Charlotte's Dystopian Car Rental Office

Some looks into the past and the future, including the wrong Durham, Burt Reynolds's old house, the least mysterious grocery store, and bizarro customer service.

Where we’re going, we don’t need on-site workers

Inside a rental car office in Charlotte that seemingly has no humans working inside. (Image via Google Maps)

Generally everything that 404 Media puts out is excellent, but this particular story caught my discerning Rabbit Hole eye:

A car rental service in Charlotte, North Carolina has replaced its agents with virtual staffers on a monitor on video chat software.

Go on.

If a customer wishes to speak to a manager, they walk into an office and sit at a desk, upon which sits a computer monitor that also has a virtual staffer on a monitor on a video chat.

So, let’s clarify. To rent a car from this place, you have to go to a physical location just to talk to somebody on a screen, and if you are upset with that somebody, you have to go to another room and talk to somebody else on a screen. You know what the future is? It’s Zoom calls all the way down.

The company in question here is NU Car Rental, which advertises itself as serving Charlotte’s airport, but is actually located in a business park off of Tyvola Road, across from Jock’s and Jill’s. That’s about ten minutes away. The 404 Media story came up short on finding answers, since NU didn’t comment. Several customers noted that they didn’t encounter any human employees in the entire building. Reviews online are across-the-board terrible.

There’s not a ton of information out there about the company itself. Its LinkedIn page notes that it “brings together a (current) group of 25 independent car rental companies, with a fleet of 25,000 cars, under one umbrella to share technology and marketing resources.” It’s had a website since 2009, when its only American location was in Miami. Today it has dozens of locations across the world, and it seems to work fairly closely with Expedia. NU’s CEO is based in Fort Lauderdale and has been on the job for nine months.

But those are just facts. As the young kids would say (I think?), the vibes here are all off. Remember when the future was exciting? Remember when we got all sorts of weird predictions, like 1993’s Demolition Man declaring that the only restaurants in our upcoming frightening utopia would be Taco Bell? At least that looked sort of cool. Instead, we have to be whisked to an old bank branch and join a Microsoft Teams call in order to rent a car. What a world.

Like the Highlander, there can only be one Durham

From Jason Greer comes this oopsie from The Guardian:

It has never been easier to find an image online. It’s also never been easier to find the wrong image online.

The Guardian’s already fixed the mistake (hence the screengrab of a tweeted screengrab above), but I’ll admit that before this, I really didn’t know much about the other, older, Durham. For one thing, North Carolina’s Durham isn’t named after the one in the U.K., it was just named after some dude named Durham. The other one has a Norman cathedral built in the year 1093 (sorry Duke Chapel). It’s also home to a university, is described by the article’s author as a “drinking-and-fighting kind of place” at 2 a.m., and seems to have hit hard times:

Even the sticky-floored Klute nightclub, famous for having been described as the second worst in Europe by FHM and for once employing Dominic Cummings, closed this year.

It’s legitimately a sad day when a town loses its oldest, shittiest bar.

Anyhow, if you have ever been to both Durhams, please compare and contrast in the comments.

Tell me this is a Trader Joe’s without telling me this is a Trader Joe’s

Every once in a while, the people who create renderings of future buildings show that they have a sense of humor. Hence, the person who created an image of a grocery store that’s coming to Matthews really wasn’t trying to create an intriguing mystery:

Boy, what grocery store could this possibly be? (Image via Joe Bruno’s Twitter, of course)

If you don’t already know, the artist used the Trader Joe’s font, and all indications point toward this being a Trader Joe’s, although the actual company hasn’t said anything. Anyhow, this is a lot like a movie trying to depict a company that hasn’t given their blessing to be included in a movie.

I could be wrong, though! This could also be a rental car office, given all of the white fleet cars parked right out front.

Eastbound and Down The Mountain

Somebody is buying a house in North Carolina that Burt Reynolds used to live in. It’s gaudy, but in a good way?

Burt Reynolds’s old house in Highlands (via Zillow).

This is up in Highlands, which is a really really pricey enclave visited mostly (in my experience) by Atlantans. Zillow has the listing price at $2.9 million, and says the sale is pending.

This was put on my radar by the Zillow Gone Wild Twitter account, which has never led me wrong. It notes: “In a letter dated December 23, 1983, Reynolds expressed his admiration for the property, stating, ‘I own about fourteen houses. Whenever I am asked which one is my favorite, without a moment's hesitation I always say my house in the mountains.’” This home really does seem to have it all, except for a prime location along the route of the Cannonball Run.

Stuff You Might Have Missed!

Because last week was a holiday week, you may have missed the previous edition of the Rabbit Hole about the monster truck that crossed the Currituck Sound. If so, please correct that right now, because this is a story that I’ve wanted to write for a long time:

This was great, because I didn’t know most of this stuff until I talked to Dennis Anderson, and every anecdote was better than the last. Also! I went on the terrific Ovies and Giglio podcast and talked about Grave Digger, fireworks, and gas stations. You can listen at the link above, or watch on YouTube below:

Lastly, the fine folks at Charlotte Talks had me on a panel to talk about the best ways to do your summer travelin’. Give it a listen!