Hiding Premium-Unleaded Careers in Plain Sight (Part Two).
My laughable attempt at selling cars among those who made a killing.
(The following events in this story take place between 2016 and 2017. While interactions and dialogue are recalled from memory, the names and locations have been changed to protect the guilty, the innocent, and the possibly deranged).
(This is Part Two of an ongoing Four-Part Series. Part One can be found on my profile).
An Old Industry Drenched in Young Blood.
One Year Later.
There is a time jump in this piece for two reasons — one because after being shortly introduced to how the car business worked and the people who worked in it, I actually quit on my own accord.
But…it wasn’t for the reasons you might think.
Unbeknownst to me, the dealership would regularly send their salespeople out to the worst neighborhoods in the city to help repossess vehicles. When the finance manager and I hopped in his BMW Series 5 to prowl through streets carrying the finest vehicles 1995 had to offer, something didn’t feel right. When my partner-in-repossession-crime had the cops on the phone and they asked if they needed to bring weapons, the feeling snowballed into uncomfortable fear.
For about ten minutes we weaved through battered streets containing houses with boards on the windows or scorch marks from fires. When a lone drug-addict stumbled down the middle of the road and made a beeline for our car, the finance manager swerved around him and decided it was time to leave.
As karma would have it, we never found the car — but we did get a speeding ticket on the way back for going 85 in a 55mph zone. Strangely enough the finance guy didn’t look upset but just kind of shrugged his shoulders and said “eh, it happens.”
I guess it did.
When we got back to the dealership, I asked the general manager if these missions were a regular occurrence. He said of course they were. I gathered my stuff, told him to have a good day, and left feeling somehow angry and disappointed at the same time. Everything had been going fine until the dealership wanted it’s own version of COPS.
So I took an emergency job at a call center. I don’t have to write an article about a call center because if you’ve worked at a call center, you already know that the sweet release of death is better than working there. Six months passed until I landed another auto sales job — when I asked the general manger at the new dealership if they conducted repossession missions on the weekends, he looked at me with the demeanor of someone who’d been slapped in the face. “No, of course not! Why in the world would we do that?”
Why indeed.
At this dealership — where we sold a domestic brand instead of a foreign one — I met a man who made an income similar to George’s. While he did not possess any sort of glaring physical obstacles to overcome, it wasn’t his laid-back demeanor or old-school ‘boy-howdy-hey-Mr. and Mrs. Customer, you sure did pick a great time to come in’ approach that stuck with me. It wasn’t even the fact that he was already technically retired and he only sold cars just to get out of the house.
It was the people my own age who were killing it almost as much as he was.
—
I remember the first week vividly.
On the second floor of the dealership was a conference room.
At the old dealership there were only a couple of guys in their early twenties. Most of them were over the age of 40 and bore careers spanning one or two decades, if not more. The guys in their early twenties were just getting their start in auto sales or were trying to something new for a change after hating whatever their old job was. Most of them didn’t have college degrees. Some of them did — though in fields that didn’t immediately guarantee a high-paying-job; one thing had led to another and they’d found themselves selling cars. Most of them were doing okay, making around $40,000 — $50,000 a year; not great but something to build on.
At the second dealership, it was a very diverse mix.
Some were old.
Some were middle-aged.
And quite a few were relatively young.
There were also a few women too.
The old place had been the definition of an old-boys-club save for George; they were populated by the kind of boring men who golfed on weekends, knew exactly which liquor got them drunk the fastest, and reminisced about the good-old-days when the internet didn’t exist and customers existed on a case-by-case basis. At the new place however, respect for modernity reigned. Not only were two out of the three sales managers in their late-twenties but even a fully-printed-out CARFAX lay inside the glovebox on all pre-owned vehicles.
They frequently referred to the internet and if Kelly Blue Book came up during the sales conversation, they didn’t fret in the slightest but welcomed it into the game. The managers even paid extra money out to the salespeople if the customer left a good review on the dealership’s Facebook or Yelp page. They encouraged the making and distributing of YouTube videos to send to customers so they could get a tour of the car before they even came to the store.
It was a Millennial-Auto-Sales paradise.
And many of their ilk were happy to take advantage of the opportunity before them.
—
Whenever I think about my time at the second dealership, six people stand out the most. For the sake of anonymity — once again — we will call them Aaron, Bobby, Lindsay, Orlando, Hector, and Rufus.
Aaron was only in his third month of auto-sales but he had already made more money in his second month than he ever did working at his old casino job. He was your Average Joe with a likable well-to-do attitude. If a building was on fire and there were still people trapped inside, he would be one of those crazy people who runs inside and ends up saving them, earning himself a breathing treatment and the front-page in the local newspaper. The upstanding salesman who is an upstanding guy and fights for the best deal possible for his clients.
He was successful and even earned referrals. By his third month, he’d sold 16 cars and made around $7000 after all bonuses were included. Harboring a wife pregnant with both child and student loans, he needed every dollar he could get. Simply by using his small-town, folksy persona — appropriate because he really was from a small town before he moved to a bustling city — he was able to resonate with both customers and coworkers. Out of all the recent hires, he was the managers’ favorite.
—
By contrast, Bobby operated a little differently.
Bobby was 27 and lived in a cool condominium downtown with a beautiful girlfriend — and with the numerous photos plastered around his desk, he made sure we could see what she looked like. He also liked to brag about the walking distance to the city’s hottest bars. As both an internet sales manager and a salesman, he had his own office that he’d decorated with all different kinds of memorabilia and novelties. One of them was a giant block which read I’M KIND OF A BIG DEAL. Hidden underneath a pile of financial-themed papers was a massive NFL cheerleader swimsuit-calendar — signed by some of the professional cheerleaders in question no less — he’d never bothered to do anything with, let alone move it out of his office. Instead, he let his superstar-aura add to his repertoire of being able to close almost any deal.
During my first week, one of the managers wanted me to shadow him and listen in to how he spoke to people on the phone. Despite being from the Midwest, he sounded like a Deep South ambassador, many vowels exaggerated beyond recognition and a voice that sounded like what would happen if a fairy-godmother loaded up a hay-maker with Jack Daniels and cornbread before giving it the gift of human speech. It was a borderline drunken, nasally, high-pitched whine that had been baptized in the Mississippi River before somehow drifting several states over and finding a part-time job at a bowling-alley that doubled as a drug kingpin’s lair.
One of those voices.
I listened to Bobby weave through several phone calls like humanity’s survival depended on it. Most went straight to voicemail and he left sales pitches that invited the prospect to call back. For the ones that did pick up, he started making off-the-wall-statements and jokes that would’ve caused me to block his number. Other people seemed to like him though — he had them chuckling and once he’d answered all the questions about a specific make and model, he would set a time for them to come in and drive it. I was baffled but impressed all at the same time. It turns out the Little Engine that Could had nothing on the Little Haymaker that Prospected.
“Yeah…” he trailed off after he made a ninth phone call. “Life’s pretty good. I make about ten or twelve grand a month.
The pit of awe — and jealousy — in my stomach grew wider.
It turns out I’M KIND OF A BIG DEAL wasn’t that much of a stretch.
—
Lindsay was special and possibly my favorite person there.
Not only was she a young, vivacious woman that had to endure some of the automatic customer-responses of “uhhh…do you work here?” or “you don’t actually know anything about cars do you?’ but also the added pressure of being in a tight spot due to her previous employment paying very little and any familial financial support being in short supply. She was a year younger than me and a little shorter than me.
She was also black. In the ultimate case of Social-Justice-Warrior-Midnight-Edition-Blend, she sold circles around some of the old, white, male veterans.
Whenever a customer approached the lot, she walked up to them with a friendly “HEEEEYYYY!!!” that immediately took them off guard. She learned their names, responded to whatever first statement they had with courtesy, and before long had them walking inside the dealership and buying a car. One particular customer — a woman in her mid-fifties — had asked to speak to the general manager after buying the car on the same day. She said that Lindsay was the best sales person she’d ever worked with and that it was the best car buying-experience she’d ever had. After decades of being talked down to by men, she described her latest car-buying-experience as ‘two friends going clothes shopping.’ The general manager beamed and made sure everyone knew the outstanding work Lindsay had done during the next meeting. Within a month and a half the managers liked her — and relied on her — even more than Aaron.
—
All of the people I have mentioned so far I would go to bat for. While some of those listed had their quirks — especially Bobby — on any given day, high-pressure sales or no-pressure sales, you wouldn’t have to look hard to find the good in them. Aaron would win you over with his no-nonsense approach, Bobby would win you over with his jokes and larger-than-life persona, and Lindsay would win you over by making you feel like a close friend who was taking you shopping. All of them — despite their quirks and imperfections, would be able to win you over by making you feel that they were a three-dimensional-person who’s job it was to sell cars. Instead of a sales-robots engineered in a lab by the finest technicians at Harvard or MIT, they were humans who wore the tags that said Sales Associate.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Hector or Rufus.
Now, there are a lot of you who have probably rolled your eyes a few times when reading this firsthand account. There are probably many of you scoffing right now at my assumption that a salesperson, especially a car-salesperson could be a human with a soul. After all, they are just there to take your money, to schmooze, to make you feel uncomfortable, to preheat you before the dealership sets the oven to bake. They cannot — and should not be trusted — in any way, shape, or form. You do not owe them propriety or nicety. They are an obstacle that must be overcome. To you, there are certain people in the world that — due to their profession — should be awarded no kindness or human decency.
And if you are the type of cold, joyless, person who thinks and feels this way about the world, I award you no taco trucks[1] and may God have mercy on your soul.
However…
Our remaining two characters — Hector and Rufus — would love to reinforce your beliefs and confirm your suspicions.
If you paid Hector enough, he might even strangle your hope of an easy process.
Right after he strangled you, of course.
In the Dragon’s Den
“Okay guys. The goal today — like it is every day — to sell as many cars as we can. Get in front of a customer and close the sale? Everybody got that? Nobody needs a reminded why they’re here today, right?” — Every one of Hector’s sales-meeting speeches paraphrased.
The most impressive thing about Hector wasn’t that a pile of fecal matter was able to knit itself a human-suit, give itself a human name, and live among other humans as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Rather, the most impressive thing was the ON/OFF switch he held regarding his true personality. Now I am not talking about what is said or what happens behind closed doors; after all, there will always be meetings where employers and employees will say things to each other they might not say in front of shareholders or customers. Fathers will speak to their children differently than brothers will speak to their sisters, teachers will speak differently to other teachers than they will their students, and so on and so forth until the end of time, forever and ever, amen.
I am talking about the types of people who can spike blood-pressure levels just by being in a room. With merely a glance or gesture they can give silent heart-attacks or strokes to those who deal with them on a daily basis. These are people who have a jar of negative traits on their bedside table and choose a couple to swallow before they head to work in the morning. This becomes evident not just their words and manner of speaking but their posture and demeanor.
Whenever you encounter them in the wild, their existence boils down to one constant theme: I am justified and entitled to disrespect you and because you are beneath me, you should shut up and take it. Those who win the game of life are those who have the most money by the end. Get out of my way before I kill you.
While I spoke in Part One of how George’s eyes glimmered like event horizons, I never once detected any sort of disrespect or entitlement in the man, not once. In my limited interactions, he’d acted and spoken somewhat strangely but I simply regarded him as a man who knew what he wanted and was determined to continue offering the best service somebody in his position could provide. I imagined myself in the shoes of a customer speaking to George and even though I couldn’t imagine feeling comfortable enough to buy a car, I could at least see George treating me like I was an honored guest and me appreciating both his time and effort. Outside of the sales process, I learned that he really did like learning about people and where they came from — especially since he was not native to America.
This hurts me even more when I know that Hector could’ve easily gotten me to buy a car but that an angel would’ve lost its wings because of it. During the sales process, Hector’s eyes shone radiance — mirth, even. They showed excitement and courage — concern even made an appearance if he was gunning for an Academy Award. When he was working a deal with a customer, all they saw was a man committed not only to their best interest but to humankind’s best interest as well.
His eyes made promises to feed the hungry and clothe the sick. They walked dogs on weekend and visited the old-folks home. They congratulated customers and celebrated with them as they drove away in their new four-door sedan; and because the customers were expecting a baby six months down the line, they even threw in three coupons for free oil changes. The eyes even recommended the best car seats to get when the time came.
Which was all well and good, considering that after the latest vehicle rolled off the lot and another X was drawn on the board, the OFF switched was pressed and the eyes returned to a black screensaver showcasing the finest arts in torture, enslavement, and general human debauchery.
—
“HEY!” Hector shouted as he stormed into the BDC[2]. Several of us jumped in our seats and I dropped the flyers I was holding. “WHAT ARE YOU ALL DOING WASTING TIME BACK HERE?!”
Four of us were seated around a conference table, holding the paper showcasing the highlights of this week’s sale. Just hours before, Bobby had told us to study and memorize it so the customers knew what deals were going on when we sent out emails and responded to inquiries on the phone. I was talking with another salesperson about how the promotional interest rate worked when the ruckus started. “WHY ARE YOU ALL BACK HERE INSTEAD OF WAITING FOR CUSTOMERS UP FRONT?”
I cleared my throat. “Sorry Hector, but Bobby printed out these flyers and I’m trying to understand how this all — ,”
“DUDE, I DON’T CARE! WE HAVE CUSTOMERS…” He made a long dramatic pause and for a brief glorious second, I thought his viral personality had finally destroyed the CPU. Then, breathing with the anger of a raging bull covered in red velvet cake, he finally found the word he was looking for — which didn’t really fit at all. “…EVERYWHERE!!!” And he stormed out of the BDC like he accomplished something amazing.
The other salespeople and I looked at each other at a loss for words before another guy — who shall remain nameless as this is his only appearance in the story — walked outside to see if he was telling the truth.
Not a single customer stood on the lot.
“So Sam,” the other guy asked me before putting his glasses on. He sounded both put out and disappointed. “You see any customers out here?”
“No,” I replied. “I mean, I get he wants us to be ready for them but there’s other ways to get that point across.”
“Exactly.” The other sales guy put on his sunglasses before shaking his head. “And his attitude is one of the reasons I’m thinking of jumping somewhere else.”
—
Now to be fair, I get it.
Any good sales manager at a car dealership wants their staff to be ready for when a customer drives up. If there aren’t anybody standing around on the lot, the customer may assume the dealership is closed and is liable to drive off. However it should be noted that during Hector’s outburst, there were already two people standing outside waiting for any sign of human buying-interest. Also, we were only doing what the Internet Sales Manager had told us to do — reviewing information for the next big holiday sale in case we had inbound sales calls.
All of these factors fell on ears that only responded to the sound of two pennies scraping together.
The main problem with Hector is that he is a one-dimensional character — like a villain in a children’s cartoon, he is presented as a daily obstacle that must be overcome before coming back to scheme on the next episode. When I try to think of anything positive to say about him, I only come up with adjective of “competitive” and unfortunately that same adjective can be applied to Genghis Khan, Josef Stalin, and others of their ilk. When I can use that same word for the other sales managers and still conjure positive character traits and descriptions for them, then I consider Hector to be winning only on paper. When his funeral comes — whenever it may be — I can imagine a few people willing to throw his legacy into a cross-cut-shredder. On that day I may mourn for his family and friends but I will not mourn for his resume of human interaction.
Hector also had a bad habit of talking down to you like you were the biggest idiot on Earth. One of the other new salespeople was completing his training on a computer in the BDC and when Hector came in, he leered right over his shoulder and got in his personal space.
“Hey, buddy…what’re you doing?” he asked.
The new salesperson — nonplussed — looked up from his computer. “Uh…doing training?”
“Is that right? You know, I don’t see very much following-up on email leads going on back here.”
“Right,” the salesperson replied. “Because I was told to do these training modules.”
For a minute I watch Hector seize up like he always did when anyone challenged his logic subway-system. He looked like he was about to hit the new guy then he must’ve thought better of it because he clicked the pen in his right hand successively— he always did this when extra stressed — and heaved a labored sigh.
“Yeah well, once you finish up whatever that is, I need you to start emailing some of our leads back. Get on the phones too. Actually do something around here…”
And he walked out, the pen clicking like it was crying out for help.
The new salesperson he’d talked to quit a week later and when I thought about it, I couldn’t blame him.
I say all of this to lead into the one character who has yet to be discovered — a character who has been named but whose discovery has been left for last. A man so strange, so wondrous, so comical, yet so terrifying in his own approach and existence, he has been left for last. Although I only knew him for two months, I am confident you could fill up an encyclopedia with the amount of fodder his existence provided.
Which is why he also deserves a section dedicated only to him.
—
(This story will be continued in Hiding Premium-Plus Careers in Plain Sight, Part Three).
[1] The correct continuation of this half-quote from the movie Happy Gilmore (1996) has been redacted. I would rather deprive you of tacos than inconsequential ‘points’ that mean nothing.
[2] “BDC” stand for Business Development Center. It’s the area in the dealership where the internet sales manager directs lead traffic and may help manage the social media. Some salespeople have desks where they can make outbound calls and answer inbound calls.
