Moving Cars - Part 1

Moving Cars – Part 1

An unwary customer straying onto the premises by mistake could quickly be hunted down. Once cornered, they would be held hostage until they bought a car, or at least made some form of solid commitment to come back and buy one. This commitment could be in the form of leaving your first born child (or second born; we were certainly flexible that way) until you came back to pick up the car - and pay, preferably on finance. There were not so many customers and that meant that most of the time we were kicking out heels or hiding. Moving cars was all that we could do to create the illusion that we were working. It became a skill which we honed to a fine art. It was the front of the car that had to line up with its neighbour in such a way that if you were to shine a laser from the first car to the last car, maybe around fifteen cars, there would be no deviation. A slightly trickier version of this is to line the cars up in a diagonal. Nor sure why this was done, but maybe they looked just a tiny bit faster that way.

The artistic part came in matching up colours. That’s basically it. Maybe the model type too. Lining up all black cars is simple. But then someone said it looks too dull so there should be a colour in there. Before long, everyone had an opinion about what constituted the best colour display. The person that solved this was Frank. There was no messing with him, no debate, or discussion. He had been in the motor trade for years and there was nothing he did not know about how to line up a car. So we did it his way.

Cue Roddy. He had been off the day before, in that luxury we know as our day off - unless we had to work it which was often, and came back full of vigour and recharged. He look at the new layout of cars and declared,

‘That’s a load of pish’.

Not one to mince his words was Roddy. I think someone may have whispered that Frank had us running around like headless chickens for the bulk of the previous day to achieve this master plan on display. But the truth was we sensed an opportunity for some more mayhem if we did what we were told without question. We were issued with updated instructions to go and change them all around to a new, and previously untried pattern. Roddy had a few years in the industry, but an ego the size of a WW2 blimp. Obviously, he had his own version of a master plan and we were sent off to implement it.

This gave rise to one of the funniest moments I have ever had in sales. When moving cars on the sales lot, the driver does the steering and a colleague outside does the directing. This is because we sometimes are manoeuvring within inches of other vehicles - and they are all pretty expensive. So it is impossible to do it safely yourself. I was paired up with Sam. He was a jolly well-meaning sort of guy that never took anything too seriously. He was also fairly large guy but he carried it well and it suited his jolly disposition perfectly. I was about to find out he could not tell his left from his right, nor did he have any spacial awareness. There are a few hand signals needed from the guide to let the driver know what to do. Spinning their finger one way or another indicates steering wheel direction, come forward or go back are obvious. Some of the guys thought this guidance was a direct threat to their masculinity and would go rogue and drive solo. This was a major source of friction between salesmen as the guides were standing waving their hands around but the driver was doing their own sweet thing. Sam was trying to guide me into a space. My attention was fixed on him and waiting for his signal. He waved me forward with a wiggle of his chubby little fingers, smiling broadly all the time. He was nearly always smiling even during the rubbish jobs. Then he started to rotate his index finger rapidly anti clockwise, so I followed the instruction and turned the wheel to suit. Suddenly he waggled both hands at me in the jazz hands motion, which was his version of the instruction to stop. Then he threw his head back rocked backwards as he laughed. His whole body was vibrating as he gradually composed himself. Then he span his finger on one hand in the opposite direction and gave me the come forward with the other. I complied. Guess what. He scrubbed this move too. The car had changed position by about 20 centimeters. He stood and scratched his head with a look of puzzlement written all over his face. I could see him mentally trying to map out how to get the car from A to B. He indicated that I should go back to the very start. After a few more false starts, I was in stitches. He waggled his hands in multiple directions and then when it went wrong, he would look at his hands accusingly as if somehow they had betrayed him. He was edging me into the final space after about five minutes and we were still on the first car. I could not help but to check my mirror, partly because maybe I had a touch of male pride in me too and partly because I was beginning to doubt that Sam knew what was going on. I thought we were getting perilously close to the next car. Sam was still waving me into position, but he had adopted a sort of glazed expression and I had seen him glance around about him a few times. He had reached his boredom threshold and had seen some customers drive on to the lot and he was contemplating abandoning his post to go and try to catch them. How do I know this? Because I would likely have been the same. The parking aids, reversing beepers to you and me, were on continuous tone, but that was normal as we were always going to be close. I did not trust Sam, so stopped and I popped my head out the window.

‘Hey, Sam! Are you sure mate?’

‘Eh?’ Sam replied and then actually looked at what I thought he had been looking at all the time. His eyes widened and he threw his hands up. ‘For flip sake STOP.’

‘I am stopped you idiot. Look.’

‘You nearly hit that car behind you.’

I got out and had a look. I was literally about 2 millimeters away from one of our top models.

‘Me? You’re supposed to be the guide. What are you playing at Sam? That was too close.’ He just laughed all the harder. In a few moments we were both laughing so hard we could not speak. To anyone looking at us we must have looked like a pair of deranged delinquents - or naughty school kids.

The cars eventually got all lined up. I had replaced Sam as the guide and he was the driver. He seemed marginally more suited to that, but only just. Afterwards, we treated ourselves to a wander around while waiting for the interminable day to end. If there were no customers to pester, the days could be long and painful.

The next day was to prove much more entertaining though as Frank was due to pop into the sales meeting again. We were all expecting the usual motivational and empowering speech. The equivalent of high praise from Frank was not to have your five minutes in the hot seat being given a total bollocking. But today he was red all the way up to his forehead from the moment he arrived. He stood at the head of the table and ignored any attempt to engage him with the sycophantic, “Morning Frank” and literally trembled. He actually looked like a kettle about to boil over, those eyes normally so chaotic and psychotic were pure black and completely devoid of emotion. There was nothing there, just empty pits with no sign of a soul. It had not taken me long to realise that Frank was in fact insane. Maybe not clinically, but that’s only because he had not been near a clinic. If he had then he would have been detained for his own safety. The moment I realised this for sure was when he started this meeting by saying (snarling),

‘I’m going to stab someone.’

I glanced towards Roddy as I suspected he was in for it. Roddy was grinning to himself inanely. Then the meeting took off.