None of us washes our rental cars (antedating 1985)

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:06 AM -0800 1/18/10, Dave Wilton wrote:
>Of course the rental car companies wash their cars (they also own them).
>They do so, along with interior cleaning and making sure the gas tank is
>full, between each customer. So finding a citation of a want ad that
>includes car washing is beside the point. The point of the quote is that the
>renter never washes one.

Perhaps, but as I believe John Baker pointed out in this thread,
those with longterm leases do.  And I seem to recall that renters of
apartments and houses do occasionally vacuum their rented carpeting,
clean their rented ovens, and on occasion even paint their rented
walls. Those who rent motel rooms don't.  So I believe there's a
fallacy in the reasoning, even though it's endorsed by otherwise
logically impeccable thinkers.

LH

>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
>Garson O'Toole
>Sent: Sunday, January 17, 2010 9:01 PM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: None of us washes our rental cars (antedating 1985)
>
>A favorite maxim of conservative and libertarian commentators concerns
>the maintenance of rental cars by non-owners.
>
>Citation: 2009 May 8, Could Profit Motive Put an End to Piracy? by
>John Stossel and Andrew Kirell, ABC News website.
>
>Economists have said "what nobody owns, nobody takes care of," and "no
>one washes a rental car."
>
>http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=7537710&page=1
>
>Jonathan Lighter noted that the politician Eliot Spitzer on CNN said
>recently:   "Somebody once said, 'Nobody washes their rental car.'
>Ownership is good.'" This shows that the adage is not restricted to
>conservatives and libertarians. A 1991 citation for the saying was
>given during a discussion in the ADS archive in 2006. Also, in the
>archive Charles Doyle remarked on the difficulty of determining "What
>'counts' as an INSTANCE of (or evidence for the existence of) a given
>proverb?" A wonderful quote from Shakespeare illustrated his point.
>
>http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0606A&L=ADS-L&P=R2295
>
>Below we exhibit a citation from a business book that was a bestseller
>in the 1980s, "A Passion for Excellence". The book reports on a
>variety of case studies including one that analyzes a reorganization
>of airplane maintenance staff within the military instigated by
>General Bill Creech. The new organization assigns staff to maintain
>specific planes on a long-term basis instead of shifting personnel
>between multiple planes, and this new arrangement is successful
>according to the authors. The core of the maxim is pronounced by "one
>of Bill Creech's noncommissioned officers (NCOs)."
>
>Citation: 1985, A Passion for Excellence by Thomas J. Peters and Nancy
>Austin, Page 239, Random House. (Google Books snippet view only.
>Metadata is sometimes inaccurate. The excerpt below is based on Google
>snippets and Amazon Look Inside.)
>
>The general asked him what the difference was between the old,
>specialist organization and the new organization, in which the plane
>and the sortie are the "customer," where the supervisor ("designated
>crew chief," remember) "owns" the plane. The NCO's to-the-point reply:
>"General, when's the last time you washed a rental car?" We think that
>may say it all. None of us washes our rental cars. There's no
>ownership. And there's no ownership if you're a specialist, no matter
>how well trained, if you're responsible only for two square feet of
>the right wing of a hundred planes. Only whole planes fly.
>
>http://books.google.com/books?id=tkm4AAAAIAAJ&q=rental#search_anchor
>
>I think that this cite points to the starting point of the process of
>conversion of the phrase into a modern proverb. However, it is also
>possible that the NCO heard the phrase beforehand as a proverb, and he
>was transmitting it to the General. If that is the case then this
>citation marks an important locus of popularization.
>
>Of course, rental cars may not gleam, but they are not usually caked
>with inches of dirt, and I found another cite that caused a chuckle at
>the time.
>
>Citation: 1966 November 17, Wisconsin State Journal, Page 60, Column
>3, Madison, Wisconsin. (Newspaperarchive)
>
>[Classified Advertisement] CAR RENTAL AGENCY ATTENDANT - part time,
>Excellent opportunity for college student. Wash rental cars and wait
>on customers.
>
>Garson O'Toole
>
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>
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