On the way back from seeing Tomorrowland at Cinema Saver with Jonny tonight, I stopped at the Hess on Vestal Parkway to get gas, probably around 8:30. Lately my car has been weirdly glitchy. So normally it automatically locks all the doors when I put it in drive, but the past couple days it’s been automatically locking multiple times when I’m driving at random times when it’s not supposed to. This happened once for a couple days about a year ago and went away on its own, so I figure it’ll eventually stop happening again if I wait it out.
So I pull up to the gas pump and turn off my car. If this were a few months ago or if I was on Long Island, I would take my keys out of the car with me and maybe lock the doors while I go to pump my gas, depending on where I am and if its level of sketchiness. But because I’m in Binghamton and it’s a high-traffic area and pretty well lit, I leave my keys in the ignition, not thinking for a second that my car would automatically lock while I’m pumping my gas and my keys are still inside. Well guess what happened.
About halfway through pumping my gas I hear my doors lock. Queue instant feelings of dread and anxiety as I reach for the door handle to check and the worst is confirmed - the doors have indeed locked, and my keys, wallet, AND phone are all inside. At this time I notice a guy, fairly young, probably in his mid to late 20s walking towards the gas station carrying a few little gift bags and wearing a dress shirt, tie, dress pants, and dress shoes. He walks up to the woman on the other side of the gas pump I was at and starts explaining that he works for a magazine and today’s the last day of some promotion where you can get $140 worth of make up if you sign up for a subscription to the magazine.
At this point I’m done pumping gas and walk around to my driver’s side door praying that by some miracle that door isn’t locked. It is. And the salesman is coming my way:
Salesman: Hey! Do you have time to hear my little pitch before you head out?
Me: Well, seeing as how I just locked my keys in the car, sure! I’ve got all the time in the world.
Salesman: Oh no! That’s terrible! Is there someone you can call?
Me: Well it seems I locked my phone in there too, so…
Salesman: Oh you can borrow my phone! I don’t have AAA or anything though.
Me: Oh it’s okay! I have AAA. Thank you so much!
Salesman hands me his phone.
Me: Oh wait, I don’t know their number. Could you look it up for me?
Salesman: Oh yeah, sure.
The salesman Googles AAA and, with both of us looking through the results, finds a number and calls it for me before handing the phone over. I end up waiting on hold for about 15 minutes, during which time another two salesmen who work with the guy who’s lending me his phone join him at the gas station and are hanging around with him while he waits for me to talk to AAA. Finally a real human being picks up. I tell her my wallet is in the car so I can’t give her my account number, but she says it’s fine she can just look me up with my phone number.
So I give her my phone number but she says she can’t find my account. I think that maybe it’s under my dad’s cell number since he set up the account for me a couple years back. I give her my dad’s number but she still can’t find my account. This is getting really weird…and worrisome. She asks me for my home address, which I give to her, but - of course - she can’t find my account this way either. She finally asks if she can put me on hold again for a short time so she can try looking me up using a different database. I tell her of course that’s fine, thanks for helping me.
After ten or so minutes on hold she comes back on the line and says she still can’t find my account. I think, hm, maybe my account hasn’t been renewed yet? I know that it usually has to be renewed sometime over the summer, so:
Me: “Is there any way you can’t find my account because it expired?”
Woman: “No, even if that happened there would still be a record of a past account. Are you sure you’re giving me the correct information for your Allstate account?”
Cue overwhelming onset of hysteria.
Me: “I’m sorry, did you just say Allstate?”
Woman: “Yes, this is the line for Allstate Road Assistance.”
Me: “Oh my God. I thought I was calling AAA. Oh my God. I’m so sorry. Thank you so much for all your help.”
At this point I’m near tears I’m laughing so hard. I tell her to have a good night and hang up the phone. All three of the salesmen guys look at me quizzically, and I try to stop laughing. I tell them that it turns out I was on the phone that entire time trying to talk to Allstate, not AAA. The changes in all of their expressions happened in slow motion, I swear. They went from looking quizzical to looking confused to bursting out in laughter. The original guy catches his breath and starts apologizing profusely because he’s the one who found the number, but of course I’m like, “it’s fine, don’t worry about it. I don’t have anywhere to be.”
It turns out the three guys have an hour long car ride before they get back to their hotel (they’re staying in Scranton, what the heck) so they wanted to get going since I’d been causing them to hang around the gas station for about 40 minutes by that point. Of course I tell them that’s totally fine and I can just go into the gas station and ask them to use their phone. Well of course they insist on walking me in and explaining my whole situation to the attendant there and making sure I’ll be safe there (lolz). So the gas station attendant of course says it’s fine and gives me the phone, at which point the salesmen guys say their farewells and I proceed to thank them 50 times for hanging out with me and lending me the phone despite all the mishaps.
They leave and I realize that I don’t have the real number for AAA. I ask the attendant if he has a way of looking up the number, like with a computer or his phone. He responds by pulling his phone out his pocket, a flip phone, and says, “I’m sorry, my phone is very…crappy.”
I realize at that moment that the only way I can call AAA is by catching the salesmen before they get back to their car, so I run out of Hess, around the corner and finally catch up to them, half laughing and half trying to explain that I need their help looking up the number for AAA. They start walking back to Hess with me but I tell them they can just look it up and I’ll remember it, they don’t need to walk all the way back with me. But they look at me disbelievingly and tell me I can’t memorize, they’ll just walk me back, it’s no big deal.
So we get back into Hess and I have the phone in hand while my salesman friend looks up the number on his phone. I watch very closely this time for obvious reasons. Would anyone like to guess what the number for AAA roadside assistance is? Well, it’s 1-800-AAA-HELP. I wish I was kidding. So not only could I have memorized it and avoided the guys having to walk back to the Hess with me, but I could have known the number from the beginning of all this and avoided the entire Allstate debacle. I will surely never forget this number for as long as I live.
I finish entering in the number and, as it’s ringing/immediately placing me on hold, I say my goodbyes to my new friends once more. I’m only on hold for about three minutes this time before someone picks up. Within five minutes I’ve given her my information and she assures me someone will be here to help me within 45 minutes. I know that’s the lowest amount of time that they’ll usually tell people so I have a good feeling it’ll take a lot less time than that. All in all I waited about 15 minutes before someone showed up and opened my door in probably 30 seconds, 45 tops.
At that point (around 10pm) I was so ecstatic and had too much energy that I couldn’t go home. I ended up driving around for about half an hour blasting music and generally enjoying not being locked out of my car anymore. So! The moral of the story is don’t get roadside assistance with Allstate, because they’ll take four times as long as AAA. Oh, and don’t lock your keys in the car.
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