Known on the day
A Piece Nobody Counted
Seats can sometimes be improvised. Space cannot. This is the entry that ends a booking at the curb more often than any other, and almost never because anybody was careless.
- What the desk writes down
- What the extra piece is, in words rather than as a number, and when the desk was told.
- Why no number can be named without it
- The operator allocated a vehicle against a stated count. A vehicle that will not close its door is not a vehicle that can take the job.
- What happens when it changes
- This is the change. Told early it is usually nothing. Discovered at the curb it is often the end of the booking.
Why space is different
Almost everything else in this intake can be worked around. An hour can shift, an address can be reconsidered, a direction can be replaced. Space is a physical fact about a particular vehicle and it does not respond to goodwill.
That is why the desk asks about luggage in the first moment, and why it writes the answer down as given rather than tidying it.
Told the evening before
Usually nothing. The operator either confirms the vehicle takes it or swaps to one that does, and the price may or may not move. Either way there is time.
Discovered at the curb
A short conversation with an unhappy ending. The driver either cannot take it or takes it in a way nobody is pleased with. The desk is not there, cannot intervene, and hears about it afterwards.
Stating that plainly is more useful than promising a rescue. A desk that owns no vehicles has no second car to send, and the operator's own availability at that moment is whatever it is.
What is written down
The thing itself, described: a folded chair, an instrument, a boxed item, something long. Not a number added to a count, because the number does not tell an operator whether it fits and the description does.
The desk's part
To have asked in the first place, in plain language, and to pass on whatever it is told the moment it is told. That is genuinely all of it, and pretending otherwise would be the kind of promise this site exists to avoid.
Known on the day, one of three moments in the intake