A few years back I had a resume on the Internet and was contacted about a job selling cars for a Toyota dealership. At the time I was working at a boring dead end job as a Bookkeeping Clerk/Proof Operator at a small community bank. At this boring job I also hated my boss. I was also developing carpal tunnel syndrome from encoding checks all day. ( I will probably write another post shortly about how much I hated that job) So I wanted to get out of the bank job in a hurry so I decided to go check out the car sales job out of curiosity. I had thought of filing a worker's comp claim about the pain in my hand from the bank work but a friend of mine who has experience working in personnel at a hospital advised me against it. Apparently according to my friend if you file a worker's comp claim it can hurt you later on when you are looking for work because other employers check on that sort of thing and do not want to hire someone who they think may turn around and also file a claim against them also. Don't you just love corporate America?
So I went to the interview. The guy was a slick car salesman. However the guy interviewing me did not work for the Toyota dealership. He owned his own company in which he recruited, trained, and charged money to new car sales recruits. The catch was we had to pay this guy 300 bucks for the training. The advantage was that since we were paying for the training we would be guaranteed a minimum livable salary for the first three months of our employment unlike the other new car salesman coming in who lived exclusively on commission from day one. So the guy interviewing me said he liked me and would I come back the next two days for the training? And make sure I bring in the 300 bucks? Because I wanted out of my old job I fell for the guy's con game.
The next day I called in sick to my bank job and showed up for my new car sales training. The guy was very good and I am embarrassed to say I fell for his bullshit hook, line and sinker. He tricked all of us new recruits. He lied to us and said he was trying to revolutionize the car business and was only recruiting people who had no prior car sales experience. He appealed to our emotions. He told us how he was a stoner, a high school dropout who turned his life around by selling cars and he would do the same for all of us. He even brought old photos of himself from the 1980s when he wanted to be the next David Lee Roth of Van Halen fame. The photos were of him and his cheesy 80s Hair Metal band. He told us about books like "The Power of Positive Thinking." He told us how Abraham Lincoln had failed many, many times before making it in politics. He told us about how selling cars was a career. He told us how wage earners were suckers. He told us all about his hot wife, beautiful children, his big house, summer home, cars, boat, etc. He told us about all kinds of stuff but very little about how to sell a car. Basically this guy was a car salesman who came up with a new scam. Sell people who were unsatisfied with their current work on how we were all going to make a lot of money selling cars and he was going to teach us all how to do it. Oh yeah I forgot he did not ask us for our 300 bucks until he had us all worked into a frenzy about how much money we were going to make. I know you people reading this are probably thinking you would not fall for this. Maybe not. But the guy was very good and he lied and tricked a lot of us.
So I fail for the guy's bullshit and gave my two weeks notice at the bank. I was the only guy who gave two weeks notice all the other new recruits started right away. So two weeks go by and I show up for my new job. I was expecting the welcome wagon but instead I sat for fifteen minutes waiting. The manager comes over and says "Oh that's right you are starting today, huh?" The guy who recruited us and took our money was gone. He had moved on to get more suckers in the next town. I had a bad feeling in the back of my mind about taking this job but I wanted to try something new so I went on to try out the car business. Then the manager tells me I am going to be selling used cars. Shit I thought. It seemed to me that as a new salesman who had never sold cars before it would have been easier for me to start out selling new cars.
So I go meet my supervisor. He informs me that I should not wear a dark shirt because I will be sweating a lot. This is in Texas during the hot summer. Eventually Toyota charges me 40 dollars a piece for two work polo type shirts I can wear. You have to buy the shirts or be stuck wearing a shirt and tie everyday in the hot sun. My new manager tells me to take a look around the lot and get familiar with the cars they have. I walk around with a notebook and just start writing down all of the vehicles. Year, Make, model. What the hell else was I supposed to do? Memorize this shit in my head? After about an hour of this my supervisor comes over laughing and says, "Man your sure sweating out there aren't you?" All the other salespeople are sitting inside in the air conditioning.
I meet some of my fellow salespeople. A young Muslim guy tells me, "You quit a 9 to 5 job with a salary for this shit?" "These 12 hour days go on and on forever." I get assigned to shadow an older guy around for the rest of the day. This means I am going to hang with another salesman and learn what a salesman does. Well most of the time as a car salesman I find you do absolutely nothing. You spend all day sitting around drinking coffee or water bullshitting with each other because there are no customers anywhere to be seen. The old guy has trouble with the heat and looks like he will pass out several times a day. One customer shows up and we take him out on a test drive. The guy I am shadowing takes the guy in and he actually sales the guy the car! Wow this is easy! This is for me I think. The salesman I am training with (his name escapes me now) fills out all kinds of what looks like to me complicated paper work. I don't grasp it at all but he assures me "the paperwork is the easy part selling is the hard part" so I don't dwell on it. Later as he is working on the paperwork he sees the guy walking out and asks me where the guy is going. He runs after him and the guy tells him he is going to eat and will be back soon. The guy never returns apparently he had a change of heart.
Around lunch time I get hungry so I ask my supervisor if I can go to lunch. He asks me where I am going. I tell him Subway. He asks me to bring him back a sandwich and I say okay. In the next few days I realize I am the only sales guy taking lunch breaks. Most of the other salespeople seem to live off of the free popcorn the dealership provides for the customers. That or they buy junk from the vending machines. One big fat Black guy tells me "I don't eat until I sell a car." Apparently he got this fat from not eating? But he seems to be telling the truth. I never see him eat at work anyway. I find lots of the sales people are broke. They joke about eating Ramen noodles and 99 cent fast food items all the time. Several of the car salesman have no cars of their own! On payday several of the salesman get paychecks printed out that say 0.00. Zero dollars and zero cents.
In the mornings we always had a sales meeting with all of the salespeople. 99% were men. When a pretty girl sales person came in it felt a little awkward for her. The meetings were usually bullshit ra ra pep rallies. Congratulations were given to the guys who sold the most cars the day before. Everyone has their name on a board so everyone knows how many or little cars you have sold. The manager of the entire dealership conducts the meetings. He seemed like a real asshole. He would always talk shit about sales people who were not selling and God forbid if you showed up late for a meeting. You would think you committed murder. He would try to do it like he was joking but his anger and contempt for late and under performing salespeople shined through his evil looking grin. After the meetings our supervisor would have us blow up and tie balloons around the car lot. Sometimes we would open up the hoods on a row of cars. They wanted something to draw attention. A carnival like atmosphere was desired. On weekends there was always some radio station or other promotion going on at the dealership. And all the sales people were fed on Saturdays. Saturdays were the one busy day of the week. During the week it was dead.
So pretty soon I am out on the lot working 12 hour long days in the hot Texas heat. There are about 20 to 30 salesman sitting around doing nothing. When a customer pulls in everyone jumps up and races to greet them. I always seemed to be too slow and too shy according to my supervisor. I also always seem to greet wholesale dealers who work directly with a supervisor, a person who is meeting another salesman, or someone who wants to meet up with an Internet salesman. Internet salespeople sit inside with the air conditioning and wait for emails. Seems like a great advantage to me. I find the other salespeople do not want to know me much less help me. Why would they want to help a guy who would take money out of their pockets? There are a few guys who are friendly but they don't seem to be selling shit either. I found out there were lots of ways to lose money in the car selling game. If a salesman greeted a customer on Thursday and put their name in the computer but the customer came back on Friday and bought the car from another salesman the guy who did all the work on Friday had to split the commission 50/50 with the guy who just said hello to the customer on Thursday! Good deal if your the guy who just said hello. Also if a salesman asked another salesman a question about a car, or warranty or whatever on a deal the guy who answered the question suddenly wanted a piece of the commission.
I found out that selling used cars makes you a lot more money than selling new cars. If you can sell any. For new cars the dealership has a certain price range they will sell a car for. With used cars the sky is the limit. If you can sell a used car that the dealership purchased for $8000 for $16,000 you can make a huge commission. When a salesman would really fuck over a customer they called it "Ripping a customer's head off!" This was common lingo in the car lot I was working at. The new car salespeople only make around $50 to $150 bucks per car they sell believe it or not. So you have to sell quite a bit to make a decent paycheck.
I found out very quickly that used car salesman lie a lot. One thing that was lied about was the so-called "14 Point Check"( I think it was 14 points...). The dealership would claim that all used cars were thoroughly inspected at 14 important places on the vehicle hence "the 14 point check." This was total bullshit. A used car would be traded in, washed and detailed, and quickly thrown out on the lot for sale with no mechanical checks done except making sure it had a current updated Texas inspection center. And guess what? The guys doing the inspections worked for the dealership! Think they were going to fail many vehicles?? Salesman also boldly lied about fixing certain things on vehicles. I sat with one salesman who was asked by a customer to have all the belts replaced on a truck he wanted to buy. The salesman agreed. Later when I reminded the salesman of his promise he told me, "Fuck that guy!"
I found out also there is a lot of racism in the car business. Indian people(people from India not Native Americans) were often called "Patels" in a derogatory way. The veteran salesman refused to wait on "Patels" because they said they would waste their time all day haggling and not buy a car. I heard many poor Mexican customers referred to as "Cockroaches". Also the customers had their own racial biases. A lot of Spanish speaking customers would only talk to a Spanish speaking salesman. Ditto for Asian customers. The dealership made local TV commercials in Spanish usually featuring a hot Latin female sales lady who would wind up getting all the Spanish speaking customers. The dealership was a very male chauvinistic environment. The sales people were 99% men. Women customers and employees were often talked about in terms of how good their various body parts looked and whether or not they were worthy of being fucked by the salesman. This is not unique just to the car business but it is worth mentioning.
So when there were not enough customers out on the lot for us the supervisor would put us in a room with phones. We would make calls and receive calls. We were told to call customers "Until they buy or die!" Don't ever give out your phone number to a car dealership. You will never stop getting called. So I was sitting around one day answering calls. A customer asks me if we had a particular make and model. I put him on hold and ask a veteran salesman for help. The guy in charge of the little phone center overhears. He says, "you don't know anything about selling cars?? Stay off my phones then!" Great. Salespeople don't want to help me and this guy encourages them not to. What a dick.
Eventually the supervisor calls me into his office. "You need to really start staying late everyday and come in on your days off until you start selling some cars", he tells me. Damn I think to myself. I am already working 6 days a week mostly 12 hour days and this asshole wants me to do more?? He gives me a little motivational speech comparing selling a car to picking up a woman in a bar and taking her home and fucking her. I just smile and nod my head in agreement. I don't mention to him that I am not a ladies man and don't have much luck in picking up women at bars. So after this it is near time for me to go home. Fuck it I am tired and hot so I go home at my scheduled time off. The next day is my day off. I don't go in to work. I watch the old Kurt Russell movie "Used Cars" that I ordered from Netflix and relax.
The next day I get called in to my supervisor's office. I am fired. Why didn't I stay late and come in on my day off like I was asked to do he asks me. I have no answer. I forget what I said. So much for the three months guaranteed salary I was supposed to get. I only lasted three weeks. And I sold zero cars. I asked if there might be any other jobs at the dealership further down the totem pole. He takes me over to the service manager. The service manager tells me to fill out an application and he will call me if he decides to hire me. He never calls me back. I email him several times but never got a response. Fuck that place I think.
Why did I not come in on my day off? I was just fucking tired. 12 hour long days of sitting around was to much for me 7 days a week. I could not hack it. I had no desire to hack it. I made a mistake. Being a salesman was not for me. There were a few guys who were really good at it and made a lot of money but they paid a big price for their money. To big of a price for me. I recently discovered a film called "Suckers" that came out in 1999 directed by Roger Nygard who also directed "Trekkies". I highly recommend this film. There is a lot of truth in this movie. Of course a lot of things in the movie were things I did not see at my dealership. Where I worked there were no employees having sex with customers while out on a test drive(That I know of!), no cussing and talking shit about customers at official meetings(although in private yes ALL the time), no racial slurs directed at black employees from management. But it has some truth to it. Check it out.
I have no regets about trying to be a car salesman. I found out that it was not for me. I do wish I could have been allowed to stay for the full three months and been given more time to try and see if I could actually succeed at it. I don't think three weeks is a very long time to learn a new career. Do you?
