in defense of car salesmen

My father has been in sales since he got his first job at 16. He's been selling cars since he was in his early 20s. I've grown up around car sales. My first job was as an evening receptionist at a car dealership my dad worked at. I know what people think of car salesmen. They are smarmy and only want your money. In the case of my father and some of his best friends in the business, they aren't that way. I have met some smarmy carsalespeople (women sell cars, too, and they are MEAN) but I noticed that most of them are just people you wouldn't want to talk to anyway.

One thing I've always hated was people going to car dealerships and getting upset (read: pissed off) that the salesman doesn't want to take them on a test drive. Um....duh. If you aren't going to buy the car then you are essentially wasting their time. Test drives take about 30 minutes when all is said and done. In that 30 minute window someone who is more serious about buying a car can come in and go buy from someone else or go to another dealership altogether. I've been on exactly one test drive in my whole life. I test drove my Rabbit and knew I wanted it after I got around the first block. The whole thing took about 10 minutes. I didn't want to waste my dad's friend's time since I wasn't getting the car that day.

The other thing I hate is when I was little and people would come in right when the store was closing and my dad would stay sometimes until 10:30pm with these people and not sell them a car. This is what car salesmen call a "nightmare" customer. They are the ones who waste precious HOURS of your time with questions and repeat test drives and the like only to go to another dealership.

Did you know that car salespeople work on commission? Well, they do. If you dick them around and cost them money, they aren't going to be happy. That's the way it works. Car salesmen are people, too.