Today was one of those once in a blue moon in a la nina in a leap year in a super delegate weekend kind of days that make you want to collapse when you get home. The dealership I work in is rather small, there are 8 of us in the showroom filling the various parts, sales, service, and cashiering roles. Today 4 of us were out sick. Maybe the flu, maybe ebola, maybe they all got drunk and made out, passing it around and knocking them all out...we shall never know. But this left me working in every department, on the busiest day of the month. Needless to say I was a bit stressed and busy.
Around mid day, I was helping 2 people at my counter and another on the phone, when this scraggely looking guy with a backpack came in asking if I was the "detailing manager." So I tried to remain calm and I introduced myself, letting him know that I was in charge of the service department, and yes, that detailing was one of the services I provide.
From there it was on! The backpack flew open and out came the "SHOW TIME"
miracle cleaner! I wasn't too impressed, so I asked him "what does it do?" still trying to be cordial and polite.
"Well let me show you what it does!" he sais and then he disappears behind the counter. I poke my head around to see him scrubbing the floors with his cleaner and rag.
"Do you see what it did to that grease stain? It's gone!" He cried proudly.
"That's amazing!" I exclaimed, "Can it clean through an old oil stain?"
"Yes it can, follow me!" and with that he was on a hunt for the biggest spot we had.
Here's a little back story on my show room.....it's a mess. We took over the dealership last may from a fat guy who took no pride in what his business looked like, full of lazy employees who don't know how to use a vacuum cleaner. The carpet is maybe 30 years old, torn in spots, and I honestly couldn't tell you what the original color is because it's now a uniform grey With TONS of oil spots.
So I decided to see how much of my carpet the guy would be willing to clean to make the sale. And he cleaned about half. He asked if I had seen enough, but I wanted to know if it would damage paint, so I took him outside (because our outer walls are dirty too). After cleaning a few stains on the wall, again he asked if I'd seen enough. But I had not.
"Will it clean the streaks off my windows?" I asked, pointing to our big wall of windows.
"Sure does," he said with noticeably less zeal.
And sure enough he cleaned most of our windows. So I started to take a look at the pricing sheet he gave me, humoring him a little. But I really didn't want any, so I told him thanks but no thanks.
"Is it the price?" He asked me (this shit cost $50 a quart! Lame!)
"No, I just have no interest in your cleaner. Since you saw that I was busy helping 3 customers and still decided to interupt my day, I decided to get some work out of you so you weren't a total waste of time.... Thank you for washing my floor."
And with that I walked away. Does that make me an A hole?
Maybe
