KEY POINTS:
Thanks to a computer upgrade in the rental car industry, I am no longer able to rent cars.
This was all explained to me in no uncertain terms at the Avis desk at Wellington airport on Wednesday by a young employee called Roger.
I'm not normally a violent person but I had had a few beers on the plane a little earlier - it had been a hell of a week - and the fresh-out-of-school Roger looked like he was small enough to dominate.
I began by shaking Roger, all the while screaming at him "Don't you know who I am?"
I regret saying that now, as it turned out he did, and that's the main reason he wouldn't rent me a car.
The shaking continued for a while and then, while I was lining Roger up for a headbutt, the tables quickly turned and he kicked my arse in front of a bunch of Japanese tourists who were waiting to pick up their Econovan.
Luckily for me none of the Japanese tourists knew who I was so the incident never made the mainstream media.
This kind of media attention could have an adverse effect on my career, which is on the up at the moment.
Roger was clearly trained in at least two forms of martial arts and has an anger management problem, but once he calmed down we discussed the rental car situation in more depth.
It seems the new database matches your name with any "previous vehicle incidents".
This quickly identifies bad drivers, helping the rental car company reduce its risk.
Roger, who was new to his job, didn't have the confidence to override the information the computer was giving him and let me rent even a bottom-of-the-line sedan.
Calling him a "pussy" didn't seem to help, and he then had the audacity to ask me whether it was true that I failed my licence the first time due to getting DIC-ed while sitting it.
Now this is a prime example of somebody treating all the information on the computer as fact, rather than using their common sense to draw their own conclusions.
It's very common for people of Roger's computer generation to do this - I see it all the time.
But now that it has been mentioned, I would like to put the record straight on this one, once and for all. Yes, I was DIC-ed while sitting my licence but it was during the written and oral section of the test, not the practical driving stage.
Again, it's these unsubstantiated rumours that could give me a bad name and adversely affect my career, which, at the start of this column at least, was clearly on the up.
So yes, it is true that technically I was DIC-ed while sitting my licence, and yes, technically, I lost my licence for six months before I had even got it, but I would never drink and drive.
The database deals with facts alone and doesn't provide any supporting information explaining why a car might have rolled, blown up, or entered the ocean.
Facts are facts and I can't argue the fact that twice I returned rental cars a little worse for wear. Once, on returning the car in pristine condition I filled it up with diesel instead of petrol, a common mistake that anyone could make.
On the other occasion I returned a car minus the expensive roof rack, but in my defence it was delivered back to the car company still attached to the roof only two days later.
I won't bore you with the details of what happened but the real problem with this new-fangled database is that when assessing your risk potential it factors in the rest of your family's driving history, and I believe that is why I am being singled out.
My Uncle Len on my father's side holds the world record for destroying rental cars. At 56 vehicles - four of which were mini vans - Len is clearly a higher-risk driver than most. Much like Evil Knievel, Uncle Len has broken every bone in his body, but unlike Knievel, Len's feats were unintentional and often performed smack in the middle of family holidays.
It's a miracle nobody has ever been killed.
Roger went on to explain that Uncle Len is now considered such a risk that he isn't even allowed to be a passenger in a rental car any more. I am only a risk level Alpha, which still permits me passenger status, and with the queue behind me building, I got my wife to rent the car in her name instead.
