Presents

Working at a rental counter at the airport, especially during the months of April and May isn't the most exciting thing to be doing.  This is traditionally one of the slowest seasons we see, the skiers are done for the year and all the summer tourists coming to visit Yellowstone and Glacier have yet to start arriving.

While the Home/City locations are still seeing steady business from their corporate accounts and filling as many insurance replacement requests as possible, we at the airports find ourselves waiting for those precious few renters to arrive or the minuscule amount of cars to return so the day doesn't seem endless.  Most of the renters we see at this time are business people coming in for meetings or the occasional leisure traveler that wants to avoid the peak seasons.  I love those people.

One of the few perks, besides having an extremely clean personal vehicle, of working at the airport is the leisure travelers more often than not over estimate the amount of "supplies" they will need during their trips.  Since they are flying out, it doesn't leave them many options other than leave the left over goodies in the car or present them to us at the counter as a parting gift for being so amazing at what we do.  These gifts can range anywhere from a sock puppet building kit to copious amounts of adult beverages.  Yes I do plan on having craft time and utilizing the sock puppet kit to its fullest potential.  How each renter handles the left over gift giving is very unique, some tell us they left something in the car, others just leave it in there as a surprise for us to find like treasure, and some just hand it over and simply say "here you go."

I can't speak for the other companies in our airport but it seems like we get a lot of these gifts either intentionally or not, I don't care. Who doesn't like getting free things right?  I have also noticed, be it because behind my counter there is almost always someone sitting there or just because we look like we could use it, customers from other companies or the occasional traveler that had friends drop them off at the airport seem to give us all their adult beverages.  They walk by awkwardly and survey the counters then walk right up to me. Usually the conversation goes something along the lines of:

Them: "I have a strange question to ask."

Me: "Okay, what is it?"

Them: "I have this [beer, liquor, etc] that I can't take with me on the plane, do you want it?"

While not trying to act over enthusiastic about the offering I say
"Sure, I would be more than happy to take that for you."

I have never seen anyone go up to another counter and offer their gifts. I can't say for sure that it happens or it doesn't.  I can say that I am very thankful to everyone that has done it to me.