Hiding Premium-Unleaded Careers in Plain Sight (Part Three).
The Greatest Actor on Earth
“The thing about Rufus is…well…Rufus is with the circus.”
“What do you mean he’s with the circus?”
“I mean he’s like a traveling ringmaster going from one dealership to the other to help General Managers sell cars. He’s like a licensed professional that goes from car lot to car lot to help out wherever he’s hired. Paid on performance but he’s got his own way of doing things. You’ll see what I mean if you stick around long enough.”
— Conversation between an anonymous salesperson and myself regarding the job Rufus had at the dealership.
“If a fish farts underwater, then the bubble has done risen to the surface. Once the bubble goes out, then there is no evidence the fish has done anything. However, the fish has done still farted and you is left with nothing.” — Rufus regarding man’s place in the universe.
—
The dealership’s newest salespeople — including Lindsay, Aaron, and I — let the attempted metaphor wither and die in the conference room. The fluorescent lights hummed above and you could hear the occasional drill from the service department down below. It was Friday morning — the designated morning for Rufus to give his gospel to the new salespeople — which meant a busier afternoon and evening was expected. Although Friday usually meant a good day of traffic, Rufus’s favorite day was Saturday — the reasons for which I will get into later[1].
Rufus was the physical combination of Ned Flanders from The Simpsons, Walter White from Breaking Bad, and a carnival of rejected characters from Green Acres, Hee-Haw, and The Dukes of Hazzard. His personality was a secretion of Bible-Belt wisdom, boiled peanuts, mustard-based BBQ sauce, and unholy specimens native to the Deep South. When you looked at him, you saw a man ravaged by cigarettes, the sands of time, and scars accumulated from bad life decisions. As he spoke, his mouth and speech got more excited, as if they had the ability to shift gears like the products they helped sell. The longer Rufus’s speech went on, the bigger the right eye got when compared to the left. If I hadn’t met him in real life, I never would’ve believed such a person was possible.
“Say you have a middle-aged couple walk up to the dealership. Nine times out of ten what are the customers going to tell Rufus?”
Rufus tended to speak in third-person. I couldn’t tell if this question was rhetorical or not but it didn’t matter because he then answered it.
“I tell you what they is going to tell Rufus! They is going to say Well Mr. Rufus sir, we is looking for a car to put no money down on and we want our car-payment to be 200 dollars. Now our credit isn’t very good and we just got rejected at three other places, can you do anything for us?’ Now after they say this, what should Rufus do?”
There was silence for a few moments until Aaron raised his hand. “Well, we just take care of them and try to find a car that fits their needs, right?”
Rufus nodded emphatically. “That’s when you say Mr. and Mrs. Customer, welcome to our dealership here at (NAME REDACTED). My name is so-and-so and I am committed to getting you all the best deal possible for…uh…whatever it is their looking for. Then you lead them into the dealership and you get them a water to suck on, and have them get comfortable. Because even though they think they is going to close the deal on their terms, they is wrong…”
And he trailed off to allow the final statement to have a dramatic effect.
“…Mr. and Mrs. Dumbass are going to be closed on Rufus’s terms.”
If Aaron and Lindsay provided respect for the client, Rufus was perfectly content to not only embody every single stereotype possible but also to throw any pretension into a fiery furnace after it refused to bow down to him. The more I listened to him speak, the more I balked. I couldn’t believe that a man who switched between perfect and imperfect grammar — not because it was an act but because he didn’t know any better — was good enough to not only start his own licensed service but also travel from dealership to dealership across the United States. Either I didn’t know how auto-sales truly worked or he possessed powers far greater than any superhero could dream of.
“I will tell you who we are, boys and girls. We are underpaid actors!” he finished, suddenly remembering proper grammar.
“If there is a deal, then Rufus will find it, whatever that deal is.”
His engorged right eye lingered before the involuntary swelling ceased. He picked up the papers from the table and began walking towards the door.
“C’mon boys and girls, let’s go get’ em!”
—
The next Saturday morning dawned bright and cheery. Some of us were bleary-eyed from still waking up but Rufus couldn’t be happier. Clutching a set of balloons in hand, he instructed some of us to help them tie them around the side-view mirrors of the cars on the front end.
“If you can’t learn to tie a balloon knot properly, then you have no business being in the car business!” he bellowed across the lot. “If you can’t get people on the lot the normal way, when the customer sees balloons, they’ll be walking up here in no time!”
One of the balloons I tied to a mirror unraveled itself in the wind and started a journey to the sky. Rufus saw it and started flapping his arms like a bird. “For plum’s sake Sam, make sure your balloon’s tied to the car mirror correctly! I don’t want no city ordinance fines coming to the dealership on Rufus’s behalf, you understand?!”
“Uh…what?” I said, not understanding the gravity of balloon ordinance laws. The balloon continued an ascent until it popped and flew back down a couple miles away. It had gotten out early when it had the chance.
Aaron walked up beside me with his fists full of balloons. “There’s city laws against releasing balloons into the sky. If more than one ends up floating off, we get fined due to it being a hazard for passing air traffic…or something like that, I don’t really know. Just make sure you keep your balloon tied and Rufus won’t lose his mind.”
“Got it,” I replied.
After I triple-knotted the next balloon to the car, I walked back into the dealership to follow up on Hector’s ever-important email-leads. Many salespeople were at their desks in the BDC answering phone calls and conversing with Bobby, trying to get the internet leads sorted. As I began the task of responding to the leads I’d been assigned, I heard the familiar goose-steps of Rufus behind me. In his hands, he had a notebook clenched like a Bible, and he raised it high above his head so everyone in the room could see. He then clapped it between his hands like a Conan O’ Brien-clone exiled from hosting a talk show.
“Saturday is church in the car business, boys and girls! And the reverend Rufus is in town!”
And as if gifted from the heavens themselves, two things happened that Saturday that I will remember for the rest of my life: Not only did I get to watch Rufus help close a deal from beginning to end…
…but I also got my first sale.
—
Saturday afternoon bustled with the activity of a thriving marketplace. Customers drove up in their cars and either parked in the service lot or the sales lot. When they got out, they were greeted by the service attendants or sales professionals. A few of us not with customers stood out on the lot and waited for more to drive up. The weather was warm and muggy — the full force of September heat out in the open. When a mud-splattered Kia Optima pulled up to a sales lot and two people — a man and a woman — got out, I watched them wander over to the mid-level sedans and peer in the windows.
No other salespeople were within striking distance. This was my chance.
Even though my knowledge of cars amounted to them being able to move when you put gas in them, I sauntered over to begin the meet-and-greet process. As I got closer, I eyed them up and down to get a better picture. You should never profile a customer in a sales job but you can learn things about a customer based on what they’re wearing.
It was a couple in their mid-to-late forties. Both were heavyset and wore casual clothes — faded t-shirts and jeans which had seen better days. The man wore a baseball hat and his girlfriend carried a large leather purse. They wouldn’t be out of place anywhere and anytime — you might run into them at the state fair or a sporting event. They were background characters in commercials advertising your local farming businesses.
“Hey folks, how’s it going for you all this afternoon?” I began.
“It’s going okay,” the man said without looking at me. He continued to look in the window while his girlfriend eyed the front of the car.
“ Well, I want to go head and welcome you all to (NAME REDACTED). What brings you all on the lot today?”
We exchanged names and pleasantries. It turns out we were their second stop after they’d felt mistreated at the first one they went to. It also turned out that they lived on the other side of the city — almost 45 minutes away if you added for the occasional slowdown. I was both impressed and curious at how bad the other place must’ve been for them to drive 45 minutes away from where they lived. Even more impressive was that they didn’t call or speak to anyone from before. For a moment, I’d wondered if word about the Reverend Rufus was getting out and people were gathering from far and wide for tent-sale-revivals just to hear the man preach the word of signing the dotted line.
The man already knew what he wanted — he was the primary buyer and his girlfriend was along for the ride. Part of his bad experience at wherever he’d gone to first is what ended up saving me in the end. He’d already been approved at the other place and after we briefly drove the sedan he wanted, he said he wanted to go ahead and take it. It was a bright, shiny new car and I was thrilled to finally have my first sale after a rocky start; granted, it’d been an easy one.
“You know,” he told me before we went back to the dealership to get the paperwork ready. “You’ve been alright. Me and the other sales guy at the other place just didn’t get along. He didn’t take me seriously or what I wanted the whole time. Kept acting like I was wasting his time when I told him I wanted a car.”
His experience was baffling to be sure — maybe he’d hit an even-more-inexperienced salesperson there — but even more baffling was what happened when we walked inside to get the deal ready. I approached Rufus with the terms the guy wanted and as soon as the papers printed out, he beckoned me to follow him.
“C’mon Mr. Samuel, let’s go get the deal done!”
—
Sales-Bulletins over Broadway
“All car salesman are…(is/are) underpaid actors.” — Rufus, depending on his emotional state.
The reason Rufus was going to partner-in on this deal was simple: for the first three months, all new salespeople were required to bring in a sales-manager when they began the negotiation process. The reasons for this were twofold: to have a more established authority persuade the customer to take the deal and give the new salesperson an opportunity to see how a veteran closed the deal. It was a lifeline and a teaching instrument all-in-one.
So you can imagine the trepidation I felt when Rufus and I sat down across from the couple and he began going over the terms and conditions of the deal. Then, as he started speaking, I couldn’t believe my eyes and ears. The Reverend Rufus started his sermon he’d carefully-refined over decades of experience. The third-person-pronoun usage and fish-farting metaphors disappeared and what replaced them was an articulate and personable conversation that you might hear at a Scoutmaster’s campfire, or Civil-War-Era-Journal.
The Gospel According to Reverend Rufus went something like this:
“Now Mr. and Mrs. Customer, I want to go ahead and welcome you for stopping by in our store today and I believe that we have terms and conditions that will fit your needs perfectly. According to everything that I’ve set before you, I have all the numbers and information on this sheet of paper. These numbers here are your vehicle price, tax, title, and license. Down here are the terms for your financing including the money you have down. We have 4-year, 5-year, and 6-year plans prepared for you. After you’ve gone over everything, you can go ahead and select which plan is best for you. Then we’ll have your new car ready and prepared with gas in it.”
Instead of watching the couple go over the numbers, I stared at the man who once spoke about fish farts acting as a truth serum to unlock the secrets of the universe. Gone was the use of referring to oneself in the third-person, as well as any indication that abstract metaphors tended to crop up in everyday speech. In that moment, Rufus could’ve gone toe-to-toe with a seasoned theater actor during a Broadway production and the audience wouldn’t have been any wiser as to who really did what for a living.
His mustache twitched. Both eyes remained the same size. For now at least.
—
Now I almost wish this deal hadn’t been the easiest car deal in history.
I wish my first sale contained an extended negotiation involving the terms of the deal, with Rufus acting like he possessed a M.A. in Communications. I wish how at some point — at the very last second — the customers would’ve opposed the deal and walked out — leaving Rufus to unravel and unspool some lines that would make classic conversation stoppers at parties. However, I regret to inform you that none of these things took place.
The man heaved a heavy sigh and looked at the paper with eyes that held sadness and resignation more than anything else. “Well Rufus and Sam…I guess the five year plan would be okay.”
And he signed on the dotted line.
—
I made small-talk with the couple for a while before they finally went through the finance department and got behind the wheel of their new vehicle. I shook their hands and bid them farewell, saying I’d be sending out an email to check up on them after a few days — (also to send out a free-oil change coupon, which Rufus had told me to include as part of the deal since they’d driven across the city). After everything was settled, Rufus gave me a high-five.
“Congrats on your first sale, Sam! Even though you got an easy one, that’s still an X on the board for ya! Now you know what that means, right?”
“Uh…time to go sell another one?” I offered.
“Exactly right! The best time to sell another car…”
His voice lowered a couple of octaves and the right eye once again threatened to engorge permanently.
“…is right after you sell a car.”
“Got it,” I said. “Thanks for the help in closing.”
“No problem. Just remember what Rufus said from earlier…we is underpaid actors.”
Trying to ignore the strange chill running down my spine, I wandered outside and surveyed the front lot, where a few salespeople and customer groups intermingled. Yeah, I sold the car but the guy already wanted it. It’s going to be a lot tougher when the customers don’t want to do anything immediately.
As the sun settled down and the afternoon morphed into a brisk evening, I still had the nagging feeling that I was completely out of my element. If I really wanted to be a superstar, I was going to need know the product like I knew my favorite donuts; the days of magically walking into a sale were few and far between.
Going to need to study on my day off, I mused while pacing up and down the lot. Going to have to pull up the engines, the sport packages, the figures, the utility features, the MPG, the smart features, the this, the that, the other thing…
—
Even if Rufus couldn’t always sell a customer, his antics could sell a television sitcom to even the most skeptical network suit.
One day, Rufus brought take-out breakfast from an establishment near the dealership and had brought it back to the BDC for a quick bite. Upon opening the box — which he’d obviously not done before he left the restaurant — he gasped and gave a series of disappointed grunts.
“That no-good restaurant has forgotten Rufus’s extra syrup…again!”
Without hesitation, he pulled out his phone and dialed the number, standing over the breakfast box like it had personally attacked his children. The only other people in the BDC were two-other salespeople and myself — we were the only ones there to witness what happened when Rufus did not get the extra syrup he demanded.
“Yes…hello?” he said, when the call went through. “Can I speak to whoever the manager is on duty?”
A few more seconds passed in silence. I wanted to turn back to my computer screen, but the imminent verbal destruction was too good to pass up.
“H-Hello? Is this the manager?” Rufus asked again. “It is? Well let me tell you why I’m calling. ‘Bout thirty minutes ago, I was in the restaurant ordering take out and I SPECIFICALLY ASKED FOR EXTRA SYRUP. Then I open the box and what do you know…NO SYRUP WAS INSIDE! I was calling to let you know that we has been loyal customers at your restaurant for many months now…but after forgetting syrup for the second time…we…we…WE WILL NOT BE BACK, THANK YOU!”
And he hung up without further ado.
Going back to his breakfast and muttering under his breath, I watched him return to an even-keel posture and shovel food in his mouth like he found it during a famine. When he noticed me staring, he nodded his head.
“Sam…is you feeling the stress son?” he asked though a mouthful of pancakes.
“Uh…yeah…I sure am.”
“Well, even if you aren’t…you will be feeling it soon, that I can promise you!”
I thought about the amount of leads on my computer I had to sort though and how I still needed to get on a level where I could confidently showcase cars to customers.
Yeah, it’ll probably be here before too long, I thought.
As it turns out…it would arrive sooner than later.
—
(This is Part Three of a four-part story. The story will continue in Hiding Premium-Unleaded Careers in Plain Sight: Part Four).
[1] Saturday is the day when our clientele tended to be off work and so as a result, it was the busiest day for both the sales department and the service department. Friday Evening and Saturday afternoon always bore the most traffic.
