Used Cars and Desperation

I went to a car dealership to try to buy a new vehicle (I had been driving my old car since 2007 so this activity was long overdue) and I spent a lot of time observing the behavior of the man who tried to "help" me make a "good" deal. I already knew some of the things that were coming because I worked in sales for quite some time when I was younger and I have purchased a car before. If I found something that I liked, the salesman would scribble a way-too-high price on a piece of paper and when I refused the offer, he would violently scratch it out before scribbling down a slightly lower way-too-high price. I knew that he would walk away to "get approval" for inordinate amounts of time and return to vigorously write down his second or third "final offer" of the afternoon. The salesman did manage to both surprise and amuse me with the level manipulation to which he would unsuccessfully attempt to sink, however. I was irritated in the moment but I came to find the salesman's antics to be pretty funny in the end but, oddly, the exchange also seemed to leave me with a better understanding of the ways in which desperation can deform a person's character.

I couldn't quite afford anything new but I found a lightly used car that I liked and it was within my reach so the negotiations began. As the salesman was scribbling down prices and scratching them out, he, calmly, mentioned that his brother had died a few days earlier. I lost my dog to age and illness last year and I was inconsolable for more than a month but he spoke of his dead brother as unemotionally as I speak of laundry detergent or toilet paper. That being the case, I was forced to suspect that this man was either not a fan of his brother or completely full of shit and trying to soften my resolve with the grim news of his imaginary sibling's passing. After that, the pressure came. "A lot of people have been looking at that car, the turbo models don't stay on the lot for very long, and my regular manager is off today so I can't guarantee that this deal will stand tomorrow," he said as I sat there unmoved by his emotional appeals. I told him that I could only pay a little less than I could actually pay, he rebutted with another offer, and the battle of wits went back and forth for quite some time. He would say that he couldn't go any lower before going a little lower. Next, he tried to use shame against me (I, personally, find that sales technique to be particularly distasteful) by disparaging the car that I come in, not knowing that no one disparaged it more than me. When it was done, I got most of what I wanted and the salesman happily handed me the keys, knowing that he had a nice commission coming on his next paycheck.

I took something (besides a car) away from the exchange. I saw a man behave like a complete douche-bag because he was driven by desperation. It may be greed, a need for job security, or financial hardship that generates his emotional motives but the unmistakable stink of desperation wafted about with every word that spewed forth from the salesman's mouth. Lying about a fake brother's conveniently timely demise or using a real brother's death to weaken the mind of a potential customer is pretty wrong, in my opinion, and I suspect that it is not an action that most people would take without being driven to it by some twisted, unhealthy thought process. The same goes for pressuring and insulting strangers who have come into his place of business with the intention to pay him (or his employer) thousands of dollars. I don't know what "why" lies behind the sales person's actions but I do know that it causes him to place success above ethics and dignity. He was like a starving, monstrous creature that would devour its own young to satisfy its intense hunger and that's not a "good look," if you ask me.

Peace.

All the images in this post are sourced from the free image website, unsplash.com.