Selling Cars and the Christmas Season

This year is the first that I get to experience a full time job during the holidays and I really don't want to complain as much as give people props for how tough this is. I appreciate that God has provided for me a job, but I'm definitely not raking in the cash, and I thank him for that as well. See, the great thing about now making much is that you get to evaluate what is important in your life, and choose to support those things instead of frivolous junk that you might otherwise spend your time and money on in the event that you had an excess of either. Christmas does put a strain on the budget, but it also makes you analyse why you even do the things you do.

Why am I buying presents for people? Why do I feel like I have to spend a certain amount or I'm just not caring? More importantly, what does it say about my world view if the only way people know I care is if I spend a ton of cash on them? I think all of these are questions that we should ask ourselves more often.

By definition, car sales is "retail", but to say that I'm working in retail is like saying I can pilot a cruise ship because I can operate a troll motor on a fishing boat. Car sales are just so different, and I wish I could be a part of the insane money changing hands like there are at Walmart, Best Buy, and all the rest. I was watching the news last night and it said the sales for today were to amount in the billions of dollars, being that it's the last Saturday before Christmas. Something else that makes retail special, and the same goes for if you work at a restaurant, is that you are here to serve people. While that sounds cute, what that means is that all those days everybody else gets off, you're working so that you can sell those people stuff. It is a different lifestyle, and I think it puts added pressure on your spiritual walk when you can't get as much time off as your friends. Getting 1 day off in December isn't exactly my idea of a vacation, but I thank God for the opportunity to see things from the point of view of a car salesman. Just like people think that everybody should be a server at some time in their life, I think you should have to sell cars for a 6 months to a year at some point.

Imagine a job where you go to work, and you know that everybody that you talk to that day is going to lie to you. You want to tell them about the product your selling, and they ignore you and talk about what they wanna talk about: price. You try to get them to try out the product, i.e. test drive it, and they will have nothing of it. You are always the liar in their eyes, you are always trying to take from them, and you are the greasy smile that reaches into their pockets and steals their hard earned money. You're looked at as a swindler, a crook, and a vulture. It's ok to get mad, yell, and cuss at the car salesman, they're just a bunch of freeloaders anyway.

And here are the excuses: If I tell them the truth they'll take from me. You aren't nice when you negotiate. You have to be hard or they'll take advantage of you. It's ok to lie to them just to test drive a car even when I don't plan on buying it, because I just want to have some fun that day.

Why doesn't that work in other stores? You don't walk into Best Buy, and take a TV off the wall, walk out, plug it in at your house, watch it for an hour, and bring it back because you don't like it. You don't go to buy clothes at a department store, and get mad and yell at the saleslady because she has the audacity to charge you $50 for a shirt. And when you go to Home Depot, and the guy in the apron is telling you why these light fixtures are the best, and they're going to work for you, you don't cut him off and tell him you're not buying it if you have to pay the price on the box.

We don't do that, because it's not expected of us. This is where we get to the core of who we are. When we walk onto a car lot, we have full license to just do whatever we want, Christian or otherwise, to get the deal we want. I would challenge you to find that in Scripture.

Here is the point I'm trying to make. Working around these salesmen, they're here trying to feed their families, and earn a living just like everybody else with a "real" job is doing the same. Thinking of these guys as "car salesmen" it's easy to be evil to them, but what if you think of them like you think of your family. What if this was your father you were buying the car from? Would you belittle him and treat him like trash? Of course not.

As followers of Christ, I think the easiest witness you can have is to have a Christian attitude even on the car lot. It's a lot harder than you think, because of how the world and culture condition you to hate care salesmen. Salesmen work on commission. That means that no matter where they work, they get commission and helps them put food on the table and gas in the tank. Whether they work at Sears, HH Gregg, Macy's, or at a dealership somewhere, they expect to get paid for their services. Servers at a restaurant should be tipped well by a Christian, because it shows love and the spirit of giving, like Christ's free gift of salvation to the world. I'm not saying you have to pay whatever the salesmen tells you to pay, but you should act like you love Jesus while you negotiate, and you should think about how you're ok with tipping everbody else in your life, and letting businesses make money on you in every other facet, but with the dealership it's suddenly an outrage. Yes, they will make a profit, but in reality the salesmen really doesn't make that much, especially not on each individual. So when you get close to the price you want, what difference does it make to knock off that extra 300 bucks? Would Christ deprive this man of a paycheck to pay for food and living for his family just not to pay an extra 3 dollars a month? If you're mad about paying a little too much, think about how the bank makes money off of you, paying you next to no interest. You don't get mad at them and take your money out to put it in a credit union usually. You just let them pay you less interest, or keep that extra bit of your money, because it's easy. Selling cars is not easy, and just getting through the process is enough to get paid for. Going through the process of greeting the customer, calming them down, finding a vehicle they can afford, finding the important thing they're interested in, getting gas in the vehicle, taking it to clean up, filling out the paperwork, calling all the necessary people for payoff, insurance, and loan applications, making the customer comfortable with the cost, explaining the fees and how you have no control over charging them, delivering the vehicle, calling the customer before the process to get them in, and after to follow up and make sure everything is great. All that stuff sounds like work doesn't it? You expect a paycheck at your job, so stop robbing men and women working at dealerships because you're so selfish that you won't show the love of Christ with them.

So be careful of how overarching your selfishness is this Christmas season. How many excuses to do you make so that you can do the things you want? Worded differently: how do you try to excuse your sin so that you don't feel guilty for wronging others? The salespeople and the people working at the places you shop have souls. Don't forget that Christ died for the world, not for you and your financial and emotional security.


(disclaimer: You should negotiate at the car lot. You should want to get a deal. You should never forget who has provided the money to pay for the vehicle you're looking at. Honor God with your actions and share the love of God with the salespeople. It does cost more. How much did Christ's sacrifice cost?)