This morning I picked up a UHaul van for our move to the new apartment.  It’s college-moving weekend, so we had a narrow window to use the loading dock.  That meant that everything else had to go right.  We had plenty of helpers lined up, we had the loading zone at the old apartment booked all morning, and everything was ready to go.

When I got to the UHaul place at 7:05, the manager was already on the phone with someone.  He was explaining that they needed to return their truck *now*.  Someone had it booked in a couple hours, and the previous booking had failed to return it the night before.  I couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation, but it seemed like the person was befuddled that they couldn’t just hang onto the truck until they were done.

The manager explained that they were ruining someone else’s move, and asked when they’d have the truck in.  The look on his face said he wasn’t happy with the answer.

He helped me afterwards, but his mind was somewhere else.  He was going to have to call the people who booked that truck today and explain that they didn’t have one for them.

I wonder how many times a year he has to make that call.