{She Said} Russell Sells a Car

We went car shopping on Saturday. We have out grown the RAV. Well, I guess we all still fit but it’s just not that comfortable. Plus the RAV is an old lady. Her time had come. So we got to meet Russell.


Matt and I (as you may be able to imagine) very naturally fall into good cop/bad cop roles when shopping and negotiating. This has many reasons (you know, like, Matt just being a nicer person than me) but the primary ones are that I am impatient and the natural expression on my face is generally one that exudes anger (yea, I’m pleasant).

So we enter the car dealership and are approached by a small gentleman that appears to be of Asian descent. Russell. We sit down with Russell at a desk with a picture of three large African American boys. It may have been presumptuous of me but I didn’t think they were of any relation to Russell. After an odd beat Russell explains that they haven’t given him a desk yet so we are borrowing one. Alright- so we are working with the new guy. He shakes nervously as he talks to us. He takes odd notes on yellow post-its. He takes long pauses in the middle of conversations as if to work out a long equation in his head.

Matt did most of the talking at that point. Zach was asleep in my arms and I was just taking it all in.

Finally Russell is going to pull a couple of cars around. It takes forever just to find the keys. This is the first time, of many for the afternoon, that I think, “is this part of the scam? Are they messing with us?” We finally get to look at the cars and Russell, at this point, has counted me out and focuses all of his discussion on Matt. He points out some ridiculous features (how he came to think these things were important to us, I don’t know) and can’t answer many of the questions Matt is asking. When he does answer questions, his voice goes up at the end of the response as if it were a question. In the mean time, Zach pees on me so I left to change his diaper and dry up the mess as much as possible. When I return Matt is going to test drive so he makes Zach a bottle and then I sit in the waiting room and feed it to him while the guys are gone. When Matt returned it was my turn to test drive. So it was going to be me and Russell with no Matt buffer. Interesting.

I started as dad always taught me- petal to the metal. I ask Russell how long he has been with this dealership- two years. “Then why haven’t they given you a desk?” Russell says that its because he doesn’t know what to put on his desk. I did notice that all desks have one token picture on them- this must be part of the scheme- easier to sell when you are a real person with people to put pictures of on your desk. Russell is single- doesn’t know what picture to put there so he uses other people’s token pictures. Alright. I ask other personal questions. He keeps trying to feel out if I like the car or not- I don’t answer him.

When we get back Russell takes us to look at the different colors of car available. This is where Russell gets the first taste of the joy I have to share with him. He explains that the white car costs more. If you know me well, it will help you picture the look on my face at this comment. “What?” I say. “You do understand that white is the absence of all color.” Russell shrugs and explains that it’s because it shimmers. Hmmm.

During the negotiations that ensued, Russell left many times to speak to an elusive manager who evidently had a slow computer. This gave Russell an opportunity to try to sell us other things. I finally told Russell that I didn’t believe there was a manager with a slow computer and that I needed to either speak to him directly or he needed to make a faster computer appear pronto. Russell wrote some note in red marker on the back of a piece of paper that Matt had to sign saying that he was wanting to buy a car today if the numbers were agreeable. I guess that’s like the picture thing- someone said people were more likely to buy if you made them sign some kind of statement. Whatever. This was the point where I looked Russell in the eye and told him that I like for people to shoot it straight and I didn’t feel like this is what Russell was doing so if he wanted us to sign a statement fine but what was going to get this deal done was us to stop getting the slow computer, manager, red marker statement run around. This seemed to be the key to the manager.

The manager came out. Now, this guy I liked. He knew what he was talking about and was much easier to be pointed with without feeling as if I was about to wreck his existence. We went back and forth for a while. It went well. Matt is really the one that did most of the talking at this point. Zach was a great baby but just a bit squirmy as we weren’t letting him explore as he would have liked. There were a couple times where I jumped in saying that I wasn’t happy with different offers etc. In the end we are happy with the deal.

I’ll miss the ole RAV. She is going to make her next owner very happy. I might also miss Russell- that crazy cat.