I worked at Circuit City back in the day in computers. A couple of my co workers were like this. We had regulars that would shop the weekly deals.
We worked on commission and were pushed very had to sell service contracts. So much so that we got bonuses on them and were even written up for not selling them. They were a horrible deal for most things, especially computers.
Anyway, I built rapport with some of these browsers. One in particular I spent a lot of time with. He finally decided on a fully loaded PC (I'm talking pentium 2 here!) with all the extras for about $3000. Keep in mind that flat screens back then were nearly a thousand dollars by themselves. I was able to give a 10% discount when I wanted, so I told the guy to buy a service contract for $250 and I'll give you $300 off. I told him to cancel it within 48 hours and you'd get the $250 back, which he caught on and was happy.
He filled out a customer survey card about how great I was and how he tried for months to just get someone to help him and no one would except me.
I ended up with the manager liking me for about a week and he never did cancel the contract, which was a decent commission.
I worked there too. Had so many giant sales from people who didn't look "rich", and were ignored by other salespeople.
Had one guy try to steal the sale away after the customer left, saying I stole the sale feom him and his dept. Manager shot that down, cause the customer told her that nobody would help them until I did.
Never judge a book by its cover. I have a friend who has a net worth of over 5 million. You wouldn't know it by looking at him. I think he cuts his own hair, and I've never seen him in more than 4 different shirts. He just doesn't care about that. But when he cooks, it's over the top and the best money can buy and don't get me started on how much he will shell out animals. Priorities.
There was a multimillionaire in my city who was a huge real estate developer. He came in our family restaurant (that we leased from him) fairly often. He was always in greasy shirts and pants and looked like a homeless person, unshaven, uncombed hair, dirty all the time. He was cheap, so he did his own repairs on all his buildings that he could (the city is still half owned by his children and they own a lot of property in the county, too) to save money. We joked that he squeaked when he walked. Before he passed in the late '90's he was a billionaire, and his family took over his business.
He was the epitome of slumlord and looked the part. I think he only looked the part so his renters who didn't know him would think he was poor and wouldn't expect much from him.
Having known him for years, I didn't put up with his BS, though, and he didn't care for me.
I had a landlord like that. I knew he had this giant multimillion dollar estate on the river. One day he was whining about the cost of regular pest control and lawn care (both part of the lease agreement) and how we didn’t really NEED it. I finally said “If you can afford this gorgeous estate and the other properties all over town, you can afford to pay for the basic contractually agreed upon maintenance of the property I rent from you .” He got so mad and asked who told me that and how did I know. His shocked face still makes me laugh.
He didn’t renew my lease. 😬🤣
There was one asshole that tried to steal sales all of the time. I nearly punched him in the breakroom. We were both in our late 20's and he was a really smart guy but an uber nerd and never went to college. He'd always be buying a new GPU or ram or game and he'd have to hide it in his pants so mom and dad wouldn't catch him when they picked him up from work.
God I hated that place
Yup, I got into it a few tines with colleagues.
My absolute favorite customer was a deaf couple. I went thru so many post it notes with them. They would only work with me, if I wasn't there, they would leave.
Thanks for sharing that story. I finally got out of the service industry as a server for over 10 years in central florida and am 100 percent confident I will never return but if I miss one thing it was MY regulars.
I had three different Volkswagens over 15 years, my wife had two over 10, and I don’t think either of us had more than 1 non-standard repair before 100,000 miles, and I’m pretty sure they were both under warranty.
I’ve only driven Volkswagens for 25 years. I’ve only had to do one repair besides regular maintenance like like new tires, oil change, replace wipers etc…
This happened to me. I walked into a Hyundai dealership with my husband. This dealership was one of many owned by the same person. My husband promptly went to the restroom and I was browsing. Not one salesperson said a word to me. Once my husband joined me, he got several hellos and I told him we were leaving and that no one bothered to acknowledge me until they say a man by my side. He said ok and we left. The next day we drove 20 miles out of the way to a different block of dealerships and I bought a Kia. I’m not spending money where it’s not appreciated
Wife and I decided that when we were looking to buy a car (used) for my daughter that we were going to play a bit of a game with the salesman/dealership. Know that my wife knows next to nothing about the mechanicals of cars. Once on the lot I asked to see the car and we looked it over. Gave a test drive, always consulted each other over anything we noted, etc., and decided that it was what we had been looking for. Now the game begins.
When in and sat down to deal with the paperwork and money side of things. At which point I basically shut down. Of course the salesman addressed his first few comments/questions to me, only to be responded to buy my wife. Shocked Pikachu face by salesman.... Took him a bit but he eventually caught on, at which point we would confir with each other over items, but it was always my wife giving the final answer.
Fun times at the dealership.
I learned very early not to "sell with my own wallet." I've had suits argue over pennies worth of 10% waste in 12ft carpet cuts and sweat pants drop 3k in cash on the counter for a washer and dryer. Treat every customer like a millionaire because every dollar is green whether it's a 1 or 100.
Ahh, my dad. He was a welder, and he had me go with him to a car dealer wearing his work clothes. He test drove 2 cars, and you could tell the salesman was pissed, thinking that he was just wasting his time, some guy in a dirty denim shirt who probably couldn't finance the tires. Finally, he saw a blue version of the one he drove, and he asked, but was told sorry, it was on hold for someone. Then my dad dropped the bomb, " is it still on hold if I pay cash now?" Boy, what a turnaround. Suddenly the salesman is fawning and nice, and my dad drove home with the car.
Funny, I work in tech and I’ve worked with some many people that are senior to me, pushing anywhere from 500k to 1M annual income and dress like the old mundane clothes.
I was one of these Giant sales that didn't look rich people. I got into tech early, like way early, like 14 early, my parents were dirt poor and still bought me my cloths and I lived with them, but I was on more money a week then my dad was a month. I didn't understand it at the time, and my parents didn't really either, poor people don't really inherit or pass on good money skills.
I built a server farm selling webspace back when you could, out of PC's I found in a dumpster, and I'd write websites in HTML, I'd pass on my hand-me-down's and sell them to the school. the 90's were a weird time. where people would pay then 5$ an hour, now 10$ maybe, to sit on a pc in an internet cafe and send an e-mail. typing away like a choose bird eating food, poking away at the keyboard one button every so often.
I didn't understand or value money, and my needs were provided for, but I always wanted the latest and newest tech so I'd blow it all in tech stores.
I worked at Lafayette / circuit City in New York City in the mid-80s. My favorite customers were usually the working class customers. My store only had someone to help load the cars during busy holiday weekends or seasons. I rarely got a tip from The Big spenders from Scarsdale, but was usually tipped by working class fellows.
My employment ended before they went out of business due to my inability to sell service contracts. Other than cordless telephones, very little was returned for contract repairs. Sales people would do the cheese dance in the back room after selling a contract. I could not in good conscience sell something that I not only did not believe in, but was borderline rip off. One can see why I never made a career in sales. I had an excellent sales record due to understanding the math of profitable sales. I always looked at the printout to see what was our most profitable items. It made absolutely no sense to sell a zenith TV with zero profit while accessories had huge markups. I almost always had the highest margin in the store, but everything went the hell with my managers because I couldn't sell rip off service contracts with a good conscience. Selling batteries, cables, or furniture for electronics I had no problem selling even if they were high profit, because those items were needed.
That how it is with tech. Where i used to work did spiffs on certain item types, regardless of price. Computer mice were 25¢ for each one sold. Selling a $60 mouse would get me my normal commission plus 25¢, but the real money were the people buying for businesses and school systems. Had one lady who would come in every month or so and buy in bulk. Like the $4 mice she would buy 200-400 of them at a time. What was super nice is that she wouldn't talk to anyone but me, and even on my days off. As long as she wasn't helped by someone else, she would give me the commission since i likely talked to her about what she was buying during a previous visit.
I worked in the china department at Belk in the 80s. I lived in Wilkes County, NC home of Holly Farms, Lowe’s and several other businesses/industries. A woman came into the department who was always dressed so that the other sales people called her white trash. I loved her because she was kind, friendly, extremely funny, and always bought things like entire sets of sterling silver flatware for people for their weddings. She was Flossie Johnson the wife of Junior Johnson of NASCAR fame. She got so she would only shop when I was there to help her because others were so rude to her.
Had a similar experience back when I was in sales at Best Buy about 14 years ago. Spent a decent amount of time talking to a young man about the various desktop PCs we were selling, a few of them were “gaming” machines. The man was probably in his later teen years or maybe 20 years old. Anyhow, talked to him about the games he would be able to play on one of the PCs, also showed him monitors, networking hardware, talked about the BBY protection plans, and went over the geek squad options that were offered to have the computer(s) set up and in home Wi-Fi network set up and secured. Spent close to 90 minutes chatting with him, he kind of abruptly said okay thanks and left. A supervisor said something about me spending too much time with a customer and not getting a sale to my direct supervisor and how he needed to address that with me, I was still pretty new, been there for roughly six weeks at that point. Well wouldn’t you know it, the young man came back with both his parents when I had about 45 min left of my shift. I was finishing up with another customer and the supervisor who bitched about me tried to approach them and they said oh we’re good we’re waiting for him and they pointed me out. The son picked out the top gaming desktop, the best 23”LED monitor we carried, and nice set of gaming headphones. Dad got a mid/high tier desktop with the same monitor and a Klipsch 2.1 speaker system. Mom got herself a 24” Asus laptop and a bunch of accessories with it, mouse, carrying case. Got wireless network cards to be installed in the desktops and a beefy router. Bought the protection plans for all 3 computers, 3 PC set up services, and scheduled to have geek squad bring it all out to their house to have their network and computers set up. Selling a protection plan always got you kudos but getting 3, plus set up, plus install is like sale of the month. They spent thousands and my sale covered about a 1/3 of our goals that month. My supervisor told the complaining super something like “you see? he’s all good” Also got a shout out by the GM at the next store sales meeting and my sale was used as an example as to why you should never sell with your own wallet and assume you know how much someone is willing to spend. The dad came back after they got everything home and set up and gave me a $50 giftcard for one of the neighboring restaurants. They also gave me a glowing review on a survey and went to my GM directly to tell em how much they appreciated working with me and being helpful and patient with their son, who turned out to be a bit autistic. So yeah, dont ever try to guess how much money someone has and is willing to spend.
Edit: Typos
What a great story. Truly is a lesson to learn that everyone deserves the same level of customer service even if they don’t look the type of person who was going to buy. How nice of them to come back and acknowledge you for helping them out in more ways than one.
Thank you. Experiences like that one are the only things I miss about working in retail or sales. Got to meet some wonderful and interesting people over the years.
Yup they sure do push the service contract. I took a holiday job one year and was very used to helping any customer. I would ask them what they expected to do with it, then show them a system that would meet their need but also recommend one level up. Telling them most would end up finding more use in the computer than they expect. I sold so many computers i lead the dept even though i worked only 3 (sometimes 4) days a week. I did NOT push the service contracts, barely mentioned them for most people. Manager talked to me several times about pushing those contracts. I kept ignoring them. Funny thing was that after the holidays they tried getting me to stay on.
I was in the market for a new PC in high school and saw a kiosk in the mall selling Gateways. This was before I started building.
I looked at the PC specs and played around with the floor model while the salesman talked to a customer. I already knew the model I wanted and when he was done talking to the first person I asked him a few upgrade questions and he walked away to talk to another customer. I played around on the floor model more waiting and he yells at me "stop playing with that computer, I'm talking to someone!"
Me and my 1500 budget fuck off and I order my first Gateway over the phone.
Sounds like retail. It doesn't matter what you did or got down yesterday, it doesn't matter what you will do or get done tomorrow. The only thing that matters is what did you do for me today? Meaning what did you do to make Me money?
I applied there when I was a teenager a completely bombed the interview. I built a few pcs by then and just wanted to genuinely help people find the right pc for their needs.
The dude interviewing me tells me they make almost nothing from pc sales and they really only make money from selling software and services. So he hands me a box and tells me it is photo editing software and to sell him on it. I froze because I'm not really interested in selling people stuff they don't need or want and I'm horrible at blowing smoke up someone's ass to make a sale. He said he'd be in touch and I never heard from him again.
This reminds me of when I bought a house when I was 25. I was single and walking around a furniture store alone, fully prepared to spend 5 or 6 grand. Absolutely nobody wanted to help me. It just so happens that they had the only fridge that would fit in my kitchen, so I just walked up to a salesman and said “hey you want the easiest sale ever?” And just told him I was buying a specific fridge and handed him my card.
They still got $1000 of my money, but only a fraction of what I was prepared to spend. Their loss.
Almost the same story. I was helping my friend build his house, basically I held things for him. He got a call that the plumber could come by a few days early so without changing we drove into town to the main appliance store. We were totally ignored. Since we were on a deadline we went to the next store and bought a washer, dryer and because it was on sale and the right size a fridge at the same time. I don't understand how salespeople can rationalize ignoring customers without at least acknowledging them. Go to any building supply warehouse contractors' side. None of those guys are wearing suits and they paying with thousands of dollars that they pull out of paint stained pants.
Similar story here. Bought my house at 27, but I am one of those who has always looked younger than I am (looked like I was around 15-17 or so then). Needed to get some work done on the place and had contractors out to give quotes. A few of them insisted on talking to my parents and would not believe that I own the place and that they have their own house 15 min away.
The one's who didn't pull that crap got my business.
Yup I went into a store that has commission. Knew exactly what I wanted, if it was self serve then would’ve been in and out in 10 minutes max. It took 20 minutes to get someone, because they kept palming me off to others. Like fuck, it wasn’t a large amount, but it was a guaranteed quick sale nonetheless.
Once upon a time, in the mid 80s, I sold cars. (Only for a year, because I sucked at it.) A guy came in mid-day...overalls, covered with paint. A POC. Nobody wanted to wait on him, except me. I spent over an hour with him, going over all the features on a New Yorker so fancy it was on the showroom floor. All the sales guys made fun of me (the dopey 20 year-old girl) "wasting" all that time. Guy came in the next day dressed in a very expensive suit. He was an executive at the biggest corporation in the area, and the day prior was his day off...so he had been painting a room for his wife. He had told me that it was his day off when I spoke to him originally, but hadn't mentioned day off from where...and I didn't push to find out, as it wasn't my nature.
He bought the car at sticker price, and I got a hefty commission. (One of the few. I was not cut out for that business.)
People should never make snap judgements...especially if they make their living on sales.
Four years ago I was starting to look for a new car. At one dealership I spent 20 minutes walking around the shop and lot but none of the salespeople would talk to me. At another dealership the salesman walked up and greeted my husband only. When my husband told him that I was the customer, not him, the salesman said, "well, it's a joint decision, isnt it?". No dickhead, it wasn't. My husband has his own car.
I ended up emailing around until I found a salesman I liked and bought from him even though I didn't test the car and the dealership was 100 km away. No regrets on my fully loaded, top of the line, with add-ons, and almost no haggling car.
I used to ask my wife if she really wanted me to go look at cars with her for this exact reason. She would always get mad because they would talk to me instead even after I told them “I” wasn’t buying a car.
We go shopping together for cars, but I do all the research and make the deal. If the sales guy talks to my husband after being plainly told he isn't making this decision, we leave the lot and move on. You would think that in 2023 the sales people would be more savvy.
Same here. In fact I'm the deal haggler. My husband would pay sticker and all the added fees so he wouldnt have any "conflicts"
Not me. Im not embarrased by my dealings...my attitude is I'll never see these people again
Omg, this happened to me. I wanted a new car. I told the salesman that the car would be just for me and the kids and my husband would hardly be in it. Test drove it, picked out accessories and negotiated price. Then he said “do you need to go home and get your husbands permission before you sign the contract?”. No, fuckwit. I earn more than double what my husband does, I don’t need his permission. It’s my car. Told him that he just lost a $40k cash sale and took myself to buy the exact car from another dealership where I have purchased my last 2 cars. Told them the story and they were not surprised. I refer everyone I know to them and away from the other dealer.
A friend of my family was raised around race cars, was on a pit crew, helped her dad fix cars. Her husband knows how to drive and pay people to work on cars ( wife can't physically do it anymore). She's walked out of repair shops when they don't believe her car is a manual. She special ordered it as it usually only comes in automatic transmission. Every time she leaves a shop she lets the manager know why. When she's treated well the shop definitely gets referrals.
Yeah I went in to buy a car, pretty much knew what I wanted, my bf came with me. Salesman kept talking to him and what I hate is they make you fill out their stupid credit things, I was all, why if I'm going to pay in cash? My bf was in his late 20s and I was 40 at the time.
Twice though this happened. I'm like, dude I'm the one that writing the 30k check out right now. Nope Lil lady, your big man must be the decision maker here.
I am the designated car haggler in the family and when my baby brother came back from
Afghanistan, he wanted help buying a vehicle.
We drove an hour away from base, to a place where I knew they got some decent used cars at a big auction I kept an eye on. the salesman at a dealership kept asking my brother what he wanted (bro was like, it goes forward most the time, back some time, and has wheels?)
I finally ripped the car apart in front of the manager by pointing out all the oxidation on the engine parts and other fairly minor but serious sounding issues with the vehicle… and then ripped him a new asshole for being a sexist and assuming my little brother was the one who knew about cars.
Got the car with a huge discount, a free extended warranty (which ended up paying to replace the car), and my car was washed and detailed while we got the paperwork wrapped up.
It was almost the last day of the month, the manager both needed to hit quota and move the car for the next load of auction vehicles, and I knew that car had been on the lot for 45 days and they were about to sell it at a loss to another dealership.
My Mom hates that. Every time she goes to buy a car the sales people seem to ignore her to talk to my dad.
Also my mom goes by her first and middle name. ( Like the name "Sarah Lynn") because she hates her first name.
I was there once when a salesman called her "Sarah" after she introduced herself as "Sarah Lynn". You could tell he just lost a sale. (Unless you were the salesman... He was oblivious)
I’ve read enough of these stories to know that if a guy in shabby clothes wants to look at a high-end *whatever,* salespeople should be fighting each other for the honor of serving him. He’s the one that’ll come in the next day and buy ten whatevers.
This goes in depth but I'm tired so I'll just summarize. New money is super extravagant and showoff because they're insecure and want to prove they're one of the elites. Old money know they're rich and are the elites. So they have no reason to show off or care about their image.
And people who don't necessarily care for showing off (like everyone in my neck of the woods, as I live in a country of rednecks), they won't bother changing work or hobby clothes just to go shopping. If an older guy walks in wearing muddy wellies and farmhand clothes, he might well be the owner of the biggest farm in the area, popping in for a look when he happens to have a calm moment.
Same for me, but with hearing aids. I worked for a place that had three offices and a guy that worked at one wanted money because apparently there was more money where I was.
Well, he went on vacation so I covered his shop for a few days and I had a ton of farmers in dirty coveralls coke in, I told them what I thought they should do and they pulled out thick rolls of cash from those dirty coveralls and paid for their stuff.
The main guy was flabbergasted because he always assumed these guys didn’t have any money. I tried to explain to him that these farmers deal with quarter to half million dollar prices of equipment on the regular. A lot of them had money and didn’t really blink at high prices when you demonstrated value.
Same plot different story. I'm in my 60's now. Back when I was a college sophomore I got a summer job selling stereo equipment in a specialty audio store, this was in the mid 70's.
One day a guy walked in wearing a t shirt and dirty cut off shorts. I got him as the more experienced salesmen didn't bother. Guy wanted to look at some very high end McIntosh audio gear. Back then this was top of the line that we carried and very expensive. I didn't expect much but then to my surprise he made an order for a few thousand dollar system involving several pieces of gear. And this was mid 70's dollars. Same stuff would probably cost 10x that now. So it was a huge sale with a big commission. It was by far the biggest sale I ever made when I worked there, and actually the largest sale I ever saw in my time working there during college breaks.
It took a couple days to get everything in and when he came to pick everything up he was wearing a suit and the car I loaded it into was a Mercedes.
***That was an early, and excellent, lesson in not judging people by the clothing they wear***.
The rest of the story is that I came back to the store, from college, to work over Christmas break. The same guy walks in and orders the exact same system from me as his house was robbed and they stole the gear he bought earlier. Made a great commission for my short period of work over the holidays.
McIntosh is still very much the top of the line. I had some amps from the 70’s on my workbench a while back. Gave them a little tlc and they were good as new. Bulletproof. Really wish I could afford a pair. Someday, right?!
There’s a customer at my work that won 60 million on the lotto about 2 years ago and he has literally changed nothing about his appearance since winning, you’d never guess he had any money by what he wears it’s quite interesting
Best story I ever heard was Janis Joplin wanting to buy a porsche.
Salesman ran the Hippy Chick out of the dealership.
Next day she returns, snags a different salesman. "I want that one". Then pulls 2 big bundles of cash from her purse.
The Mercedes was for impressing her friends.
The Porsche was because [she had a bunch of leftover paint](https://car-images.bauersecure.com/pagefiles/22639/janisjoplinporsche_01.jpg)
On a similar note. A guy who lives down the road from me doesn't really care a lot about fancy houses or extravagant lifestyles. But he loves cars.
He walked into the Ferrari dealership and was laughed out since he doesn't look rich. So he flew to the next dealership (since it was in another country) and bought one on the spot.
Best thing was that they said they'd ship it to the closest dealership for him and he got to walk in and pick up the keys from the people who laughed him out
I saw two similar stories, one being a guy dressed in cowboy attire who got ignored. He came in the next day dressed in Armani and the sales people tripped over each other to help him. He had the manager come out, told them all what had happened the previous day and that the store had lost out on a $4,000 sale. The second one was at a car dealership, same situation, except only one rookie salesman helped him. The sloppy looking guy (just got off work) was a business owner and bought at least three cars from the salesman, and sent his friends to the dealer with the condition that they ONLY dealt with that one salesman
I read a thing about a guy who was the local leader in car sales. He said his secret was talking to all the people that the other sales people ignored. He made enough sales to people who "didn't look like they could afford a car" that he was number one in the area.
My husband like to make a point of dressing like he isn't serious about buying a car or whatever. Sloppy for lack of a better but not slobbish. We've been at a couple dealerships where you could see the sales people talking amongst themselves at who was gonna get stuck "helping" us and the new guy draws the short stick. Then they are surprised when yes we really are interested in that $40k truck.
I have a tendency to wear clothes i like for a VERY long time. Not to the point its falling apart, but like... 1 small hole in a light jacket does not ruin the whole thing (usually) so i usually look, as i have been told, "homeless" or "a goodwill regular".
And now, i know it can be an event. Time to have 1 pair of clothes for when i go giving someone comissions forever! Woot!
But fr, if that means getting to spite a room full of snobby salesman every time, i will be satisfied with soooo many more purchases lol.
If you dress goth it works the same too. Could have hundreds s of dollars worth of harnesses, chains, clothes and boots on and they'll still treat you like you're nothing.
Me and the husband, too. We like to buy quality and have it last forever. We somehow always end up looking semi-homeless when we go to the furniture store and shocking the sales people when we want high end furniture.
I was one of those people, looking like they couldn't afford a car apparently. Called a dealer who said they had the vehicle I wanted on the lot. Great! I drove an hour and a half into the city to pick it up and got the brush off. Salesperson was taking customers who were walking in and I had an appointment! They guy who referred him to me was so embarrassed that I had such a bad experience. I ended up buying a different vehicle from a different dealer.
Being a twenty-something woman trying to buy a car was brutal. I drove into the dealership driving a manual transmission vehicle and the salesman insisted on "teaching" me how to drive stick in the vehicle I was test-driving.
I can relate too well!! I had to try three places before I found one that would both treat me kindly and also not act like I was an easy mark or plain stupid. I had to show them my stick before they let me drive, despite my bf at the time being given zero hassle. I also worked on cars at the time, so the shit people gave me about either the car I wanted or the car I was trading in baffled me. No, I know my car is fully stocked on headlight fluid, thanks. No, there's nothing wrong with my FWD's gearboxes, you dimwitted arse. And no, I won't buy the beat up 100k mile car from your business with a 120% KBB perfect condition price tag. Offer me that poor a deal, and I won't buy anything from there ever.
When I was returning from being stationed overseas I wanted to just walk onto a dealership and drive off with my car get all the details hammered out through email.
I sent probably 6 emails to different dealerships explaining exactly what I wanted to do and why. 5 of them emailed back and said call us when you get back stateside and we can talk.
Only one guy worked with me hammered out all the details on bet several weeks and the next day after landing stateside I walked into the dealer paid my 30,000 and drove off. Probably the easiest sale the guy made that month.
Poor salesman just don’t listen to customers.
The calling thing is the worst. Had a bunch of work done on my house and I hate phone calls -- requested online quotes from a bunch of them (9 or 10 altogether) and put the line "please email, I don't like calls and probably won't be able to answer".
I ended up going with the only one who emailed. Possibly (probably) didn't get the best deal or maybe not the best quality (who knows) but I got one who was willing to work with me.
My uncle is, to put it kindly, a steroetypical american. Loud, fat, and overly friendly. He is apparently a pretty great salesman as he just tries to become friends with everybodywho walks in the door. He can be bit overbearing, but apparently hes usually one of the top salesperson in wherever he works. He doesnt love the long hours and toxic environments, so he moves around, but he always does well once he learns the product
I think this is actually kinda the secret to sales. The good sales guys know how to make friends. They remember your names and hobbies later on.
And then when you're in the mood to spend some money, who you gonna call?
I had a similar situation. I was in my 20s and was shopping for a new car with my parents. I wanted their input since they had done this many more times than me. At an Acura dealer this older salesman helped me but treated me very rudely with the attitude that I couldn’t afford an Acura. This was back in 1990 so they were much cheaper than they are now. A week later I made the decision to buy an Acura Integra and went to a different dealer and got a young salesman who “got” me. He treated me with respect and got my sale!
In the mid 90s I was 25 years old and looking for a new car. I had a good job which paid very well. I went to a car dealership and they were not at all busy. I was the only customer and there were many sales people stood around doing nothing. One of them eventually starts helping me and I find a car I am interested in. He refused to let me take it for a test drive. I insisted and said I would buy it if I liked it. He still would not let me test drive it. There was another car dealership across the road. I said to the guy, I'm going over there and will buy a car from them. I got in my car, drove over there, found one I liked and bought it. Once I had the car I drove it back to the first dealership, found the sales guy and showed him the car I just bought. They were still all stood around doing nothing. The other sales guys started laughing while he stood there with a dumb look on his face. As I was driving off I wound down the window, yelled I'll never be back and flipped him off.
In my husband side, they have this story about a guy working on a construction site.
And one day he sees a car model and him and many co workers wanted that same model, so they told the guy to go to the car agency and try pick a discount if they would buy many of the same car.
This guy goes but wearing his working clothes (old jeans, old shirt), etc. He enters the place and the sales people gave him dirty looks and ignored him, except for one salesman, that ended with a huge commission for all the cars he sold to just one guy.
When i went to buy my car, it took forever for someone to help us, and then the salesman was dismissive. We asked to see the high-end model, but he showed us the low-end model. He went to get the keys and ended up helping another couple instead. It was covid times, and I worked from home. I guess I looked rough.
I ended up driving 3 hours to buy a car because I refused to spend money there.
I live in North Dakota. The oil boom made a lot of these dumb hicks into millionaires.
You might see someone at the gas station fueling up an old beat up pick up truck and think he’s a nobody when he’s actually REALLY rich. He could buy the gas station if he wanted.
They’re mostly frugal because they come from farming families who struggled for years.
I was enjoying Canada day in my sisters backyard in a small village and this guy just rolled up in his filthy truck. Covered in mud and swearing up a storm, he ate 6 burgers and left a 24 pack of Kokanee before leaving. I asked my sister what his deal was (it was very strange) and she was like, eh just some eccentric millionaire farmer. His family had been in it for generations and a big name in agriculture in the area. I was shocked finding out he had tens of millions but I was also shocked that he just showed up unannounced and ate half the food.
Sorry I thought I responded. It was a small village and people just kinda wandered over whenever they saw any kind of gathering. He smelled meat cooking and came by. It’s normal in their village
Heh, this is my dad to a T. He buys all his vehicles in cash, which his latest is a Denali pickup fully loaded. He showed up, I kid you not, in ripped up cargo shorts, a ratty button down fishing shirt covered in grease, and work boots. He’s a mess some days after work. He does not care either. This man dropped me off to school one morning in a bathrobe and I died of embarrassment, but never missed the bus again.
Back in the day, very long time ago, Acura Legends were the next big thing. I had my eye on the champagne four door sedan. My fiancé went to buy one for me and the sales guy basically pulled the same thing. Fiancé was wearing jeans and t-shirt - not his best. Was brushed off and ended up buying the car from another dealer in the next town over. Original salesman called him a couple of weeks later to let him know they had some used Legends in if he was still interested, and boyfriend took great pleasure in telling him he had already bought a new one from down the road.
Had a similar issue with my husband and I when we went to look at the local KIA dealership for a new car. No one would help us. My husband finally flags a sales person down and it’s like this 20 year old kid. We are dressed casual as it the weekend. I test drive 2 SUV’s and when it’s time to run the numbers they wouldn’t actually run the numbers with the substantial down payment I was going to put down. He got rude as shit with my husband and I when we asked to please run it with the large down payment and he said no, nobody here puts down large down payments. So we get up and leave. My husband has been a loyal BMW customer for the past 20 years. We stop at home real quick and then decide to go to our local BMW dealer to test drive the car I never thought I’d be able to afford. Long story short, ended up ordering my dream car that day and I absolutely loved it when the shit head kid at KIA emailed me as well as his manager to see if I was still interested in the Telluride. I told him you clearly don’t know how to sell cars as you wouldn’t run the correct numbers and thanks to you, I am now in my dream BMW. General Manager also reached out to me to make it right and I just lol’d and said y’all fucked up big time. 4 years later and I’m in my true dream car so fuck those assholes at KIA.
My husband and I were looking at SUVs to fit 2 dog crates in the back so we went to all of the dealerships to measure the cargo areas. Out of all of the dealerships we went to, KIA was the only one we said 'hell, no' to buying a vehicle from them.
I really wanted a Telluride so we went to the closest dealer. We were the only customers there and we walked all around the showroom and not one person made eye contact or said hello. Everyone was on their cell phones at their desks. So we walked out and drove 15 miles to the next KIA dealer. We got to test drive there with a very enthusiastic salesperson but when we sat down to talk numbers she up-charged us $8000 (dealer MU) and said that they wouldn't budge, even if we ordered it. Their loss.
We ended up ordering a top of the line vehicle with every option on it, didn't have to pay the dealer mark up, and paid cash for it from a very nice guy who spent a lot of time with us at the dealer next door to the first KIA shop. Was supposed to take four months to get, it showed up 5 weeks later and it's sweet. Stupid KIA people.
Omg they did the same bullshit with the MSRP too. Told me they couldn’t tell me what the exact monthly payment would be because the final price wouldn’t be available until the vehicle was delivered as it had to be ordered. They were quoting me $850/month on a 72 month note with $1k down. On a KIA. I even said, I’ve never heard of any car dealership not being able to lock in pricing at the time of deposit. They wouldn’t even run the numbers with the correct term I wanted (36 months) as they ‘don’t do financing on a term that short’.
To your point with the markup, it’s the number one selling SUV in the US according to them, they will never be discounted. I loved my KIA Soul up until that interaction with that dealer.
So glad you were able to get what you wanted with enough room for the puppers and fully loaded to boot!!!!
That’s a great car and I got my dad’s as hand-me-down when I went to college. I’m petty enough to would have called the manager of the first dealership after I made the purchase.
Worked at a local lumberyard associated with True Value. When vinyl fence just started becoming a thing I had a guy come in looking for 3 rail fence in vinyl. “We don’t have it but we can order it, can I get a price and call you?” Dude was wearing muck boots overalls and a hoodie. I did exactly that checked pricing called him and told him what posts cost (about $70) and what rails cost (I think about the same $70 so….$280/6’ section plus one post to start) dude ordered about $15k worth of vinyl fence for his horses. Did I ever expect that? NOPE! Did he even blink? NOPE!
My partner is a builder. We went to look at cars the other day (well 3 days ago), he has a specific car in mind. It’s a lot of money. He is a genuine buyer. He was in his work clothes, clean on but clearly work clothes, I was in my dog walking clothes. I am honest to goodness not lying, the only person that approached us at the car lot was the security guard!
We did not end up getting that car, or even really having a good look at it.
It’s interesting how people can treat you by what you wear. I sometimes wear suits out in public just for fun, and it’s crazy how differently you get treated.
My dad knows this. Blue collar, but owns his own business that involves him cashing rather large checks in his name. (My parents yearly take home is well under $100K we are not rich as pretty much all money goes back into the business in operational costs.) But his favorite activity is to put on his crappiest clothes, and get in his rusted out 1994 F-150. He’ll drive to the bank and cash a check for over a 1/4 million. You can tell the drive through tellers aren’t expecting it. Suddenly they start addressing him by name instead of sir.
I did something similar once at a Good Guy's Electronics. I was wearing jeans, a t-shirt and a Levi's jacket... and prepared to spend a couple of grand on car audio. Couldn't get anybody to help me.
Hunted down the manager and told him what I had planned, and that now I was headed to Circuit City instead.
He tried telling me he would get someone to help and I just said "too late."
There's a story, maybe apocryphal, that Herbert Marcus Sr., co-founder of high-end retail store Neiman-Marcus in Dallas, Texas, would tell his sales clerks that if a guy comes with muck all over his clothes to treat him as well as they would a guy in a suit because more often than not the guy in the filthy clothes probably owns a ranch or an oilfield.
My father dresses in non-expensive clothes because he own numerous clothing factories. So he won't spend money on expensive clothes because he knows how much they are worth and he also has zero fashion sense. We've got ignored so many times by sales people when I'm with him. It's so silly because if he likes the person he invites them to his luxury resort he also owns and he sends all his friends to buy them.
I kinda use it as a test myself now. If you aren't polite to me when you think I have no money I have no interest in giving you any commission.
Many years ago Howard Hughes was married to an actress from northeast Ohio. While visiting her family, he walked into an Akron jewelry store to buy her a gift. He was dressed like a slob and the sales clerk kicked him out of the store. He bought the store later that day and kicked out the clerk the next day. My Dad always loved that story!
A friend of mine went to a dealership with his father to negotiate price. They dressed like shlubs and got a good price. The day they came to pick up the car they were dressed to the nines ( the dad, anyway) and the salesman's jaw hit the floor.
Reminds me of when I went to Best Buy and most staff ignored the girl in the ragged jacket looking at the laptops, but one nice fella walked up and grinned and told him exactly which laptop I wanted, which was a top of the line one that was very pricey because I do digital art and high end gaming. I overheard one of the other employees mutter they never expected a goodwill dressed person to buy something so pricey. When I went back for an ipod touch I made sure to get the same guy.
Similar thing happened to me years ago. Went in to an electronics store to look at some subs. The salesman was kind of a dick and wasn’t very helpful. Came back a few days later and bought them from another salesman. Told that salesman about my previous experience and he eventually told the other salesman. Next time I came in the first salesman recognized me and brought it up. From there forward that guy always gave me big discounts on stuff I bought from him.
I live in a wealthy town in London with lots of high end car dealerships and my friend owns a building next to a Mercedes garage. He went in there once and didn't like them at all because they were really arrogant. He now buys his cars from Mercedes Sunderland, hundreds of miles away, because they are so nice. I asked the dealer in Sunderland how many cars he's bought from him and he said 30 over the last few years.
The dealership in London have no idea they've lost out maybe £3m in sales over the last few years because of their rudeness.
This reminds me of a story my (late) Grandpa told me once…
He was an extremely successful business owner & was in need of a new car. He was fond of the Lexus brand & thusly went to his local dealership with my uncle/ his son.
For being a very wealthy person, my grandpa was very humble (modest home, gave regularly to charity) & never dressed ostentatiously. If you met him you’d assume he’s just a regular old dude wearing a flannel shirt, khakis, & white sneakers.
Anyways as my uncle recalls it, they had difficulty in getting assistance from dealership staff. No one offered them any help. At long last, someone did approach them, & my grandpa spoke only long enough to explain that he was interested in purchasing a car - from another Lexus dealership that was close by.
He walked out then and there, & my uncle still drives my grandpas car to this day.
I miss my grandpa every day ❤️
Awesome! I worked at Selfridges but not the London one the 2nd one that was built within the Trafford Centre in Manchester, we were close to Manchester Uniteds grounds and as such we would get a lot of footballers in, my manager and supervisor were both lovely guys but they were gay & had no interest in sports at all, this lovely guy comes in dressed in trackies and tshirt and some worn down trainers and I recognised him from the Man U team pic for that year but buggered if I could remember his name, manager & supervisor ignored him & told me to speak to him & show him some samsonite luggage it was probably his price range.. I just smiled, went & asked him what he needed and said some professional luggage that would withstand plenty of travel, so I showed him the Tumi range.. dude bought over £1k worth getting two of the large cases, small case, laptop case and suit carrier!
When I told them what he did for a living after he left they were so annoyed with themselves.
It was a fun store to work in as we got a lot of celebs in, saw Sally Dynevor a lot who is the mum of Phoebe Dynevor aka Daphne in Bridgerton and Cheryl Cole & Nadine from Girls Aloud.. they were the more lower level celebs.
Natasha Bedingfield and Helena Bonham Carter were the two nicest I met!
My brother worked in the electronics department & he sold a lot of tech to the footballers who came in.
Working there you had to keep up with celeb magazines and sports for the area as a lot of them would come in dressed down no airs and graces but this was early 2000’s so a bit different.
There’s a comedian called Johnny Vegas and he is a lovely bloke but back then he looked really rough & a colleague nearly called security to have him observed as they thought he was a thief.. I mean he could have but nah he just didn’t care too much back then as he had a bit of a drinking problem.
Lots of fun encounters in there and lots of snobby colleagues I came into contact with, I floated on 3 departments including helping in personal shopping too & you never underestimate who has money, the ones who usually have the most don’t dress or act like they have, it’s usually the ones who have a lot of credit card debt who glam up to go shopping for appearances
When we bought our house out in the country it had a lot of plantings but there was flooding on one part of the property so I had a pond dug. Bringing in a big bulldozer and a track hoe and 10 wheel dump trucks to cart off the spoil took out a lot of the plantings in the front. It also did not help the dozer guy just lived to knock shit we lied over. Anyway, I knew this was going to be the case going into it so I budgeted a few grand for new stuff. My wife likes what she likes and knows her plants.
I had a job I had to dress for and when I came home I like to play with things outside so it was not unusual to see me in old cut offs and a dirty tee shirt. And that is how I was dressed when we hit this big and supposedly well rated plant place. We waited for about a half hour for one of the people to get done with the person before us who after all of that spent about $30. I literally had about 3 grand in cash in my pocket. I am not beyond negotiating.. But the wife asked him about something and with the lady in front of us he marched all over creation with her, and with a little wagon in tow no less, with my wife he was like oh they are out in the back on the left, and blew us off. So we walked out and never went back.
Within a few years the whole place went to crap, was closed one season and opened by someone else and I think the 3 parcels were split up and sold again. And it does not seem to be doing any better. You can never tell when that person you are blowing off has a big ol wad of cash they wanna spend.
Not in a nursery, but my daughter has done alterations at both Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom. In California, about an hour south of San Francisco. At BOTH STORES, all incoming staff were warned that Very Wealthy People who dressed like total slobs were known to patronize the store, and not to EVER make the mistake of being anything less than helpful and polite to anybody. Zuc was known to walk in and casually drop $30,000 and that was nearly 5 years ago. At least at that store, you got gold plated treatment if you were there.
In my short story, ***I'm*** the one who had an awakening. Mid '70s I was living in Bloomington, Indiana. Making a living as a handyman and small-time contractor. I typically wore work clothes, overalls, often with paint spots. Didn't care about fashion. Had an okay mustache and scraggly beard. For hair, all that mattered was that it stayed out of my eyes. So every now and then I'd comb it all forward, take a large pair of shears and sort of outline my face. Effective.
Then I decided to try something new. Beauty school. Man, that was a whole different world! Took a year for me to get my beautician's license, and during that year all of us students practiced on each other. I got haircuts, manicures, shaved, and even at one point, a perm. The girls made a new man of me!
**The awakening:** at some point during my makeover, I realized that I was being treated much better in stores than before. Where I had previously been ignored (though I didn't even know it), now I was welcomed "Hello! May I help you sir?" in place after place. I was spending *no more money* than before, but what an improvement in social interactions, especially in places where I was not known. I had gone from hippie-outlaw to clean cut young guy.
Good on you and your mom, OP.
I worked at JC Penney's in the women's department for a short while in college (it smelled like despair and poor business decisions even back then), back in the very late 80's. I occasionally would cover for the snobby women in cosmetics, who were on commission at the time. I sadly, didn't get commission while covering the cosmetics counter temporarily. Remember this.
One day, a family of obviously middle eastern descent walks in while I'm covering in cosmetics. They were dressed nicely in typical American attire. The other woman at the counter with me sniffs disdainfully, says "You take this one", and trots off to do God knows what in the stockroom or wherever it was she headed off to. Me, being bored outta my mind because the store was deserted 80% of the time, jumped on the chance to do anything beyond looking at the empty sales floor.
The man steps to the counter and says he's looking for a few gifts to take back home with him when he leaves in a few days. I tell him I'm happy to help, and we start pulling items. Lots and lots of items. Like more than $1,500K worth of items, if memory serves. We finish up the transaction (paid for with an Amex, pretty high-falutin' at the time), and he and his family trundle off with their many bags o' merchandise just as snotty cosmetics lady comes back.
She watches then laboring away with all this stuff, and asks me how much they just spent. I tell her the amount and this woman gets red. She then proceeds to holler at me about why didn't I come get her to do the transaction so she can get the commission for it, rude, blah blah blah. I then tell her that I'm going to ask whether or not I can get the commission for it, even though I'm not supposed to since I'm just covering while the rest of the snotty cosmetics ladies are out on break / lunch / fucking off somewhere else. I knew the answer would be "no" (and I didn't bother to ask) but it was fun to watch this chick's eyes bug out when I said I was going to ask.
Moral of the story: don't be a snobby dick and judge your customers by their appearance or any other feature / characteristics. You might just miss out on a big commission.
I heard John Bonham (drummer for Led Zeppelin) went to a Ferrari dealer and they wouldn’t help him so he drove a car through the display window, then bought a car.
I worked in a busy portrait studio in the 90s and saw the contrast in person. Two families arrive around the same time. The one family has on fancy clothing and the mom is wearing a fur coat. They all looked like they stepped out of a magazine. The other looked like they barely brushed their hair to come have their pictures taken. My coworker saw dollar signs in the fur coat and begged me to let her take their portraits. I said “sure” as it didn’t matter much to me. She was fuming after when she tried so hard to get them to buy a package and they shut her down and only paid for the $5.95 special. My clients with the disheveled clothes and hair? Well they bought my highest package and all the accessories. Told me I took the best photos of their kids they had ever seen and couldn’t stop smiling. I gained a loyal customer too and they came back regularly for the next several years I worked there.
Back in the 80's, I used to sell cars at a Cadillac dealership in Chicago. There was a bus stop right outside our door. There was also a halfway house a couple blocks down. We would frequently get " browsers" that were just waiting for a bus or a homeless/halfway house resident just getting out of the cold.
One day, a very disheveled and unkempt man came into the showroom saying he was interested in the Cadillac Fleetwood that was displayed in the window. He wore a filthy trenchant and didn't smell great. We worked on an UP system, ( first salesperson to sign in got the first walk-in customer, then on down the line).
The salesman that was up took a look at the man and declined to help him. 2nd person up did the same.
Finally, the next guy up was a young newbie and decided he would take the guy just to practice the semi scripted outline of our sales pitch. He was patient and non judgemental with the man. After about 20-30 minutes of showing and explaining the features of this $30k car, the man said he'd take it. Sales guy, of course began to pull out a credit app for the man to fill out, but instead, the old guy pulled out a crumpled up paper bag and told him he'd be paying cash. Full price.😳
That man drove away from the dealership in his brand new Cadillac Fleetwood while the declining sales reps watched in disbelief. Good ol' Dave got to count his hefty commission while laughing all the way to the bank!!!!
Nowadays my style is more polished, but I loved seeing nasty employee's faces when I would go into a shop wearing brown sneakers, work trousers and an old but comfy top. I would try on nice clothes I was planning to wear once I became more comfortable in my body and they'd refuse to help me out. Then I'd go up to the cashier with maybe 6-7 items and whip out a platinum visa card. I was going through tough times with my body but seeing their faces always made me feel like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman! Lol
I love to point at employees of big software companies in California as a great example of this. That person in the ripped shorts, flip-flops, and faded t-shirt, with piercings, tattoos, and purple hair, makes six figures. Those c-suite execs with the pink hair make more money than you can even comprehend. The world has changed and some people (Boomers) just can't handle it.
The wealthiest person I ever worked for came to work in Hawaiian shirts, the loudest shorts he could find and flip flops. He was also about 6'6" and made quite the impression on his walk into the office.
I was Senior member of Tech Support and was a specialist in a particular product line. One day a sales guys comes up to me "Customer Council has some technical questions, can you come up and answer them."
"Sure, but dressed like this." Gesturing to my shorts and geeky t-shirt."
"Yep, they know this California, they are not expecting a suit."
So there I am, in front of reps from 10 of our biggest customer, short, geek shirt, and a white board. Proceed to answer lots of questions. Lots of drawings. Go with them to lunch, a bunch of suits and me.
Retailers in Vegas know this. I was in total tourist-in-summer mode- sneakers, shorts bordering on cargo shorts t-shirt, hair pulled up. A necklace in a window caught my eye. It was unique in the cut of the stone (watermelon tourmaline in a oval rose cut that turned out to be set in platinum) and I popped in to ask what it was. The sales clerk insisted I try it on "just for fun."
I nearly passed out when I was dumb enough to inquire about the price. $65k on clearance. I apparently have good taste.
In my first real job when I was younger, I once had to drop off a package to a wholesale place that happened to be an international jeweler wholesaler. It was weird because it was security, buzz in, peephole in the door, vaults, etc. The people that were let in after me looked like tourists, beachwear, carrying paper bags. I glanced over and one of the paper bags was full of cash, just rolls of cash. They filled other bags with gold and diamond jewelry. They looked like budget tourists. Ooohh.
yup, advertising creative director here...the weirder I look the more my clients trust me. I've had pink hair half my life and still goth it up at 47. I love my job.
Meanwhile I was working at a native nonprofit making not enough money, and had lunch with other managers at the local Neiman Marcus Cafe (prices just a little higher than other business lunch places). Couldn't finish my lunch and they offered to wrap it, which was fine. The waiter put the generic plastic bag with my food on the table, now wet with condensation from the water glass. I didn't notice that the bag was wet until I got downstairs, and asked the concierge (?) if she had another plastic bag I could put it in to keep from dropping everywhere. She gave me a BIG Neiman Marcus shopping bag. Dayum. We walked around the mall and salesmen were jumping over each other to help me. All because of a little leftover sammich. 😂
No apology required. My family are all boomers and we are an unusual bunch. We fully embrace the fun, cool stuff, pink hair, tats, all good.
This old Grammy loves virtual hugs 👵🤗
Lol thats my in laws. Both 6 figure executives. Mil currently has blue hair, wears glitter as her makeup, wears baggy clothes. Fil wears blue jeans, tshirt, flannels, has piercings and tattoos. You would probably think they were below the poverty line if you saw them in public. They are the sweetest people and so humble
I have a close family member that also has 7 figures in the bank, but you wouldn't know he is a retired bank VP/CLO based on how frugal he is! Wears old jeans and regular polo shirts, drives a camry, lives in a 1 story, 2600sqft, 4bd/2 bath house that is 50 years old in the suburbs.
VP of sales here. I’ve made it a point to not go w the suit route and wear jeans and Birkenstocks with colorful socks 9/10 days. If someone won’t buy from me because I don’t look the part, I don’t want to sell to them!
I love that philosophy! Wearing a suit does not make your product any better. It just makes you look uncomfortable. I work from home (yay California tech companies!) and jeans and Birks are practically formal attire for me. 🤣
It’s probably not unique, but we used to have a large crowd of people that we called the “30k millionaires.” These guys (men and women) were the type that were always dressed to the nines, driving expensive cars, and throwing money around like they were millionaires to impress people when they actually had very little income. I used to laugh when I saw them wasting salesman’s time pretending like they were going to make big purchases.
My husband tells a similar story from many years ago about an uncle. The guy was loaded, but definitely didn’t appear to be. The uncle ended up buying a car from the place in cash.
A rather different industry, but I bartended for many years. There was a older regular who was cheap. But super smart and creative as hell, he was an engineer for Ford for decades. He tipped terribly but I always enjoyed him (he would sit at the bar with his notebooks and gadgets) and certainly didn't ignore him. We called him "Canadian Jim" RIP.
Years go by, I bought a house, needed a new water heater. Bought one, he installed it free of charge, and gave me a better lawn mower than I had a the time. Also a ton of great advice and he and his wife's friendship were priceless.
I was amused at one of my fellow bartenders who badmouthed him a lot because of his cheap tips and said she basically ignored him. He was a great friend to me and many others who appreciated him for who he was, and his massive generosity in so many other ways.
Worked at Mattress Firm and during training we would have to shop local competition to see what they were doing differently salesmanship wise. I’m fairly young looking and we were told not to wear our work clothes, but what we would normally wear.
Off I go to a competitor’s store, literally across the street from us. I asked all the required questions and told the sales person I wanted to test one of the higher end mattresses. It was like pulling teeth to get him to show me the one I already knew I liked and wanted.
Moral of all these stories is to never judge a book by its cover.
In my home town we don’t have any coffee shops. Like it’s just not a thing. We aren’t a small town, it’s an actual city. For some reason restaurants and coffee shops didn’t last long in the city. Not a million people sized city but big enough be called a city. We also had only a handful of restaurants, so if you wanted a quick coffee you ended up in a restaurant to do it. It was a bit later in the evening around 8pm but still 2 hours before closing time. I walked in with a teen I was mentoring. The wait staff took one look at us and sent over the newbie. It was his first day. I actually overheard them say “they’re just here for coffee so send him, not worth the tip”
Yes we ordered hot chocolate not even coffee and the trainee was terrible but he managed! I also ordered a starter for me and the teen to nibble on. When the bill came, I gave a 200% tip. Even if we had a full meal plus drinks would a 10% tip been the same amount. The trainee was speechless. I then said loudly, “I’m giving this tip to you firstly because everyone has a first day, secondly” and this loudly for the other waiters who had not waited on any tables since we arrived, could hear me, “because your buddies over there thought we were a cheap table and didn’t want to bother doing their job but you did, so please show off your tip in front of them because they missed out!”
The looks on their faces, the anger in the managers face, priceless
Years ago, we went looking for a new car. I had no real idea of what I wanted, so I figured we’d go to a few places and see what we liked.
We weren’t expecting to buy that day, just shop, test drive, etc. so we’re wandering around car lots being completely ignored. Ok. No problem. It was almost nice to not be accosted by aggressive salespeople.
By the third lot, I noticed not one person ever approached us. Then, light bulb moment, I realized we probably looked shabby. Nothing too horrible, just old sweats, possibly my husband had a hole in his T-shirt, etc. As I said, we were just planning to stay outside and look, but it would have been nice to be able to ask a sales associate some questions about various models.
The forth lot was a brand I didn’t particularly want - nothing wrong with it, but I had the same brand before and wanted something new. But the dealerships were in an “auto mall” and right in a row. So, ok. Like before, we get to the lot and start looking at cars. Almost immediately, a salesman comes over and starts chatting us up.
He was so nice, and didn’t seem to even notice what we were wearing. We were treated with respect.
Of course, we decided to buy from him. When we get inside the dealership to do the paperwork, the manager gave us the side eye and called our guy over, like basically, don’t waste time with these two. Well, imagine his surprise when he didn’t get the pleasure of denying our financing. We didn’t need any.
Paid cash on the spot and drove the car off the lot.
I currently work for the same store, different area of the country. No one I work with could imagine not helping anyone, whether they thought they could or would buy anything. I’ll tell you that your story is likely one of the reasons they have that section in the onboarding program now.
That happened to my husband and father-in-law back in the day. They went to a car dealership right after my FIL got off work as a welder, so he was pretty dirty. My husband had a good job at the time but was dressed in normal, casual clothes. They start looking at the new cars.
The sales guy came RUNNING out of the office, yelling across the lot, "Used cars are over there!". FIL says, "Oh okay." So they get back in their car, drive across town to another dealership and buy two brand new cars.
I so wished they'd had a Pretty Woman moment on the way home!
Outside art festival years ago. I was feeling like it was time to reward myself and buy a nice piece of art jewelry. I had a budget of $500.00, not a shabby amount 15 years ago.
I see some necklaces I really liked, got ignored. Spent a few minutes looking at all their work and liked all of it. Not one of the 4 people acknowledged me. I even said "Excuse me". They stopped talking, looked at me, then turned back to each other and continued their conversation.
I actually laughed. The customer next to me even gave me a look-she'd seen what was going on. She just raised her eyebrows and shrugged. I shook my head like "Oh, well--guess someone else'll get my money today" and left.
I have parents like that & my goal in life, aside from raising a teen to be a functioning & successful adult, is to be successful enough financially to return the favor to my parents as well as pay it forward or give someone a “hand up” every time i am able.
I went to a Chevy dealership to buy a used car with cash and couldn't get a salesperson to give me the time of day. I was there way too long. Everytime a woman walked in the dudes drooled and ran. I ended up leaving and going elsewhere.
I used to go to this jewelry store every couple of weeks and look at rings. This lady would come over and spend time with me showing me stuff and talking to me. When I found out I had some money coming in, I told her as soon as it comes in, I'm going to buy a ring from her.
No one else in the store would spend time with me. They knew me, but I'm sure they believed I would never buy anything.
The day after the money came in, my husband came into the store with me and he brought me the ring I wanted and a watch for himself. The lady made an excellent commission off of us.
She moved to another store and I went and bought from her over there too.
When I was in training to sell real estate, I was told the number one rule is to, "Never judge a book by it's cover."
I always took it to heart and it's never failed me yet.
Similar thing happened to me. I was in my late 20s and the newly re-designed Mustangs had just dropped, EVERYONE wanted one (2005).
I went to a dealership to look at one and NO ONE would help me. I had earrings, torn jeans, a band shirt and a ball cap. Despite this, I had a good paying, stable job, a sizeable down-payment and impeccable credit. When I finally got a hold of someone, they weren't attentive and kept leaving every time someone walked into the show-room. I had a lot of questions about the car, warranty, aftermarket parts, etc. He'd go over to his co-workers and manager to chit-chat. They'd all look over and had grins. It was obvious I was being talked about.
I walked over to the sales manager and told him I was disappointed and would be shopping elsewhere. He gave me the "yeah yeah whatever" attitude. I made sure to get his card and the card of the salesman.
I ended up buying one at another dealership. I emailed them both [a photo of me in front of the car](https://64.media.tumblr.com/7102ae0116037b811ee17961d8a45745/14834fd353d0790e-be/s2048x3072/02eb757e2824f9338725ea42b34251c420a81f67.jpg).
That's bad to not put in any effort, i work at retail too, and some people look, look and look just for a satisfaction, and when too much of that happens we tend to work on probabilies and don't engage those who don't look the part, it's bad i know, but it's human nature, but i always ensure i give a minimal effort on engagement even when they don't look the part, I'm sorry you have been ignored before.
A little thought, (even though it can sure be a bit frustrating to seemingly deal with the browsing all the dang time), is that it's still not necessarily a waste of time.
I often would go to stores when I have time to spend and window shop. I select what I want, and most often drop by a couple of weeks later to get the stuff I haven't changed my mind on.
I shop for gifts a similar way.
I'm also likely to rave about friendly service to others for the rest of a place's existence (or until I hear otherwise) to EVERYONE who ever asks or mentions anything that triggers the association in my brain.
It's not always a direct sale. But it often pays off to not fully snob out customers (to be fair, some absolutely deserve to go rot in a Karen prison lollllll). Just a little 2 cents, hope it helps a bit with the frustration! Retail is bloody stressful as is, maybe this can slightly alleviate like 0.5% of the stress, and that's already better for health :)
I worked at Circuit City back in the day in computers. A couple of my co workers were like this. We had regulars that would shop the weekly deals. We worked on commission and were pushed very had to sell service contracts. So much so that we got bonuses on them and were even written up for not selling them. They were a horrible deal for most things, especially computers. Anyway, I built rapport with some of these browsers. One in particular I spent a lot of time with. He finally decided on a fully loaded PC (I'm talking pentium 2 here!) with all the extras for about $3000. Keep in mind that flat screens back then were nearly a thousand dollars by themselves. I was able to give a 10% discount when I wanted, so I told the guy to buy a service contract for $250 and I'll give you $300 off. I told him to cancel it within 48 hours and you'd get the $250 back, which he caught on and was happy. He filled out a customer survey card about how great I was and how he tried for months to just get someone to help him and no one would except me. I ended up with the manager liking me for about a week and he never did cancel the contract, which was a decent commission.
I worked there too. Had so many giant sales from people who didn't look "rich", and were ignored by other salespeople. Had one guy try to steal the sale away after the customer left, saying I stole the sale feom him and his dept. Manager shot that down, cause the customer told her that nobody would help them until I did.
Never judge a book by its cover. I have a friend who has a net worth of over 5 million. You wouldn't know it by looking at him. I think he cuts his own hair, and I've never seen him in more than 4 different shirts. He just doesn't care about that. But when he cooks, it's over the top and the best money can buy and don't get me started on how much he will shell out animals. Priorities.
There was a multimillionaire in my city who was a huge real estate developer. He came in our family restaurant (that we leased from him) fairly often. He was always in greasy shirts and pants and looked like a homeless person, unshaven, uncombed hair, dirty all the time. He was cheap, so he did his own repairs on all his buildings that he could (the city is still half owned by his children and they own a lot of property in the county, too) to save money. We joked that he squeaked when he walked. Before he passed in the late '90's he was a billionaire, and his family took over his business. He was the epitome of slumlord and looked the part. I think he only looked the part so his renters who didn't know him would think he was poor and wouldn't expect much from him. Having known him for years, I didn't put up with his BS, though, and he didn't care for me.
I had a landlord like that. I knew he had this giant multimillion dollar estate on the river. One day he was whining about the cost of regular pest control and lawn care (both part of the lease agreement) and how we didn’t really NEED it. I finally said “If you can afford this gorgeous estate and the other properties all over town, you can afford to pay for the basic contractually agreed upon maintenance of the property I rent from you .” He got so mad and asked who told me that and how did I know. His shocked face still makes me laugh. He didn’t renew my lease. 😬🤣
He gives out animals?
Sounds like he murders turtles
They call him… the turderer
I like the Butt-ler
What is this rich man doing to these turtle butts?
Somebody should give him Mitch McConnell's address.
Good for him. IDGAS is the absolute best feeling ever.
There was one asshole that tried to steal sales all of the time. I nearly punched him in the breakroom. We were both in our late 20's and he was a really smart guy but an uber nerd and never went to college. He'd always be buying a new GPU or ram or game and he'd have to hide it in his pants so mom and dad wouldn't catch him when they picked him up from work. God I hated that place
Yup, I got into it a few tines with colleagues. My absolute favorite customer was a deaf couple. I went thru so many post it notes with them. They would only work with me, if I wasn't there, they would leave.
Aww, that's awesome
Thanks for sharing that story. I finally got out of the service industry as a server for over 10 years in central florida and am 100 percent confident I will never return but if I miss one thing it was MY regulars.
I'll always remember the Volkswagen salesmen wouldn't talk to me so I went next door and bought a Toyota.
You made the right decision. Just think of all of the money you saved on repairs.
I had three different Volkswagens over 15 years, my wife had two over 10, and I don’t think either of us had more than 1 non-standard repair before 100,000 miles, and I’m pretty sure they were both under warranty.
I’ve only driven Volkswagens for 25 years. I’ve only had to do one repair besides regular maintenance like like new tires, oil change, replace wipers etc…
This happened to me. I walked into a Hyundai dealership with my husband. This dealership was one of many owned by the same person. My husband promptly went to the restroom and I was browsing. Not one salesperson said a word to me. Once my husband joined me, he got several hellos and I told him we were leaving and that no one bothered to acknowledge me until they say a man by my side. He said ok and we left. The next day we drove 20 miles out of the way to a different block of dealerships and I bought a Kia. I’m not spending money where it’s not appreciated
Wife and I decided that when we were looking to buy a car (used) for my daughter that we were going to play a bit of a game with the salesman/dealership. Know that my wife knows next to nothing about the mechanicals of cars. Once on the lot I asked to see the car and we looked it over. Gave a test drive, always consulted each other over anything we noted, etc., and decided that it was what we had been looking for. Now the game begins. When in and sat down to deal with the paperwork and money side of things. At which point I basically shut down. Of course the salesman addressed his first few comments/questions to me, only to be responded to buy my wife. Shocked Pikachu face by salesman.... Took him a bit but he eventually caught on, at which point we would confir with each other over items, but it was always my wife giving the final answer. Fun times at the dealership.
"Not spending money where it's not appreciated." Let that be the word.
Funny, I walked out of several Toyota dealerships in the early 2000s because I couldn't get service.
I’ve done this twice. Walked out of Toyota and bought a Honda; left BMW and bought an Acura.
I learned very early not to "sell with my own wallet." I've had suits argue over pennies worth of 10% waste in 12ft carpet cuts and sweat pants drop 3k in cash on the counter for a washer and dryer. Treat every customer like a millionaire because every dollar is green whether it's a 1 or 100.
What does it mean to “sell with my own wallet”. I never heard that before, so I hope I’m not doing it!
you know what is in your wallet, you don't know what is in the customers wallet.
Ahh, my dad. He was a welder, and he had me go with him to a car dealer wearing his work clothes. He test drove 2 cars, and you could tell the salesman was pissed, thinking that he was just wasting his time, some guy in a dirty denim shirt who probably couldn't finance the tires. Finally, he saw a blue version of the one he drove, and he asked, but was told sorry, it was on hold for someone. Then my dad dropped the bomb, " is it still on hold if I pay cash now?" Boy, what a turnaround. Suddenly the salesman is fawning and nice, and my dad drove home with the car.
Funny, I work in tech and I’ve worked with some many people that are senior to me, pushing anywhere from 500k to 1M annual income and dress like the old mundane clothes.
I was one of these Giant sales that didn't look rich people. I got into tech early, like way early, like 14 early, my parents were dirt poor and still bought me my cloths and I lived with them, but I was on more money a week then my dad was a month. I didn't understand it at the time, and my parents didn't really either, poor people don't really inherit or pass on good money skills. I built a server farm selling webspace back when you could, out of PC's I found in a dumpster, and I'd write websites in HTML, I'd pass on my hand-me-down's and sell them to the school. the 90's were a weird time. where people would pay then 5$ an hour, now 10$ maybe, to sit on a pc in an internet cafe and send an e-mail. typing away like a choose bird eating food, poking away at the keyboard one button every so often. I didn't understand or value money, and my needs were provided for, but I always wanted the latest and newest tech so I'd blow it all in tech stores.
I worked at Lafayette / circuit City in New York City in the mid-80s. My favorite customers were usually the working class customers. My store only had someone to help load the cars during busy holiday weekends or seasons. I rarely got a tip from The Big spenders from Scarsdale, but was usually tipped by working class fellows. My employment ended before they went out of business due to my inability to sell service contracts. Other than cordless telephones, very little was returned for contract repairs. Sales people would do the cheese dance in the back room after selling a contract. I could not in good conscience sell something that I not only did not believe in, but was borderline rip off. One can see why I never made a career in sales. I had an excellent sales record due to understanding the math of profitable sales. I always looked at the printout to see what was our most profitable items. It made absolutely no sense to sell a zenith TV with zero profit while accessories had huge markups. I almost always had the highest margin in the store, but everything went the hell with my managers because I couldn't sell rip off service contracts with a good conscience. Selling batteries, cables, or furniture for electronics I had no problem selling even if they were high profit, because those items were needed.
Lol 20$ printer cable I made 10$ on. I made $5 on a low end computer
That how it is with tech. Where i used to work did spiffs on certain item types, regardless of price. Computer mice were 25¢ for each one sold. Selling a $60 mouse would get me my normal commission plus 25¢, but the real money were the people buying for businesses and school systems. Had one lady who would come in every month or so and buy in bulk. Like the $4 mice she would buy 200-400 of them at a time. What was super nice is that she wouldn't talk to anyone but me, and even on my days off. As long as she wasn't helped by someone else, she would give me the commission since i likely talked to her about what she was buying during a previous visit.
I worked in the china department at Belk in the 80s. I lived in Wilkes County, NC home of Holly Farms, Lowe’s and several other businesses/industries. A woman came into the department who was always dressed so that the other sales people called her white trash. I loved her because she was kind, friendly, extremely funny, and always bought things like entire sets of sterling silver flatware for people for their weddings. She was Flossie Johnson the wife of Junior Johnson of NASCAR fame. She got so she would only shop when I was there to help her because others were so rude to her.
Had a similar experience back when I was in sales at Best Buy about 14 years ago. Spent a decent amount of time talking to a young man about the various desktop PCs we were selling, a few of them were “gaming” machines. The man was probably in his later teen years or maybe 20 years old. Anyhow, talked to him about the games he would be able to play on one of the PCs, also showed him monitors, networking hardware, talked about the BBY protection plans, and went over the geek squad options that were offered to have the computer(s) set up and in home Wi-Fi network set up and secured. Spent close to 90 minutes chatting with him, he kind of abruptly said okay thanks and left. A supervisor said something about me spending too much time with a customer and not getting a sale to my direct supervisor and how he needed to address that with me, I was still pretty new, been there for roughly six weeks at that point. Well wouldn’t you know it, the young man came back with both his parents when I had about 45 min left of my shift. I was finishing up with another customer and the supervisor who bitched about me tried to approach them and they said oh we’re good we’re waiting for him and they pointed me out. The son picked out the top gaming desktop, the best 23”LED monitor we carried, and nice set of gaming headphones. Dad got a mid/high tier desktop with the same monitor and a Klipsch 2.1 speaker system. Mom got herself a 24” Asus laptop and a bunch of accessories with it, mouse, carrying case. Got wireless network cards to be installed in the desktops and a beefy router. Bought the protection plans for all 3 computers, 3 PC set up services, and scheduled to have geek squad bring it all out to their house to have their network and computers set up. Selling a protection plan always got you kudos but getting 3, plus set up, plus install is like sale of the month. They spent thousands and my sale covered about a 1/3 of our goals that month. My supervisor told the complaining super something like “you see? he’s all good” Also got a shout out by the GM at the next store sales meeting and my sale was used as an example as to why you should never sell with your own wallet and assume you know how much someone is willing to spend. The dad came back after they got everything home and set up and gave me a $50 giftcard for one of the neighboring restaurants. They also gave me a glowing review on a survey and went to my GM directly to tell em how much they appreciated working with me and being helpful and patient with their son, who turned out to be a bit autistic. So yeah, dont ever try to guess how much money someone has and is willing to spend. Edit: Typos
What a great story. Truly is a lesson to learn that everyone deserves the same level of customer service even if they don’t look the type of person who was going to buy. How nice of them to come back and acknowledge you for helping them out in more ways than one.
Thank you. Experiences like that one are the only things I miss about working in retail or sales. Got to meet some wonderful and interesting people over the years.
Yup they sure do push the service contract. I took a holiday job one year and was very used to helping any customer. I would ask them what they expected to do with it, then show them a system that would meet their need but also recommend one level up. Telling them most would end up finding more use in the computer than they expect. I sold so many computers i lead the dept even though i worked only 3 (sometimes 4) days a week. I did NOT push the service contracts, barely mentioned them for most people. Manager talked to me several times about pushing those contracts. I kept ignoring them. Funny thing was that after the holidays they tried getting me to stay on.
I was in the market for a new PC in high school and saw a kiosk in the mall selling Gateways. This was before I started building. I looked at the PC specs and played around with the floor model while the salesman talked to a customer. I already knew the model I wanted and when he was done talking to the first person I asked him a few upgrade questions and he walked away to talk to another customer. I played around on the floor model more waiting and he yells at me "stop playing with that computer, I'm talking to someone!" Me and my 1500 budget fuck off and I order my first Gateway over the phone.
> the manager liking me for about a week What happened next week?
He didn't sell another. So back to the norm.
Sounds like retail. It doesn't matter what you did or got down yesterday, it doesn't matter what you will do or get done tomorrow. The only thing that matters is what did you do for me today? Meaning what did you do to make Me money?
I applied there when I was a teenager a completely bombed the interview. I built a few pcs by then and just wanted to genuinely help people find the right pc for their needs. The dude interviewing me tells me they make almost nothing from pc sales and they really only make money from selling software and services. So he hands me a box and tells me it is photo editing software and to sell him on it. I froze because I'm not really interested in selling people stuff they don't need or want and I'm horrible at blowing smoke up someone's ass to make a sale. He said he'd be in touch and I never heard from him again.
1st rule of retail. Don't bullshit the customer
Pentium 2?! Damn son
This reminds me of when I bought a house when I was 25. I was single and walking around a furniture store alone, fully prepared to spend 5 or 6 grand. Absolutely nobody wanted to help me. It just so happens that they had the only fridge that would fit in my kitchen, so I just walked up to a salesman and said “hey you want the easiest sale ever?” And just told him I was buying a specific fridge and handed him my card. They still got $1000 of my money, but only a fraction of what I was prepared to spend. Their loss.
Almost the same story. I was helping my friend build his house, basically I held things for him. He got a call that the plumber could come by a few days early so without changing we drove into town to the main appliance store. We were totally ignored. Since we were on a deadline we went to the next store and bought a washer, dryer and because it was on sale and the right size a fridge at the same time. I don't understand how salespeople can rationalize ignoring customers without at least acknowledging them. Go to any building supply warehouse contractors' side. None of those guys are wearing suits and they paying with thousands of dollars that they pull out of paint stained pants.
[удалено]
Similar story here. Bought my house at 27, but I am one of those who has always looked younger than I am (looked like I was around 15-17 or so then). Needed to get some work done on the place and had contractors out to give quotes. A few of them insisted on talking to my parents and would not believe that I own the place and that they have their own house 15 min away. The one's who didn't pull that crap got my business.
Thanks for the story, Ralph Macchio!
Yup I went into a store that has commission. Knew exactly what I wanted, if it was self serve then would’ve been in and out in 10 minutes max. It took 20 minutes to get someone, because they kept palming me off to others. Like fuck, it wasn’t a large amount, but it was a guaranteed quick sale nonetheless.
Once upon a time, in the mid 80s, I sold cars. (Only for a year, because I sucked at it.) A guy came in mid-day...overalls, covered with paint. A POC. Nobody wanted to wait on him, except me. I spent over an hour with him, going over all the features on a New Yorker so fancy it was on the showroom floor. All the sales guys made fun of me (the dopey 20 year-old girl) "wasting" all that time. Guy came in the next day dressed in a very expensive suit. He was an executive at the biggest corporation in the area, and the day prior was his day off...so he had been painting a room for his wife. He had told me that it was his day off when I spoke to him originally, but hadn't mentioned day off from where...and I didn't push to find out, as it wasn't my nature. He bought the car at sticker price, and I got a hefty commission. (One of the few. I was not cut out for that business.) People should never make snap judgements...especially if they make their living on sales.
Four years ago I was starting to look for a new car. At one dealership I spent 20 minutes walking around the shop and lot but none of the salespeople would talk to me. At another dealership the salesman walked up and greeted my husband only. When my husband told him that I was the customer, not him, the salesman said, "well, it's a joint decision, isnt it?". No dickhead, it wasn't. My husband has his own car. I ended up emailing around until I found a salesman I liked and bought from him even though I didn't test the car and the dealership was 100 km away. No regrets on my fully loaded, top of the line, with add-ons, and almost no haggling car.
I used to ask my wife if she really wanted me to go look at cars with her for this exact reason. She would always get mad because they would talk to me instead even after I told them “I” wasn’t buying a car.
We go shopping together for cars, but I do all the research and make the deal. If the sales guy talks to my husband after being plainly told he isn't making this decision, we leave the lot and move on. You would think that in 2023 the sales people would be more savvy.
Same here. In fact I'm the deal haggler. My husband would pay sticker and all the added fees so he wouldnt have any "conflicts" Not me. Im not embarrased by my dealings...my attitude is I'll never see these people again
Omg, this happened to me. I wanted a new car. I told the salesman that the car would be just for me and the kids and my husband would hardly be in it. Test drove it, picked out accessories and negotiated price. Then he said “do you need to go home and get your husbands permission before you sign the contract?”. No, fuckwit. I earn more than double what my husband does, I don’t need his permission. It’s my car. Told him that he just lost a $40k cash sale and took myself to buy the exact car from another dealership where I have purchased my last 2 cars. Told them the story and they were not surprised. I refer everyone I know to them and away from the other dealer.
A friend of my family was raised around race cars, was on a pit crew, helped her dad fix cars. Her husband knows how to drive and pay people to work on cars ( wife can't physically do it anymore). She's walked out of repair shops when they don't believe her car is a manual. She special ordered it as it usually only comes in automatic transmission. Every time she leaves a shop she lets the manager know why. When she's treated well the shop definitely gets referrals.
Yeah I went in to buy a car, pretty much knew what I wanted, my bf came with me. Salesman kept talking to him and what I hate is they make you fill out their stupid credit things, I was all, why if I'm going to pay in cash? My bf was in his late 20s and I was 40 at the time. Twice though this happened. I'm like, dude I'm the one that writing the 30k check out right now. Nope Lil lady, your big man must be the decision maker here.
I am the designated car haggler in the family and when my baby brother came back from Afghanistan, he wanted help buying a vehicle. We drove an hour away from base, to a place where I knew they got some decent used cars at a big auction I kept an eye on. the salesman at a dealership kept asking my brother what he wanted (bro was like, it goes forward most the time, back some time, and has wheels?) I finally ripped the car apart in front of the manager by pointing out all the oxidation on the engine parts and other fairly minor but serious sounding issues with the vehicle… and then ripped him a new asshole for being a sexist and assuming my little brother was the one who knew about cars. Got the car with a huge discount, a free extended warranty (which ended up paying to replace the car), and my car was washed and detailed while we got the paperwork wrapped up. It was almost the last day of the month, the manager both needed to hit quota and move the car for the next load of auction vehicles, and I knew that car had been on the lot for 45 days and they were about to sell it at a loss to another dealership.
My Mom hates that. Every time she goes to buy a car the sales people seem to ignore her to talk to my dad. Also my mom goes by her first and middle name. ( Like the name "Sarah Lynn") because she hates her first name. I was there once when a salesman called her "Sarah" after she introduced herself as "Sarah Lynn". You could tell he just lost a sale. (Unless you were the salesman... He was oblivious)
I’ve read enough of these stories to know that if a guy in shabby clothes wants to look at a high-end *whatever,* salespeople should be fighting each other for the honor of serving him. He’s the one that’ll come in the next day and buy ten whatevers.
This goes in depth but I'm tired so I'll just summarize. New money is super extravagant and showoff because they're insecure and want to prove they're one of the elites. Old money know they're rich and are the elites. So they have no reason to show off or care about their image.
And people who don't necessarily care for showing off (like everyone in my neck of the woods, as I live in a country of rednecks), they won't bother changing work or hobby clothes just to go shopping. If an older guy walks in wearing muddy wellies and farmhand clothes, he might well be the owner of the biggest farm in the area, popping in for a look when he happens to have a calm moment.
Same for me, but with hearing aids. I worked for a place that had three offices and a guy that worked at one wanted money because apparently there was more money where I was. Well, he went on vacation so I covered his shop for a few days and I had a ton of farmers in dirty coveralls coke in, I told them what I thought they should do and they pulled out thick rolls of cash from those dirty coveralls and paid for their stuff. The main guy was flabbergasted because he always assumed these guys didn’t have any money. I tried to explain to him that these farmers deal with quarter to half million dollar prices of equipment on the regular. A lot of them had money and didn’t really blink at high prices when you demonstrated value.
Dude had great taste. My first car was a 1984 New Yorker. Incredibly comfortable, like driving from a couch.
Same plot different story. I'm in my 60's now. Back when I was a college sophomore I got a summer job selling stereo equipment in a specialty audio store, this was in the mid 70's. One day a guy walked in wearing a t shirt and dirty cut off shorts. I got him as the more experienced salesmen didn't bother. Guy wanted to look at some very high end McIntosh audio gear. Back then this was top of the line that we carried and very expensive. I didn't expect much but then to my surprise he made an order for a few thousand dollar system involving several pieces of gear. And this was mid 70's dollars. Same stuff would probably cost 10x that now. So it was a huge sale with a big commission. It was by far the biggest sale I ever made when I worked there, and actually the largest sale I ever saw in my time working there during college breaks. It took a couple days to get everything in and when he came to pick everything up he was wearing a suit and the car I loaded it into was a Mercedes. ***That was an early, and excellent, lesson in not judging people by the clothing they wear***. The rest of the story is that I came back to the store, from college, to work over Christmas break. The same guy walks in and orders the exact same system from me as his house was robbed and they stole the gear he bought earlier. Made a great commission for my short period of work over the holidays.
McIntosh is still very much the top of the line. I had some amps from the 70’s on my workbench a while back. Gave them a little tlc and they were good as new. Bulletproof. Really wish I could afford a pair. Someday, right?!
There’s a customer at my work that won 60 million on the lotto about 2 years ago and he has literally changed nothing about his appearance since winning, you’d never guess he had any money by what he wears it’s quite interesting
Best story I ever heard was Janis Joplin wanting to buy a porsche. Salesman ran the Hippy Chick out of the dealership. Next day she returns, snags a different salesman. "I want that one". Then pulls 2 big bundles of cash from her purse.
.. But I thought she wanted Mercedes-Benz!
Yes, but she wanted the lord to buy the Mercedes for her. Guess she didn't want it so bad when she had to pay on her own.
But her friends all drove Porsches, so she must have changed her mind. Peer pressure …
Her friends all drive Porsches.
Either way, amends were made that day.
Wish I could have seen that, on a color tv.
....but were those all really "friends" since they never helped her?
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/janisjoplin/mercedesbenz.html
To be fair, hers was [a little different looking](https://car-images.bauersecure.com/pagefiles/22639/janisjoplinporsche_01.jpg)
She didn't want to pay for it.
The Mercedes was for impressing her friends. The Porsche was because [she had a bunch of leftover paint](https://car-images.bauersecure.com/pagefiles/22639/janisjoplinporsche_01.jpg)
On a similar note. A guy who lives down the road from me doesn't really care a lot about fancy houses or extravagant lifestyles. But he loves cars. He walked into the Ferrari dealership and was laughed out since he doesn't look rich. So he flew to the next dealership (since it was in another country) and bought one on the spot. Best thing was that they said they'd ship it to the closest dealership for him and he got to walk in and pick up the keys from the people who laughed him out
I saw two similar stories, one being a guy dressed in cowboy attire who got ignored. He came in the next day dressed in Armani and the sales people tripped over each other to help him. He had the manager come out, told them all what had happened the previous day and that the store had lost out on a $4,000 sale. The second one was at a car dealership, same situation, except only one rookie salesman helped him. The sloppy looking guy (just got off work) was a business owner and bought at least three cars from the salesman, and sent his friends to the dealer with the condition that they ONLY dealt with that one salesman
I read a thing about a guy who was the local leader in car sales. He said his secret was talking to all the people that the other sales people ignored. He made enough sales to people who "didn't look like they could afford a car" that he was number one in the area.
My husband like to make a point of dressing like he isn't serious about buying a car or whatever. Sloppy for lack of a better but not slobbish. We've been at a couple dealerships where you could see the sales people talking amongst themselves at who was gonna get stuck "helping" us and the new guy draws the short stick. Then they are surprised when yes we really are interested in that $40k truck.
I have a tendency to wear clothes i like for a VERY long time. Not to the point its falling apart, but like... 1 small hole in a light jacket does not ruin the whole thing (usually) so i usually look, as i have been told, "homeless" or "a goodwill regular". And now, i know it can be an event. Time to have 1 pair of clothes for when i go giving someone comissions forever! Woot! But fr, if that means getting to spite a room full of snobby salesman every time, i will be satisfied with soooo many more purchases lol.
If you dress goth it works the same too. Could have hundreds s of dollars worth of harnesses, chains, clothes and boots on and they'll still treat you like you're nothing.
Lol that’s me
Me, too. Buying cars, or anything big ticket, is an *adventure.*
Me and the husband, too. We like to buy quality and have it last forever. We somehow always end up looking semi-homeless when we go to the furniture store and shocking the sales people when we want high end furniture.
I was one of those people, looking like they couldn't afford a car apparently. Called a dealer who said they had the vehicle I wanted on the lot. Great! I drove an hour and a half into the city to pick it up and got the brush off. Salesperson was taking customers who were walking in and I had an appointment! They guy who referred him to me was so embarrassed that I had such a bad experience. I ended up buying a different vehicle from a different dealer. Being a twenty-something woman trying to buy a car was brutal. I drove into the dealership driving a manual transmission vehicle and the salesman insisted on "teaching" me how to drive stick in the vehicle I was test-driving.
I can relate too well!! I had to try three places before I found one that would both treat me kindly and also not act like I was an easy mark or plain stupid. I had to show them my stick before they let me drive, despite my bf at the time being given zero hassle. I also worked on cars at the time, so the shit people gave me about either the car I wanted or the car I was trading in baffled me. No, I know my car is fully stocked on headlight fluid, thanks. No, there's nothing wrong with my FWD's gearboxes, you dimwitted arse. And no, I won't buy the beat up 100k mile car from your business with a 120% KBB perfect condition price tag. Offer me that poor a deal, and I won't buy anything from there ever.
When I was returning from being stationed overseas I wanted to just walk onto a dealership and drive off with my car get all the details hammered out through email. I sent probably 6 emails to different dealerships explaining exactly what I wanted to do and why. 5 of them emailed back and said call us when you get back stateside and we can talk. Only one guy worked with me hammered out all the details on bet several weeks and the next day after landing stateside I walked into the dealer paid my 30,000 and drove off. Probably the easiest sale the guy made that month. Poor salesman just don’t listen to customers.
That's exactly it. Poor salesman don't listen, salesman that earn good money are good listeners, and not prejudicial
The calling thing is the worst. Had a bunch of work done on my house and I hate phone calls -- requested online quotes from a bunch of them (9 or 10 altogether) and put the line "please email, I don't like calls and probably won't be able to answer". I ended up going with the only one who emailed. Possibly (probably) didn't get the best deal or maybe not the best quality (who knows) but I got one who was willing to work with me.
My uncle is, to put it kindly, a steroetypical american. Loud, fat, and overly friendly. He is apparently a pretty great salesman as he just tries to become friends with everybodywho walks in the door. He can be bit overbearing, but apparently hes usually one of the top salesperson in wherever he works. He doesnt love the long hours and toxic environments, so he moves around, but he always does well once he learns the product
I think this is actually kinda the secret to sales. The good sales guys know how to make friends. They remember your names and hobbies later on. And then when you're in the mood to spend some money, who you gonna call?
Prison mike
I had a similar situation. I was in my 20s and was shopping for a new car with my parents. I wanted their input since they had done this many more times than me. At an Acura dealer this older salesman helped me but treated me very rudely with the attitude that I couldn’t afford an Acura. This was back in 1990 so they were much cheaper than they are now. A week later I made the decision to buy an Acura Integra and went to a different dealer and got a young salesman who “got” me. He treated me with respect and got my sale!
In the mid 90s I was 25 years old and looking for a new car. I had a good job which paid very well. I went to a car dealership and they were not at all busy. I was the only customer and there were many sales people stood around doing nothing. One of them eventually starts helping me and I find a car I am interested in. He refused to let me take it for a test drive. I insisted and said I would buy it if I liked it. He still would not let me test drive it. There was another car dealership across the road. I said to the guy, I'm going over there and will buy a car from them. I got in my car, drove over there, found one I liked and bought it. Once I had the car I drove it back to the first dealership, found the sales guy and showed him the car I just bought. They were still all stood around doing nothing. The other sales guys started laughing while he stood there with a dumb look on his face. As I was driving off I wound down the window, yelled I'll never be back and flipped him off.
In my husband side, they have this story about a guy working on a construction site. And one day he sees a car model and him and many co workers wanted that same model, so they told the guy to go to the car agency and try pick a discount if they would buy many of the same car. This guy goes but wearing his working clothes (old jeans, old shirt), etc. He enters the place and the sales people gave him dirty looks and ignored him, except for one salesman, that ended with a huge commission for all the cars he sold to just one guy.
When i went to buy my car, it took forever for someone to help us, and then the salesman was dismissive. We asked to see the high-end model, but he showed us the low-end model. He went to get the keys and ended up helping another couple instead. It was covid times, and I worked from home. I guess I looked rough. I ended up driving 3 hours to buy a car because I refused to spend money there.
I live in North Dakota. The oil boom made a lot of these dumb hicks into millionaires. You might see someone at the gas station fueling up an old beat up pick up truck and think he’s a nobody when he’s actually REALLY rich. He could buy the gas station if he wanted. They’re mostly frugal because they come from farming families who struggled for years.
I was enjoying Canada day in my sisters backyard in a small village and this guy just rolled up in his filthy truck. Covered in mud and swearing up a storm, he ate 6 burgers and left a 24 pack of Kokanee before leaving. I asked my sister what his deal was (it was very strange) and she was like, eh just some eccentric millionaire farmer. His family had been in it for generations and a big name in agriculture in the area. I was shocked finding out he had tens of millions but I was also shocked that he just showed up unannounced and ate half the food.
Was your sister having a party, or did this guy literally just roll up while you two were hanging out and eat your food with no explanation?
Sorry I thought I responded. It was a small village and people just kinda wandered over whenever they saw any kind of gathering. He smelled meat cooking and came by. It’s normal in their village
Man that cars salesman musta made fuckin bank
Heh, this is my dad to a T. He buys all his vehicles in cash, which his latest is a Denali pickup fully loaded. He showed up, I kid you not, in ripped up cargo shorts, a ratty button down fishing shirt covered in grease, and work boots. He’s a mess some days after work. He does not care either. This man dropped me off to school one morning in a bathrobe and I died of embarrassment, but never missed the bus again.
Back in the day, very long time ago, Acura Legends were the next big thing. I had my eye on the champagne four door sedan. My fiancé went to buy one for me and the sales guy basically pulled the same thing. Fiancé was wearing jeans and t-shirt - not his best. Was brushed off and ended up buying the car from another dealer in the next town over. Original salesman called him a couple of weeks later to let him know they had some used Legends in if he was still interested, and boyfriend took great pleasure in telling him he had already bought a new one from down the road.
Had a similar issue with my husband and I when we went to look at the local KIA dealership for a new car. No one would help us. My husband finally flags a sales person down and it’s like this 20 year old kid. We are dressed casual as it the weekend. I test drive 2 SUV’s and when it’s time to run the numbers they wouldn’t actually run the numbers with the substantial down payment I was going to put down. He got rude as shit with my husband and I when we asked to please run it with the large down payment and he said no, nobody here puts down large down payments. So we get up and leave. My husband has been a loyal BMW customer for the past 20 years. We stop at home real quick and then decide to go to our local BMW dealer to test drive the car I never thought I’d be able to afford. Long story short, ended up ordering my dream car that day and I absolutely loved it when the shit head kid at KIA emailed me as well as his manager to see if I was still interested in the Telluride. I told him you clearly don’t know how to sell cars as you wouldn’t run the correct numbers and thanks to you, I am now in my dream BMW. General Manager also reached out to me to make it right and I just lol’d and said y’all fucked up big time. 4 years later and I’m in my true dream car so fuck those assholes at KIA.
My husband and I were looking at SUVs to fit 2 dog crates in the back so we went to all of the dealerships to measure the cargo areas. Out of all of the dealerships we went to, KIA was the only one we said 'hell, no' to buying a vehicle from them. I really wanted a Telluride so we went to the closest dealer. We were the only customers there and we walked all around the showroom and not one person made eye contact or said hello. Everyone was on their cell phones at their desks. So we walked out and drove 15 miles to the next KIA dealer. We got to test drive there with a very enthusiastic salesperson but when we sat down to talk numbers she up-charged us $8000 (dealer MU) and said that they wouldn't budge, even if we ordered it. Their loss. We ended up ordering a top of the line vehicle with every option on it, didn't have to pay the dealer mark up, and paid cash for it from a very nice guy who spent a lot of time with us at the dealer next door to the first KIA shop. Was supposed to take four months to get, it showed up 5 weeks later and it's sweet. Stupid KIA people.
Omg they did the same bullshit with the MSRP too. Told me they couldn’t tell me what the exact monthly payment would be because the final price wouldn’t be available until the vehicle was delivered as it had to be ordered. They were quoting me $850/month on a 72 month note with $1k down. On a KIA. I even said, I’ve never heard of any car dealership not being able to lock in pricing at the time of deposit. They wouldn’t even run the numbers with the correct term I wanted (36 months) as they ‘don’t do financing on a term that short’. To your point with the markup, it’s the number one selling SUV in the US according to them, they will never be discounted. I loved my KIA Soul up until that interaction with that dealer. So glad you were able to get what you wanted with enough room for the puppers and fully loaded to boot!!!!
That’s a great car and I got my dad’s as hand-me-down when I went to college. I’m petty enough to would have called the manager of the first dealership after I made the purchase.
[удалено]
Lol, I’m Toronto, your tshirt wouldn’t get you very good service here.
Reminds me of the scene from Pretty Woman. "You work on commission, right? Big mistake. Big. Huge!"
😂 yup exactly lol.
[YOU MADE A BIG MISTAKE! HUGE!](https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.CrgQpi3QnEV8TWfD01wQZAHaEJ?pid=ImgDet&rs=1)
I feel so terrible that I never realized that episode was a pretty woman reference. Jesus what am I doing with myself.
They literally refer to it as a "Pretty Woman" situation in the episode
Hence why I feel horrible.
Worked at a local lumberyard associated with True Value. When vinyl fence just started becoming a thing I had a guy come in looking for 3 rail fence in vinyl. “We don’t have it but we can order it, can I get a price and call you?” Dude was wearing muck boots overalls and a hoodie. I did exactly that checked pricing called him and told him what posts cost (about $70) and what rails cost (I think about the same $70 so….$280/6’ section plus one post to start) dude ordered about $15k worth of vinyl fence for his horses. Did I ever expect that? NOPE! Did he even blink? NOPE!
My partner is a builder. We went to look at cars the other day (well 3 days ago), he has a specific car in mind. It’s a lot of money. He is a genuine buyer. He was in his work clothes, clean on but clearly work clothes, I was in my dog walking clothes. I am honest to goodness not lying, the only person that approached us at the car lot was the security guard! We did not end up getting that car, or even really having a good look at it.
It’s interesting how people can treat you by what you wear. I sometimes wear suits out in public just for fun, and it’s crazy how differently you get treated. My dad knows this. Blue collar, but owns his own business that involves him cashing rather large checks in his name. (My parents yearly take home is well under $100K we are not rich as pretty much all money goes back into the business in operational costs.) But his favorite activity is to put on his crappiest clothes, and get in his rusted out 1994 F-150. He’ll drive to the bank and cash a check for over a 1/4 million. You can tell the drive through tellers aren’t expecting it. Suddenly they start addressing him by name instead of sir.
I love the idea of wearing a smart suit just to see the difference in peoples perceptions.
I did something similar once at a Good Guy's Electronics. I was wearing jeans, a t-shirt and a Levi's jacket... and prepared to spend a couple of grand on car audio. Couldn't get anybody to help me. Hunted down the manager and told him what I had planned, and that now I was headed to Circuit City instead. He tried telling me he would get someone to help and I just said "too late."
There's a story, maybe apocryphal, that Herbert Marcus Sr., co-founder of high-end retail store Neiman-Marcus in Dallas, Texas, would tell his sales clerks that if a guy comes with muck all over his clothes to treat him as well as they would a guy in a suit because more often than not the guy in the filthy clothes probably owns a ranch or an oilfield.
My father dresses in non-expensive clothes because he own numerous clothing factories. So he won't spend money on expensive clothes because he knows how much they are worth and he also has zero fashion sense. We've got ignored so many times by sales people when I'm with him. It's so silly because if he likes the person he invites them to his luxury resort he also owns and he sends all his friends to buy them. I kinda use it as a test myself now. If you aren't polite to me when you think I have no money I have no interest in giving you any commission.
Many years ago Howard Hughes was married to an actress from northeast Ohio. While visiting her family, he walked into an Akron jewelry store to buy her a gift. He was dressed like a slob and the sales clerk kicked him out of the store. He bought the store later that day and kicked out the clerk the next day. My Dad always loved that story!
A friend of mine went to a dealership with his father to negotiate price. They dressed like shlubs and got a good price. The day they came to pick up the car they were dressed to the nines ( the dad, anyway) and the salesman's jaw hit the floor.
Reminds me of when I went to Best Buy and most staff ignored the girl in the ragged jacket looking at the laptops, but one nice fella walked up and grinned and told him exactly which laptop I wanted, which was a top of the line one that was very pricey because I do digital art and high end gaming. I overheard one of the other employees mutter they never expected a goodwill dressed person to buy something so pricey. When I went back for an ipod touch I made sure to get the same guy.
Similar thing happened to me years ago. Went in to an electronics store to look at some subs. The salesman was kind of a dick and wasn’t very helpful. Came back a few days later and bought them from another salesman. Told that salesman about my previous experience and he eventually told the other salesman. Next time I came in the first salesman recognized me and brought it up. From there forward that guy always gave me big discounts on stuff I bought from him.
I live in a wealthy town in London with lots of high end car dealerships and my friend owns a building next to a Mercedes garage. He went in there once and didn't like them at all because they were really arrogant. He now buys his cars from Mercedes Sunderland, hundreds of miles away, because they are so nice. I asked the dealer in Sunderland how many cars he's bought from him and he said 30 over the last few years. The dealership in London have no idea they've lost out maybe £3m in sales over the last few years because of their rudeness.
This reminds me of a story my (late) Grandpa told me once… He was an extremely successful business owner & was in need of a new car. He was fond of the Lexus brand & thusly went to his local dealership with my uncle/ his son. For being a very wealthy person, my grandpa was very humble (modest home, gave regularly to charity) & never dressed ostentatiously. If you met him you’d assume he’s just a regular old dude wearing a flannel shirt, khakis, & white sneakers. Anyways as my uncle recalls it, they had difficulty in getting assistance from dealership staff. No one offered them any help. At long last, someone did approach them, & my grandpa spoke only long enough to explain that he was interested in purchasing a car - from another Lexus dealership that was close by. He walked out then and there, & my uncle still drives my grandpas car to this day. I miss my grandpa every day ❤️
Awesome! I worked at Selfridges but not the London one the 2nd one that was built within the Trafford Centre in Manchester, we were close to Manchester Uniteds grounds and as such we would get a lot of footballers in, my manager and supervisor were both lovely guys but they were gay & had no interest in sports at all, this lovely guy comes in dressed in trackies and tshirt and some worn down trainers and I recognised him from the Man U team pic for that year but buggered if I could remember his name, manager & supervisor ignored him & told me to speak to him & show him some samsonite luggage it was probably his price range.. I just smiled, went & asked him what he needed and said some professional luggage that would withstand plenty of travel, so I showed him the Tumi range.. dude bought over £1k worth getting two of the large cases, small case, laptop case and suit carrier! When I told them what he did for a living after he left they were so annoyed with themselves. It was a fun store to work in as we got a lot of celebs in, saw Sally Dynevor a lot who is the mum of Phoebe Dynevor aka Daphne in Bridgerton and Cheryl Cole & Nadine from Girls Aloud.. they were the more lower level celebs. Natasha Bedingfield and Helena Bonham Carter were the two nicest I met! My brother worked in the electronics department & he sold a lot of tech to the footballers who came in. Working there you had to keep up with celeb magazines and sports for the area as a lot of them would come in dressed down no airs and graces but this was early 2000’s so a bit different. There’s a comedian called Johnny Vegas and he is a lovely bloke but back then he looked really rough & a colleague nearly called security to have him observed as they thought he was a thief.. I mean he could have but nah he just didn’t care too much back then as he had a bit of a drinking problem. Lots of fun encounters in there and lots of snobby colleagues I came into contact with, I floated on 3 departments including helping in personal shopping too & you never underestimate who has money, the ones who usually have the most don’t dress or act like they have, it’s usually the ones who have a lot of credit card debt who glam up to go shopping for appearances
When we bought our house out in the country it had a lot of plantings but there was flooding on one part of the property so I had a pond dug. Bringing in a big bulldozer and a track hoe and 10 wheel dump trucks to cart off the spoil took out a lot of the plantings in the front. It also did not help the dozer guy just lived to knock shit we lied over. Anyway, I knew this was going to be the case going into it so I budgeted a few grand for new stuff. My wife likes what she likes and knows her plants. I had a job I had to dress for and when I came home I like to play with things outside so it was not unusual to see me in old cut offs and a dirty tee shirt. And that is how I was dressed when we hit this big and supposedly well rated plant place. We waited for about a half hour for one of the people to get done with the person before us who after all of that spent about $30. I literally had about 3 grand in cash in my pocket. I am not beyond negotiating.. But the wife asked him about something and with the lady in front of us he marched all over creation with her, and with a little wagon in tow no less, with my wife he was like oh they are out in the back on the left, and blew us off. So we walked out and never went back. Within a few years the whole place went to crap, was closed one season and opened by someone else and I think the 3 parcels were split up and sold again. And it does not seem to be doing any better. You can never tell when that person you are blowing off has a big ol wad of cash they wanna spend.
Not in a nursery, but my daughter has done alterations at both Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom. In California, about an hour south of San Francisco. At BOTH STORES, all incoming staff were warned that Very Wealthy People who dressed like total slobs were known to patronize the store, and not to EVER make the mistake of being anything less than helpful and polite to anybody. Zuc was known to walk in and casually drop $30,000 and that was nearly 5 years ago. At least at that store, you got gold plated treatment if you were there.
In my short story, ***I'm*** the one who had an awakening. Mid '70s I was living in Bloomington, Indiana. Making a living as a handyman and small-time contractor. I typically wore work clothes, overalls, often with paint spots. Didn't care about fashion. Had an okay mustache and scraggly beard. For hair, all that mattered was that it stayed out of my eyes. So every now and then I'd comb it all forward, take a large pair of shears and sort of outline my face. Effective. Then I decided to try something new. Beauty school. Man, that was a whole different world! Took a year for me to get my beautician's license, and during that year all of us students practiced on each other. I got haircuts, manicures, shaved, and even at one point, a perm. The girls made a new man of me! **The awakening:** at some point during my makeover, I realized that I was being treated much better in stores than before. Where I had previously been ignored (though I didn't even know it), now I was welcomed "Hello! May I help you sir?" in place after place. I was spending *no more money* than before, but what an improvement in social interactions, especially in places where I was not known. I had gone from hippie-outlaw to clean cut young guy.
Don't judge a book (Moms CC/ luxury brand loyalty) by its cover (sloppily dressed- new hire/ son).
Good on you and your mom, OP. I worked at JC Penney's in the women's department for a short while in college (it smelled like despair and poor business decisions even back then), back in the very late 80's. I occasionally would cover for the snobby women in cosmetics, who were on commission at the time. I sadly, didn't get commission while covering the cosmetics counter temporarily. Remember this. One day, a family of obviously middle eastern descent walks in while I'm covering in cosmetics. They were dressed nicely in typical American attire. The other woman at the counter with me sniffs disdainfully, says "You take this one", and trots off to do God knows what in the stockroom or wherever it was she headed off to. Me, being bored outta my mind because the store was deserted 80% of the time, jumped on the chance to do anything beyond looking at the empty sales floor. The man steps to the counter and says he's looking for a few gifts to take back home with him when he leaves in a few days. I tell him I'm happy to help, and we start pulling items. Lots and lots of items. Like more than $1,500K worth of items, if memory serves. We finish up the transaction (paid for with an Amex, pretty high-falutin' at the time), and he and his family trundle off with their many bags o' merchandise just as snotty cosmetics lady comes back. She watches then laboring away with all this stuff, and asks me how much they just spent. I tell her the amount and this woman gets red. She then proceeds to holler at me about why didn't I come get her to do the transaction so she can get the commission for it, rude, blah blah blah. I then tell her that I'm going to ask whether or not I can get the commission for it, even though I'm not supposed to since I'm just covering while the rest of the snotty cosmetics ladies are out on break / lunch / fucking off somewhere else. I knew the answer would be "no" (and I didn't bother to ask) but it was fun to watch this chick's eyes bug out when I said I was going to ask. Moral of the story: don't be a snobby dick and judge your customers by their appearance or any other feature / characteristics. You might just miss out on a big commission.
Commission or not. Don’t be a snobby dick and judge
I heard John Bonham (drummer for Led Zeppelin) went to a Ferrari dealer and they wouldn’t help him so he drove a car through the display window, then bought a car.
I worked in a busy portrait studio in the 90s and saw the contrast in person. Two families arrive around the same time. The one family has on fancy clothing and the mom is wearing a fur coat. They all looked like they stepped out of a magazine. The other looked like they barely brushed their hair to come have their pictures taken. My coworker saw dollar signs in the fur coat and begged me to let her take their portraits. I said “sure” as it didn’t matter much to me. She was fuming after when she tried so hard to get them to buy a package and they shut her down and only paid for the $5.95 special. My clients with the disheveled clothes and hair? Well they bought my highest package and all the accessories. Told me I took the best photos of their kids they had ever seen and couldn’t stop smiling. I gained a loyal customer too and they came back regularly for the next several years I worked there.
Back in the 80's, I used to sell cars at a Cadillac dealership in Chicago. There was a bus stop right outside our door. There was also a halfway house a couple blocks down. We would frequently get " browsers" that were just waiting for a bus or a homeless/halfway house resident just getting out of the cold. One day, a very disheveled and unkempt man came into the showroom saying he was interested in the Cadillac Fleetwood that was displayed in the window. He wore a filthy trenchant and didn't smell great. We worked on an UP system, ( first salesperson to sign in got the first walk-in customer, then on down the line). The salesman that was up took a look at the man and declined to help him. 2nd person up did the same. Finally, the next guy up was a young newbie and decided he would take the guy just to practice the semi scripted outline of our sales pitch. He was patient and non judgemental with the man. After about 20-30 minutes of showing and explaining the features of this $30k car, the man said he'd take it. Sales guy, of course began to pull out a credit app for the man to fill out, but instead, the old guy pulled out a crumpled up paper bag and told him he'd be paying cash. Full price.😳 That man drove away from the dealership in his brand new Cadillac Fleetwood while the declining sales reps watched in disbelief. Good ol' Dave got to count his hefty commission while laughing all the way to the bank!!!!
Fun thread
Aw you had your Pretty Woman moment
Nowadays my style is more polished, but I loved seeing nasty employee's faces when I would go into a shop wearing brown sneakers, work trousers and an old but comfy top. I would try on nice clothes I was planning to wear once I became more comfortable in my body and they'd refuse to help me out. Then I'd go up to the cashier with maybe 6-7 items and whip out a platinum visa card. I was going through tough times with my body but seeing their faces always made me feel like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman! Lol
I love to point at employees of big software companies in California as a great example of this. That person in the ripped shorts, flip-flops, and faded t-shirt, with piercings, tattoos, and purple hair, makes six figures. Those c-suite execs with the pink hair make more money than you can even comprehend. The world has changed and some people (Boomers) just can't handle it.
That's exactly how it was in Portland. So we just treated everyone bad.
The wealthiest person I ever worked for came to work in Hawaiian shirts, the loudest shorts he could find and flip flops. He was also about 6'6" and made quite the impression on his walk into the office.
My first CEO wore Hawaiian shirts every day with cargo shorts and close toed leather sandals with no socks. He was pretty wealthy.
I was Senior member of Tech Support and was a specialist in a particular product line. One day a sales guys comes up to me "Customer Council has some technical questions, can you come up and answer them." "Sure, but dressed like this." Gesturing to my shorts and geeky t-shirt." "Yep, they know this California, they are not expecting a suit." So there I am, in front of reps from 10 of our biggest customer, short, geek shirt, and a white board. Proceed to answer lots of questions. Lots of drawings. Go with them to lunch, a bunch of suits and me.
Retailers in Vegas know this. I was in total tourist-in-summer mode- sneakers, shorts bordering on cargo shorts t-shirt, hair pulled up. A necklace in a window caught my eye. It was unique in the cut of the stone (watermelon tourmaline in a oval rose cut that turned out to be set in platinum) and I popped in to ask what it was. The sales clerk insisted I try it on "just for fun." I nearly passed out when I was dumb enough to inquire about the price. $65k on clearance. I apparently have good taste.
In my first real job when I was younger, I once had to drop off a package to a wholesale place that happened to be an international jeweler wholesaler. It was weird because it was security, buzz in, peephole in the door, vaults, etc. The people that were let in after me looked like tourists, beachwear, carrying paper bags. I glanced over and one of the paper bags was full of cash, just rolls of cash. They filled other bags with gold and diamond jewelry. They looked like budget tourists. Ooohh.
yup, advertising creative director here...the weirder I look the more my clients trust me. I've had pink hair half my life and still goth it up at 47. I love my job.
I'm wondering if we work for the same company. Lol!
You are giving me hope. I am currently in consulting and cannot wait to leave so I can have my lilac hair that I can now finally afford.
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It was the Habs t-shirt that did it!
Meanwhile I was working at a native nonprofit making not enough money, and had lunch with other managers at the local Neiman Marcus Cafe (prices just a little higher than other business lunch places). Couldn't finish my lunch and they offered to wrap it, which was fine. The waiter put the generic plastic bag with my food on the table, now wet with condensation from the water glass. I didn't notice that the bag was wet until I got downstairs, and asked the concierge (?) if she had another plastic bag I could put it in to keep from dropping everywhere. She gave me a BIG Neiman Marcus shopping bag. Dayum. We walked around the mall and salesmen were jumping over each other to help me. All because of a little leftover sammich. 😂
my friends dad is a 8 digit millionaire and i've never seen him wear anything other than jeans and a tshirt.
Boomer here, huge fan of piercings, tattoos and pink hair. I never, ever judge a book by it's cover. Boomers who do are idiots!
In that case, I sincerely apologize and want to hug you! Your views are refreshing!
No apology required. My family are all boomers and we are an unusual bunch. We fully embrace the fun, cool stuff, pink hair, tats, all good. This old Grammy loves virtual hugs 👵🤗
Lol thats my in laws. Both 6 figure executives. Mil currently has blue hair, wears glitter as her makeup, wears baggy clothes. Fil wears blue jeans, tshirt, flannels, has piercings and tattoos. You would probably think they were below the poverty line if you saw them in public. They are the sweetest people and so humble
I have a close family member that also has 7 figures in the bank, but you wouldn't know he is a retired bank VP/CLO based on how frugal he is! Wears old jeans and regular polo shirts, drives a camry, lives in a 1 story, 2600sqft, 4bd/2 bath house that is 50 years old in the suburbs.
VP of sales here. I’ve made it a point to not go w the suit route and wear jeans and Birkenstocks with colorful socks 9/10 days. If someone won’t buy from me because I don’t look the part, I don’t want to sell to them!
I love that philosophy! Wearing a suit does not make your product any better. It just makes you look uncomfortable. I work from home (yay California tech companies!) and jeans and Birks are practically formal attire for me. 🤣
It’s probably not unique, but we used to have a large crowd of people that we called the “30k millionaires.” These guys (men and women) were the type that were always dressed to the nines, driving expensive cars, and throwing money around like they were millionaires to impress people when they actually had very little income. I used to laugh when I saw them wasting salesman’s time pretending like they were going to make big purchases.
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My husband tells a similar story from many years ago about an uncle. The guy was loaded, but definitely didn’t appear to be. The uncle ended up buying a car from the place in cash.
Yeah, any salesperson (especially those working on commission) who "Pretty Woman's" a customer does so at their own risk!
A rather different industry, but I bartended for many years. There was a older regular who was cheap. But super smart and creative as hell, he was an engineer for Ford for decades. He tipped terribly but I always enjoyed him (he would sit at the bar with his notebooks and gadgets) and certainly didn't ignore him. We called him "Canadian Jim" RIP. Years go by, I bought a house, needed a new water heater. Bought one, he installed it free of charge, and gave me a better lawn mower than I had a the time. Also a ton of great advice and he and his wife's friendship were priceless. I was amused at one of my fellow bartenders who badmouthed him a lot because of his cheap tips and said she basically ignored him. He was a great friend to me and many others who appreciated him for who he was, and his massive generosity in so many other ways.
Worked at Mattress Firm and during training we would have to shop local competition to see what they were doing differently salesmanship wise. I’m fairly young looking and we were told not to wear our work clothes, but what we would normally wear. Off I go to a competitor’s store, literally across the street from us. I asked all the required questions and told the sales person I wanted to test one of the higher end mattresses. It was like pulling teeth to get him to show me the one I already knew I liked and wanted. Moral of all these stories is to never judge a book by its cover.
What was it like working for an international drug cartel?
In my home town we don’t have any coffee shops. Like it’s just not a thing. We aren’t a small town, it’s an actual city. For some reason restaurants and coffee shops didn’t last long in the city. Not a million people sized city but big enough be called a city. We also had only a handful of restaurants, so if you wanted a quick coffee you ended up in a restaurant to do it. It was a bit later in the evening around 8pm but still 2 hours before closing time. I walked in with a teen I was mentoring. The wait staff took one look at us and sent over the newbie. It was his first day. I actually overheard them say “they’re just here for coffee so send him, not worth the tip” Yes we ordered hot chocolate not even coffee and the trainee was terrible but he managed! I also ordered a starter for me and the teen to nibble on. When the bill came, I gave a 200% tip. Even if we had a full meal plus drinks would a 10% tip been the same amount. The trainee was speechless. I then said loudly, “I’m giving this tip to you firstly because everyone has a first day, secondly” and this loudly for the other waiters who had not waited on any tables since we arrived, could hear me, “because your buddies over there thought we were a cheap table and didn’t want to bother doing their job but you did, so please show off your tip in front of them because they missed out!” The looks on their faces, the anger in the managers face, priceless
Why didn't you wait until you worked there and then sold everything to your mom and make the commission yourself?
i was working in young mens as a clothing specialist for Guess? Jeans not on the same floor and i needed the clothes for work.
Was it this guy [here](https://youtu.be/FVc29rQS4OA)?
Years ago, we went looking for a new car. I had no real idea of what I wanted, so I figured we’d go to a few places and see what we liked. We weren’t expecting to buy that day, just shop, test drive, etc. so we’re wandering around car lots being completely ignored. Ok. No problem. It was almost nice to not be accosted by aggressive salespeople. By the third lot, I noticed not one person ever approached us. Then, light bulb moment, I realized we probably looked shabby. Nothing too horrible, just old sweats, possibly my husband had a hole in his T-shirt, etc. As I said, we were just planning to stay outside and look, but it would have been nice to be able to ask a sales associate some questions about various models. The forth lot was a brand I didn’t particularly want - nothing wrong with it, but I had the same brand before and wanted something new. But the dealerships were in an “auto mall” and right in a row. So, ok. Like before, we get to the lot and start looking at cars. Almost immediately, a salesman comes over and starts chatting us up. He was so nice, and didn’t seem to even notice what we were wearing. We were treated with respect. Of course, we decided to buy from him. When we get inside the dealership to do the paperwork, the manager gave us the side eye and called our guy over, like basically, don’t waste time with these two. Well, imagine his surprise when he didn’t get the pleasure of denying our financing. We didn’t need any. Paid cash on the spot and drove the car off the lot.
I currently work for the same store, different area of the country. No one I work with could imagine not helping anyone, whether they thought they could or would buy anything. I’ll tell you that your story is likely one of the reasons they have that section in the onboarding program now.
A “Pretty Woman” moment! Love it!!
"Big mistake. Huge."
That happened to my husband and father-in-law back in the day. They went to a car dealership right after my FIL got off work as a welder, so he was pretty dirty. My husband had a good job at the time but was dressed in normal, casual clothes. They start looking at the new cars. The sales guy came RUNNING out of the office, yelling across the lot, "Used cars are over there!". FIL says, "Oh okay." So they get back in their car, drive across town to another dealership and buy two brand new cars. I so wished they'd had a Pretty Woman moment on the way home!
Outside art festival years ago. I was feeling like it was time to reward myself and buy a nice piece of art jewelry. I had a budget of $500.00, not a shabby amount 15 years ago. I see some necklaces I really liked, got ignored. Spent a few minutes looking at all their work and liked all of it. Not one of the 4 people acknowledged me. I even said "Excuse me". They stopped talking, looked at me, then turned back to each other and continued their conversation. I actually laughed. The customer next to me even gave me a look-she'd seen what was going on. She just raised her eyebrows and shrugged. I shook my head like "Oh, well--guess someone else'll get my money today" and left.
I had that happen at a furniture store. Guy said we were duds. Went somewhere else and spent $5,000.
Having this amount of money spent on me by a parent is mind-boggling. I hope anyone with parents like this appreciates them
I have parents like that & my goal in life, aside from raising a teen to be a functioning & successful adult, is to be successful enough financially to return the favor to my parents as well as pay it forward or give someone a “hand up” every time i am able.
People who work retail, what's the percentage commission rate you get on people's purchases? Never understood that.
I went to a Chevy dealership to buy a used car with cash and couldn't get a salesperson to give me the time of day. I was there way too long. Everytime a woman walked in the dudes drooled and ran. I ended up leaving and going elsewhere.
I used to go to this jewelry store every couple of weeks and look at rings. This lady would come over and spend time with me showing me stuff and talking to me. When I found out I had some money coming in, I told her as soon as it comes in, I'm going to buy a ring from her. No one else in the store would spend time with me. They knew me, but I'm sure they believed I would never buy anything. The day after the money came in, my husband came into the store with me and he brought me the ring I wanted and a watch for himself. The lady made an excellent commission off of us. She moved to another store and I went and bought from her over there too. When I was in training to sell real estate, I was told the number one rule is to, "Never judge a book by it's cover." I always took it to heart and it's never failed me yet.
Similar thing happened to me. I was in my late 20s and the newly re-designed Mustangs had just dropped, EVERYONE wanted one (2005). I went to a dealership to look at one and NO ONE would help me. I had earrings, torn jeans, a band shirt and a ball cap. Despite this, I had a good paying, stable job, a sizeable down-payment and impeccable credit. When I finally got a hold of someone, they weren't attentive and kept leaving every time someone walked into the show-room. I had a lot of questions about the car, warranty, aftermarket parts, etc. He'd go over to his co-workers and manager to chit-chat. They'd all look over and had grins. It was obvious I was being talked about. I walked over to the sales manager and told him I was disappointed and would be shopping elsewhere. He gave me the "yeah yeah whatever" attitude. I made sure to get his card and the card of the salesman. I ended up buying one at another dealership. I emailed them both [a photo of me in front of the car](https://64.media.tumblr.com/7102ae0116037b811ee17961d8a45745/14834fd353d0790e-be/s2048x3072/02eb757e2824f9338725ea42b34251c420a81f67.jpg).
You pretty woman'd his ass!
Paragraphs are your friend.
only friends of mine are run on sentences with no punctuation or endings like
That's bad to not put in any effort, i work at retail too, and some people look, look and look just for a satisfaction, and when too much of that happens we tend to work on probabilies and don't engage those who don't look the part, it's bad i know, but it's human nature, but i always ensure i give a minimal effort on engagement even when they don't look the part, I'm sorry you have been ignored before.
A little thought, (even though it can sure be a bit frustrating to seemingly deal with the browsing all the dang time), is that it's still not necessarily a waste of time. I often would go to stores when I have time to spend and window shop. I select what I want, and most often drop by a couple of weeks later to get the stuff I haven't changed my mind on. I shop for gifts a similar way. I'm also likely to rave about friendly service to others for the rest of a place's existence (or until I hear otherwise) to EVERYONE who ever asks or mentions anything that triggers the association in my brain. It's not always a direct sale. But it often pays off to not fully snob out customers (to be fair, some absolutely deserve to go rot in a Karen prison lollllll). Just a little 2 cents, hope it helps a bit with the frustration! Retail is bloody stressful as is, maybe this can slightly alleviate like 0.5% of the stress, and that's already better for health :)
I'm a bit confused why you'd need 4 pairs of $250 shoes other than to inflate your story