, signatures; everything was surnames here.  

“What the hell?!” Jameson demanded.  “I brought it back on time.”

“Yes you did sir, and we appreciate that,” he replied mechanically.

“I only had it for a few hours.”

The urge to roll his eyes was astoundingly strong but he persevered.  “Yes sir,” instead came his flat, faux-pleasant voice.  “But it is a daily rate, and I can’t charge for singular hours.”

“Then I want the equipment back.”  The petulance in the grown man’s face would have rivaled that of the most spoiled of children.  “If I’d known I wasn’t going to get a discount for turning it back in on time, I’d have kept it longer.”

The satisfaction of getting to say what he was about to say almost made up for the silliness of a full grown human throwing a temper tantrum.  “Sadly sir, we needed it back at this time regardless, so we really do appreciate you turning it on when you said you would.  Another customer has requested this equipment be ready to go out again on the hour.”

Go ahead, complain that you’re somehow more important than others.  Make my day.

Regretfully, thankfully, Jameson didn’t go that route.  Instead came the other dependable route customers like him most often took.  “Well there’s no way that’s the number of miles I drove.”

Feigning understanding, he nodded along.  “Would it helped if we looked at the equipment log pictures we have on file?”

“Yes, please,” came the grunt with absolutely no sincerity.

Sink your own ship, fine by me.  He scrolled back up, clicked onto a tag to open a separate tab, so he wouldn’t have to fight the loader again, and then opened a selection of picture files.  Several pictures of a black dashboard came into clearer focus.  “So, here we have the picture logged by the last customer who rented the equipment.”  He scrolled to the next.  “And here we have the one taken by yourself, when the equipment was turned in just now.  So, all we have to do sir is take the difference from 49013 on the previous picture…”

He watched the man’s face fall as he realized the math was accurate.  Of course, it came right back to its indignant annoyance.  “Ok fine, I drove the miles.  But where’s my discount?”

“What discount would that be sir?”

“Military,” came the immediate response.  Not surprising; there was a giant poster on the wall behind him stating that all Military received lower prices for use of their equipment.

Furrowing his brow, he scrolled back over to the client information.  He hadn’t made this reservation personally, but maybe the person who had missed that.  “Sorry sir, I don’t see any military ID listed on the contract, but I can amend that.  Do you have your CAC?”

“...My what?”

You dumb f- “What’s your MOS?

Deer in the headlights.

“Your smart card.”

“Smart card?  I used a MasterCard.”

He took a deep breath.  Spirits and God save me from idiots…  “Do you have any form of military ID that would verify you are or were a service member?”

“I have my social security card.”

“And I’m not a federal fax machine.”  The customer’s eyes widened a touch at his clipped tone.  “I cannot check a social security card against active or inactive military records sir.  This online portal barely survives turning itself on most of the time.  Now, will you be paying with the same MasterCard on file?”

A short, terse annoyed silence.  “I still think I should get a discount.”

This again?!  He sighed and turned fully away from the computer, linking his hands together.  His scarred fingers and ring seemed to catch the customer’s eyes, as did the military tattoo on his exposed upper arm, beneath the hem of his crisp, beige work shirt.  “Sir, we don’t have discounts for turning equipment in on time.”

“The guy I spoke to on the phone said you do.”  

Lie right to my face why don’t you?  “Ah, and what was his name?”

“...Kevin…?”

He shook his head.  “There is no Kevin that works here sir.  Our rates are posted online and on our store’s billboard outside.”  He gestured with a hand.  “You said you needed the equipment for 6 hours, you took it out for 6 hours, we called and reminded you that we needed it back for another rental before the 6 hours were up…”

“Yeah, and you rushed me!”

“I do apologize for rushing you sir, normally I wouldn’t have minded if you kept it a bit longer if we didn’t have another customer waiting to use it, but…”  He trailed off.  “So will that be the same card or…?”

Furious wheels turned inside the sweaty, bald pate in front of him.  He waited.  The time would only march ever on after all.  Five o clock could not get here any sooner.

“I…don’t have it on me.”

“No problem sir, do you remember the Zip attached to the card’s listed billing?”  No, of course you don’t.  “Well sir, then unfortunately I’ll have to put this contract into claims.”  His hand hovered over the mouse like a guillotine.  “You’ll be contacted within 7 business days to settle the outstanding payment owed, and afterwards you will have to wait 7 more business days to confirm the payment has been sent before you can rent with us again.”

The smile on his face might as well have been acid for how it made the man shrivel up before him.  The zip code was given a second or two later.  The payment was confirmed with a wonderful little green icon and a chiming sound, because of course that’s the only page on this browser that works 100% of the time, and he closed out the Jameson account with a satisfied click.

“Thank you for moving with We-Haul, sir!” he grinned across the desk at the man.

“I want to speak to your manager.”

Oh the dreaded words.  Those most wonderful, horribly dated words.

Standing slowly from his seat, Harker fixed Jameson with a flat-eyed stare.  Standing, he was quite a bit taller than the older man.  “I am the manager here.  You asked to speak with me already.  My regional manager is out.  I don’t answer to the storage unit facility across the street.  Maybe Kevin works there, go chat with him.”  His icy eyes met the customer’s with a steely annoyance on a completely different power level.  “Now.  We-Haul, and you go away.  Bye bye now.”

The man did not move.

Sighing, he looked back at the cubicle behind him.  “Hey Jangles, you mind escorting someone out?”

The lumbering shifting of weight preceded a huge Doberman Canine Anthro’s face.  Grim jowls smeared with sauce from the burrito he had been eating made the man look even more intimidating.  A collar with dogtags hanging from them designated the 7-and-a-half-foot-tall Grunt as Jangles.

Jameson took the message and hurried out.

Grinning, he winked back at his coworker.  “Thanks, Jangles!”

“Eyyy, no problem,” the Canine grunted with a heavy accent.  He heard the thumping of the man’s short tail from behind the wall.

A ringing sound came from Harker’s phone.  Up he shot from his computer, signing out in a flash and tossing his work hat back onto its hook.  “Later fuckers!” he called cheerily to the rest of the office.  All the customers looked shocked, but his fellow prisoners of We-Haul just waved.

He made only one stop on the way out of the building towards the parking garage behind it.  A huge pair of moving trucks were parked at the bays where a crew of hulking Anthros, even bigger than Jangles, were all busy unloading pallets and pieces of equipment.

“Yo, Griggs!”

From within the truck, a ferocious, striped head of a fearsome, furry-headed Tiger poked out.  The scar on her face was visible even from here, as were the crisp sharpness of her feral, yellow eyes.  “What?!”

“We still on for drinks tonight?”

“If your Mom lets you!”

He rolled his eyes.  “Very funny, Griggs.  Hope you have a Grrrreat time!”

“One more cereal reference, Harker,” she growled.  “And I’ll frost your flakes.”

“Aww, it’s a date,” he teased and then loped off.  Better to be careful even when being playful with one of his oldest friends.  His phone chimed at him again just as he slid into his car, reminding him to go get his updated meds at the pharmacy.

No rest for the wicked...

He sent a text to Amanda to let her know he'd be a little late coming home, the pharmacy was on the other end of town, but he offered to get dinner.

Her clipped response of "No thanks, Rene brought something," made his internal organs shrivel up slightly and he gloomily threw the gear shift into drive and sullenly peeled out of the parking structure.

***

Antonia "Toni" Griggs watched Eric Micheal Harker go with a surly, if pleased growl at the sight of his tight khakis.  She could almost still smell his empathic odor from here; muted masculinity coupled with a depressive slump, drained energy and a loss of zest.  She hated seeing her oldest friend like that.  Even when he was smiling, Eric no longer looked like one of the living.  Working for We-Haul tech and scheduling probably didn't help either, but going home to what he was put a sour taste in the Tiger's stomach.

A bump to her shoulder jostled her, making her glance back in annoyance at the offending party.  Brack, a massive Bovine but still not as tall as her save perhaps his horns, winked at her.  “Bet you wish it was,” he joshed her.

“Oh look, a steak dinner,” she rasped, rolling her growl yet higher into her throat and baring one side of her long fangs at him.  He quickly dropped the game and went back to shoving the pallet jack he was manning.  When she looked back in Harker’s direction, he had by then gone out of sight, but she did think she saw his little beat up Silver Ford pulling away down the street.

Yeah, I guess I do, she thought morosely, before she got back to work.

End of Part 1