Rennie's Car Wash: A Cautionary Tale

It's a rare occasion that I care for my car. Mostly I treat it like a gypsy caravan/covered wagon of sorts and there are things like 1200 Dasani water bottles, vacuum cleaner accessories, and a lone slipper in the trunk. But I love Armor All upholstery wipes and Rain-Ex. Rain-Ex is amazing--the rain just beads off--no replacement wipers until the absolute 11th hour! Having purchased these products to revive my car's inside and windshield, I decided to make it a day and get Stealthy Mighty (named bestowed by my mother)a much-deserved bath.

So I went to Rennie's to do a "fake" car wash. Rennie's is a gas station/convenient store with attached drive-thru car wash, the kind with a machine you pay, rather than attendants, which is why it feels fake (the lack of witnesses to your vehicular responsibility). It's frightening though because you're all alone back there, because it tells you with "stop" and "go" lights what to do, and I always feel like human error will leave me stuck on the conveyor belt for all time because I put the car in Neutral instead of Park. But, I muster courage each time, knowing that within three minutes my car will look a little cleaner at least for a day, and I'll feel good about doing something I should be doing frequently. Anyway, after being pushed back and forth for a while between the octopus things and the suction things, the green light went on for me to exit. I commenced my exit. It was hot out and I was feeling claustrophobic, so before I fully exited the wash, I rolled down my windows. And... was promptly sprayed in the ear by a hose-full of water! Who designed this? NO WATER AFTER THE EXIT LIGHT GOES ON, PEOPLE. This should be an obvious design rule. I left the parking lot feeling like a wet dog, wishing there had been an attendant there to at least laugh at me or say "Gotcha!"