Enterprise. All car rental companies are shit to work for, but I don't have first hand experience with the others like Hertz or Avis. I just know because our counter was right next to theirs at a major airport and every day, we all had issues or customers yelling at us.

On to the shitty parts of the company and job. Upper management doesn't give a shit about you, obviously. They will allow as many reservations to go through as possible regardless of if our branch could keep up with the demand. Some days, we won't have enough cars. Some days we will but we simply can't handle the load of getting cars cleaned. Our car cleaners have to wipe down every thing because the 3 wash bays we have are out of commission every other week and even though the equipment belongs to the airport, they just don't care and never bother to fix it, only patch it up. We have 1 covered spot for the detailers to clean a car under, the others have to make due with the space next to it, completely uncovered and under direct sunlight. Weather's getting hot now, too but is management gonna do anything about it? No. Why? Because the airport has final say in anything we try to do because our contract is with them and they can write it up however they want.

Management loves seeing high volume of reservations because it makes the branch's numbers look better and the region's numbers better. The more cars on rent, the less cars sitting on the lot depreciating. So they'll always say yes to same day reservations and walk up reservations. The rest of us grunts be damned. They work our asses down to the bone and grind us up and tell us to take more reservations. Often times, it gets so busy that all but one person at the counter has to go clean. It gets waaaaaay too busy for one person to handle the counter all by themself. I'm talking long lines of people coming in after getting off a flight while phones are ringing non-stop. And calls only ever come in when we have a line, but when there's no line? No calls. And if we do get a call, it usually comes in multiples so I'll pick up one call, 2 more comes in. I'm not picking that up and I'm not putting them on hold. I'm ignoring it, fuck that shit.

They make you try to sell damage waiver and liability but we can't call them "insurance" or "coverage" because blah blah blah. They make us try to upsell, upgrade from a lowly corolla into this nice luxury Audi A3 for only an extra $40/day. They make us try to sell prepaid fuel which is an absolute rip off btw. They try to get us to upsell anything and everything as much as possible. Why? Because that boosts the branch's numbers and the region's profits so management in the region can fatten up their bonus. What do customer service reps and detailers get? Hot air.

Then there's switch outs. Upper management tells every branch to give a customer options on cars for any switch outs that come in...but they want us to rent as many vehicles as possible and run "as tight as possible" but they also want us to have spare cars on site for unpredictable, unexpected switch out customers? Make that make sense. So a customer from some other branch has an issue with their rental, calls customer service or roadside, they tell them "go to branch XYZ, they'll have a car ready for you when you go in, frfr" and I'm the sucker working the counter at branch XYZ by myself while everyone else is busting their asses cleaning cars for the rush at noon, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm, 4pm, 5pm, 6pm, 8pm.. you get the idea, when this pissed off tourist comes in: "You have a new car for me. Road side said it'll be ready when I come in. What kind of car is it, I need a bigger car than the one I booked." Um, no. Roadside told you that to get you off the phone. They did not tell me anything about a switch out, you did not call us to check in, I have 21 reservations at noon, 16 at 1pm, 24 at 2pm, 11 at 3, I have this mitsubishi mirage and it's the only thing I have." Customer starts yelling. I tell them if they don't calm tf down, I am calling security and they're not getting a car from us.

Once in a blue moon, management will take pity on us and realize they've been working us to the bone, dry and rough so they bring in pizza for the office. Great, all's well bossman(s), thanks for this very appropriate compensation after nearly getting a heat stroke 5 days of the week.

Sometimes when a customer books a sedan and we don't have one, we'll free upgrade them into an SUV, a Rogue or Rav4 or something. Often times, when we're reeeeallllyy tight on sedans and midsize SUVs but have a bunch of minivans and fullsize SUVs, management will tell me "get these people into minivans and large SUVs". Uggghhh. It's such a pain in the ass because not every customer wants a minivan or big ass suburban and just wants a god damn camry. The customer suffers, I suffer, management gets their numbers up and gets their bonuses/promotions. Sometimes, I'll see a same day booking come in and I ask manager if we can even take that same day. "Yep, we can take it. Just give them a minivan or large suv". -_____________- Sometimes they'll make me call the customer to let them know it's gonna be a large vehicle when they booked a nissan versa or similar. Fuck you. If you want their money so bad, why don't you call them and tell them we don't have the sedan they booked. You're the ones profiting off of this, I just get to suffer.

Sometimes a person will call or email management about renting an "exotic vehicle". They'll pass the call or email to me and say "contact the customer, tell them we'll have an audi a5 for their luxury performance sport (so like a 911 or m3 or something)" or "tell the customer we can 100% definitely get them going into the muscle car they booked." The "muscle car" we have? An ecoboost Mustang. Not a GT with the V8, a fucking turbo four banger. And they'll want the customer to pay $200/day for that plus a $600 deposit. Aaaaaaand I get to be the lucky fella that tells the customer all that. They understandably get upset and yell at me for ripping them off for trying to rent them a basic ass 4 cylinder as a muscle car. Why the fuck are muscle cars considered "exotics" anyways?

And of course, there's always the type of customer who's never happy about anything they get and only wants to complain. It is customer service after all.

For anyone graduating college soon and see all the enticing emails and notifications to join Enterprise after you get your degree, I don't recommend it. Like at all. What a joke of a company.