Valet loses our car!
Working on location can bring forth many mis-adventures! I just spent the last week working with some friends on some Music Video shoots in Memphis, TN. We all stayed in the outskirts at one of the Casino hotels in Tunica.
We were working long days, and usually not leaving set until after midnight, but one day we wrapped up early and decided to go have dinner at the Horseshoe Casino down the street from where we were staying at Hollywood Casino. Since it was raining very heavily, we opted for the valet.
We turned over the keys for our 2 rental cars and headed inside for dinner. After we were finished with dinner and losing a few bucks in the slots, we headed back out to pick up our cars a little before midnight. The valet brings both cars around and we hop in and ready to go, then one of our team gets out of his car looking bewildered.... we roll down the window and he says "This is not our car, it's a Lexus!" Sure enough, we left a Dodge SUV and they were giving us a LEXUS SUV. Nice upgrade ? LOL.... well not when the bumper sticker on the back says "lifetime NRA Member!"
At first the valet is acting like this has to be our car because the keys were under the number we gave him. No ... trust us ... this is not our car! So they take to the search to find our second car. It's not listed in the log .... (are we sure we parked it at the valet? ---- YES!!! ) Keys are no where to be found, did they give it to someone else? Who is driving our car that has thousands of dollars of laptops and harddrives and equipment in the back??
It was almost comical at how they were acting like they didn't believe we left our car there. We described the jacket the guy who we left it with was wearing, to only find out that "no one here has a jacket like that." Well SOMEONE who was pretending to be a valet here took the keys to both of our rentals, and this is the right car, and the other one is lost? Hard to believe!! It was pouring down rain, and they couldn't find the car in the parking lot. So we drove around the valet lot ourself, and finally found the car! Locked of course!
We return to tell them we found the car. They follow us back out to the parking lot and claim that we told them it was blue. (??) Okay, now they believe us.... but where are the keys? Lost of course. They call a locksmith, open the doors, no keys anywhere! Two of our guys are in the valet room searching through all the keys, cupboards, and everywhere trying to find the keys. By this time it's been over 2 hours in our search for the missing car and now missing car keys! One of our guys asks if they searched through all the pockets of the jackets that were hanging on the wall, and they said "Yes, of course!" and he asked if he could look again, they agreed. And what do ya know ..... there, in the pocket of a jacket they already searched was the keys! And to top it all off, the jacket that the keys were found in belonged to the main girl who was convinced that we didn't leave our car there.
The Casino comped us meal vouchers for lunch the next day, and almost 3 hours later, we head back to the hotel. What a night! The night we get off early, we end up getting back to the hotel 1 hour later than we had normally been arriving.
Just makes you wonder how many times they have given someone the wrong car, and what happens if the person is not honest and brings it back? But at least we now have something to laugh about, and we might think twice before parking at a valet for a while!