What would you do if you landed in an unfamiliar city, planning to pick up a rental car, only to find the rental counter abandoned? Waiting for someone to show up is one option, perhaps grabbing a taxi or using public transportation are others. That’s not what one group of customers did. When a group of airline passengers arrived at the Hertz rental counter at Syracuse Regional Airport, the car rental station was empty. One of those passengers just happened to be the mayor of Denver, Colorado. The customers hung around from 7:15 p.m. to 8:25 p.m., and then began deciding for themselves which cars to take. Since the location doesn’t offer an automated or computerized way to pick up and drop off cars and with nobody around to assign cars, would-be renters took matters into their own hands by taking whatever cars had keys in them. The anarchistic delivery system worked for some, including Denver Mayor Mike Johnson, but it wasn’t long before the location ran out of cars. The passengers finally called the airport authority, who reached out to Hertz to remind them that they were scheduled to be open until 1:30 a.m. and had obligations to their customers. An area vice president for the car rental giant apologized and took action immediately.
