Car Dealer Hi-jinx

StanDavis submitted 518 days ago

I worked for a car dealership in Sand Springs, Oklahoma and developed this Kato-Inspector Clouseau relationship with the owner whom I'll call "Dick". I am kind of a likeable guy, and a bunch of the salespeople and I would go to my house and play ping pong, and just generally screw around...barbeque or whatever. The owner, Dick, who was allegedly a loner and had no friends in high school even though he bought and sold friends on a daily basis now, made an example out of me in a sales meeting one time. I was selling a lot of cars for this man and he screwed me out of thousands of dollars every month for eight months. In this sales meeting, he singled me out and said, "Now I know you guys all want to go over to Wally's house and play ping pong, but you need to get off your ass..." you get the picture. I took abuse such as him pulling up to the sales office in his convertible corvette and throwing a half-full beer can at me, stealing every penny he could from me, dragging my good name through the mud on every occasion until one day I was walking through the new car building looking for the key to a car I had sold. His partner, I'll call him Dick Wannabe looks at me, then turns back to Dick and says, "I think I'll fire that son-of-a-***** today"
Dick says, "You don't have the balls"
They goad each other for a few minutes, I find my keys and go back to my office in the used car building. About the time I walk in, my boss, Bobby (his real name) yells at me, "Wally!". "Wannabe wants to see you in his office right now!" I trot back to the new car building and locate wannabe...he is in the office talking to the ladies. I waited for a half an hour in the doorway where he could see me, and no response from him. Finally I get an opening and say, "Bobby said you wanted to see me?". He gets a puzzled look on his face and realize that Dick has set him up. Dick had called my boss, told him to tell me that Wannabe wanted to see me in order to force Wannabe to either wack me or admit he was weak. He was weak by the way. Very Weak.
It dawns on him what is transpiring and says, "Yes, I do want to see you, come with me to my office" and we trotted down the hall. We entered his office, one wall nothing but 20" tv monitors attached to cameras on the lot. He says, "You haven't been doing that well here, have you?" My reply was that I sold 17 cars the month before and was selling almost a car a day this month. He retorted, "Yeah, see, that isn't really that good". I came back with, "I was third from the top man and made $5500 last month!" "Well it really isn't working out for me." "Look, I can tell you don't really want me to work for you, so I tell you what-you have my last check ready tomorrow and you never have to see me again!" "OK, I'll have your check ready by 3:00"
I walked away and came back the next day to get my check. He hands it to me and I open it and look at it immediately. Bear in mind that we got a printed voucher for every car we sold. I notice that my check is almost $2000.00 light, and I call him on it. He says we couldn't get the customer financed and he brought the car back. I ask him where the car is and he says they sold it after I left last night. I say, "Thats interesting, this was a cash deal with real $100 dollar bills and we already gave him the title." He says we took back the car, refunded his money and resold the car."

This is indicative of every job I have ever had in the car business. Every employer I have been with for the last 15 years has stolen no less than $1000 a month from me by devaluing trade-ins, secret packs, offering spiffs and not paying when you sell a spiffed car, or any one of a hundred underhanded ways to keep money they are supposed to pay. My best, most honest and accurate calculation is that in my fifteen years as a salesman, sales manager, finance manager, inventory manager and general manager that dealers have outright stolen about $460,000.88 (lol) from me during this time. Some of it I can prove more easily than others, but I would put my life up against my numbers. The only reason they get away with it is because no one, and I mean NO ONE is looking over their shoulder!

I have made my dealers millions and millions of dollars in cash money and they begrudge me what they owe me. A vacation could never make up for this, no it really wouldn't even help, but it would be nice.

Thanks for letting me vent,

Stan