He wanted his granddaughter to have it.
In a way, I did indeed hold him hostage in my office.
When people want to signal that they are through negotiating, they usually stand up from the desk and make a beeline to the door.
He couldn't really do that, because he was tethered by his oxygen tank and had difficulty moving. Thus, every time he tried to get up and failed, I would use the standard "Wait just a minute - Let me check on one more thing" line to slow him down and get the chance to take another run at him.
In a sense, you are correct that it was my choice to get into the automobile industry. At the time I did it, the economy was very slow and I was offered 3 jobs: 2 selling cars, and one killing puppies and kittens at the pound.
What was not my choice was the state I found the industry in. I didn't invent hardcore sales - I just found it there. It was the antithesis of what I had been studying in college - namely, economics.
For capitalism to operate at maximum efficiency, one must have a good flow of information. In fact, it is one of the primary assumptions of economic theory: "Perfect information."
What I found was an industry based on keeping information from people. Nobody can know what they must pay for a car in real numbers until they have made a commitment to buy the car.
It's called, in car business slang, a "wouldyatake." The salesman, or the closer, asks the customer what it would take to send him/her home in that vehicle right now.
Without a commitment to buy the vehicle at a certain set of fictional numbers, negotiations do not even start.
Negotiations are all about giving and taking away mental ownership of a vehicle. It is a technique which is well-known and taught within the industry.
It is designed to test the buyer and to learn and calculate how much money can be had by the dealer in the transaction.
Reality never enters into it. Numbers are made up at the beginning of the transaction. It is all a carefully scripted performance.
As a closer and a sales trainer, I was able to walk into a transaction that had already been started by one of my salespeople and I knew EXACTLY what the customer had been told - because I wrote it - but to the customer, I seemed to be higher-ranking authority who reiterated the same ideas and arguments they had already heard from at least one, and sometimes two, other people.
And it's not that we were lying. We used a lot of doubletalk, and questions that started with "if" and numbers that were prefaced with phrases like "I think the banks would like to see" or " what you ought to be paying for this vehicle is." (Just think about President Bush denying that America uses torture, while carefully redefining "torture" into meaninglessness.)
It was an elegantly choreographed ballet of deception.
Even people who think they are skilled negotiators and leave happy have no idea what just happened to them. It is not that they are necessarily stupid or undereducated - many are in fact professionals. Even judges and lawyers who ought to know better succumb to the techniques of the industry. (A little flattery and false recognition of their intelligence and wisdom helps it along. "I know you're way to smart for me to play any car business games on, so let's just make this simple" - followed by the standard car business games.))
It's an evil game on so many levels.
Lots of people genuinely need transportation - to take their children to school, to take their parents to medical appointments and to get work, for example.
To a car dealership, they are grist for the mill. We chew them up, search the remains for credit and cash, take that, and get rid of them.
They are not people. They can't be, or the system doesn't work. And the system does work. Why do you think that the largest companies in the universe are automobile companies? Because they had a good idea and filled a need?
Not at all. I will tell you, as I told all my greenpea salesmen, that the car business is not about cars. It is about separating people from as much of their money, and future earnings, as is humanly possible.
"There are two words in the phrase 'car business'" I would tell them. "The long and the short of it is that we are about the long word and they are about the short word."
That's reality.
It's not pretty. You can tart it up by singing the praises of feral capitalism, appealing to people's desire to believe that being a good salesman is about "filling a need," and thinking like a Calvinist who believes that God showers money on His appointed and thus must approve - but in the end, sales is about separating not only a fool from his money, but a lot of needy and defenseless people from their money as well.
Am I glad I put my time into the car business and learned what I did? Absolutely. It was an education beyond compare and left with me a very sharp skill set that I can use for other, more productive things.
In that sense, I would do it again. On the other hand, I could not in good conscience stay in that field after I fully learned and understood what it was all about.
In that business, literally the largest in the universe and considered a "blue chip" industry, if you have pity, or compassion, or generosity, you are a failure. The guy down the street doesn't. Your business will fail, and you will fail your family who depend on you.
So - I am sure you see the dilemma. In order to be generous and compassionate to those you care most about, it is required that you show none of that to anyone else.
If a system like that is not a definition of evil, I don't know what is.
If a Christian can, in good conscience, survive that environment, I would like to know how.
Oh sure - we had a lot of Protestants who used their church affiliation to fleece their trusting fellow worshippers. We encouraged those salespeople who were so inclined to join the largest churches in the area for just such a purpose, and those who used the technique did very well for themselves financially.
And when the junk cars were towed in on the end of a hook, those people would say a prayer with the crying suckers who fell for the "flying the fish" ruthless salesman from their congregation.
And, with a pious look and a quite insincere "I'm sorry" - they were sent on their way while the "Christian" salesman bought a new set of golf clubs with his commission and asked the boss if he would get a bonus if they agreed to pay our shop to replace the engine.
I'm Sorry, Tom, that you don't see what sales is all about.
Maybe your industry is not real sales - but rather order-taking and supplying product information. That can be helpful and useful to people and is not something I consider to be in the same category as genuine sales.
Once you cross over into a world where it is required of you to maximize profits, which is the goal of all free-market economies, I am not sure it is possible to believe both in Orthodoxy and Zig Ziglar.
If anyone would like advice on the car buying process, please feel free to send me a private message and I will be happy to get you up to speed (pun intended) on what you are up against and offer a few helpful tips (or so others have said) as to how to make an end run around some of the games which are so well played in taht industry.