The Man with Faces On His Shoes

Las Vegas. Spring 2006

The two Russians seem like nice guys to me. I have done everything right and put them on a car which they like, a Honda CRV. One of the rules at the dealership here in Vegas is that I do not bring a customer inside to a table to talk numbers unless he or she has test driven the vehicle. If the customer likes the car, that emotion becomes important in closing the deal. I am learning that customers do not purchase based on logic and reasoning. The game is all about triggering the right emotional response. Do this, and they will actually buy a car that they do not need and can not afford. During my very first sale, I felt a pang of guilt about this when the customer said to me that she would buy the new Accord rather than the Civic and just eat less for a few months.

But that is not my concern, as my manager, Tony tells me. I am trying to survive and thrive out here in the desert. Anyone can be an order taker, he says. It takes a real salesman to put a customer in the car that the salesman chooses, making the customer think they chose it and driving off the lot happy.

It is a game that I am not very good at, yet, so the dealership does not let me close my own deals. Once I get the test drive done and the customer wants to talk numbers, I bring them inside and Tony takes over.

That is what is happening with the two Russians, a father and son. The four of us sit around a small table. Tony is a native Hawaiian, and speaks English with an accent which I never heard before I met him. There is a bit of a language barrier between the Russians and him, and the Russians have a blank expression on their faces.

I try to help things along by asking them a question. "What did you like about the car during the test drive?"

Tony immediately kicks me under the table. It is not the first time he has done that. He basically wants me to shut up when he sits down.

When I first started this job, I was more in a fog than I am now. I could sense Tony was trying tactics of some sort with the customer at the table, but I could not really identify what he was doing.

Now, as more experience comes, I begin to see his strategy and how he is trying to move the customer to a place where he can go into a closing sequence. He is like a tiger circling its prey.

Today, he thinks he has the Russians there and writes down a number on "the four square," the payment plan grid that the dealership uses.

The two men look at it for a moment. The older Russian suddenly becomes angry. He shakes his head violently, says "No!" and stands up like he is ready to begin a physical fight. The son follows his lead. He pushes the paper back at Tony and begins yelling at him. The accent is so thick, though, that I can not tell if he is speaking English or Russian. I do not think Tony can tell, either.

This is the first time I have ever seen a customer react this way, a total 180 from the way the two behaved with me during the test drive.

Tony is also thrown off by the emotional outburst. Like most people, he does not function so well when someone is yelling at him. I saw this when Alejandro, another salesman, went to Tony complaining that I had snaked him out of a deal. When Alejandro began yelling and threatening to quit, Tony caved and decided to give him credit for the sale.

Tony is acting the same, skittish way now. Wide eyed, Tony speaks in hushed tones, and just tries to get the Russians calm again, but it is to no avail. They storm out of the dealership and do not return...(Later in my sales career, I will learn this is a tactic some buyers use- outrage or indignation- to try and get the number lowered. That practice comes to irritate me, and it is a weakness I possess as a salesman in that I have a hard time not showing my irritation to the customer when I see him or her doing it).

***

Afternoon is turning to evening. I stand at the southwest corner of the dealership lot, looking toward the strip, or Las Vegas Boulevard. In the Aladdin Casino, not too far from the dealership, the Miss America Pageant is getting underway (Four years later, in 2010, when I am in law school at Florida State University, one of the beautiful contestants competing tonight will become my classmate).

I look back toward the dealership and see Hector walking outside on the sidewalk, checking on his sales team.

Hector is a sales manager, the same as Tony. I like Hector, though he has not paid much attention to me since I started. He is from the Philippines. In this section of east Las Vegas, the Filipino community is significant, and we get a lot of Filipino customers here. Every one of the members of Hector's sales team is from the Philippines as well. They all can speak Tagalog, in addition to English. Picture a young, fat Samoan and you can picture Hector. He moves very slowly when he crosses the sales floor, almost shuffling, and I can hear his heavy breathing. Hector takes pride in his appearance, though. He is always dressed in a nice suit with the coat on. He wears a noticeable gold watch and a gold pinkie ring.

What interests me about Hector is that he is also very good at his job, but he hardly ever smiles. It is not that he has an angry or sad expression- I do not get that vibe from him at all. I believe his not smiling is a combination of maintaining a poker face which he thinks is necessary for the job. Also, with his weight, all his movements are calculated for efficiency, and facial expressions are an unnecessary expenditure of energy.

A little further down, Sonja, the only female salesperson at the dealership, talks with her partner, Desmond.

I like Desmond. He has been one of the friendliest people to me at the dealership. A big black man originally from Jacksonville, Florida, I enjoy listening to him talk. He has been a car salesman for 20 years or more. He speaks with a lisp. This, combined with a rasp in his throat that comes from years of smoking, tickles my eardrums when he speaks- especially the way he says "Customer."

He and Sonja have been together many years. She is also a very friendly and honest person. They both are hard working people, and I was amused at the frank answer of Sonja when I asked how she met Desmond.

"It was in a bar in Jacksonville," she said. "We liked each other, and I went home with him. The next morning, he tried to give me some money. I told him, 'You don't have to do that.' And we've been together ever since."

To my surprise, Desmond and Sonja are trying to save enough money to get out of Las Vegas, to get back to Jacksonville if possible.

Desmond is one of the internet salesmen. This means he gets an office inside, rather than standing a post in front of a parking space like the rest of us. He works at a computer all day, sending out emails and responding to queries that the dealership receives on line. When a customer comes on the lot and says he is responding to an email, we are supposed to take that customer to Desmond, though not all the salesmen do (which is a prime example of how you "snake" someone in the car sales business).

In my conversations with Desmond during his smoke breaks, he is frustrated that the business is not what it used to be.

"There was a time, back in the 80s, when you could make a fistful of dollars in car sales," he says.

But not anymore. Corporate keeps much more of the money now on new cars. I sold a new Civic at full sticker price, plus tax, tags and title last week, and my commission was all of $300. With used cars, a salesman can make more, because the markup is higher.

Another thing that I like about Desmond are his dress shoes. They are custom made with alligator skin. He will come to work wearing orange ones, white ones, bright yellow, bright baby blue- virtually all sparkling colors of the spectrum. What's more, his shoes almost always have paintings on the top.

Sometimes it is an elaborate floral pattern. Usually, though, it is a portrait of a person. He takes the artwork on his shoes very seriously. It was a painting of his mother that he wore on each shoe one day. Other times, it is of characters like a court jester or an R&B singer. None of the portraits look realistic. The one of his mother was like a cartoonization of her. His supply of these type of shoes seems endless.

He has a friend who makes the shoes for him. I do not ask him why he does this, because I know the answer. It is a conversation starter, a way to break the ice with the customer and get the customer to laugh. Desmond tells me that when he was a younger, more energetic man, he wore a colorful suit to match, like bright orange.

Talking with Desmond and seeing what shoes he is wearing are two of the things I look forward to each day at the dealership.

Flying Between Fields

It has been an eventful and tiring week at work. Now past midnight, I am too exhausted to write the rather lengthy blog entry which I had in mind, "The Man With Faces On His Shoes," another story from my time in Las Vegas. That will come later. Instead, I will write about a memory from when I was eight years old or so, riding my bike out in the countryside where my family used to live: Rt. 7, Box 568B, Lumberton, North Carolina 28358.

There are no cars coming. Good.

I stand up on my BMX bike and push the pedals, pumping them one after another, as hard and rapidly as my legs can go.

"What's the fastest thing in the world?" I remember Brian, my friend at school, asking me one day.

"Light," I answer. "Nothing is faster than the speed of light."

"No, it's a bicycle," Brian says. "Because a bicycle is never wide open."

I smile at this memory. I think to myself, let's see if I can go faster than anything in the world.

It is a hot summer day. School is out for the year, which is why I can be outside pedaling down the middle of this country road in the early afternoon.

My plan is to get up close to my maximum speed on the asphalt, coast a little as I lean into a sharp left turn onto our long sandy driveway, then pedal again and go as fast as I can, until I come to the end of the driveway. I will push hard all the way to the finish, and then I will slam on brakes (my BMX has pedal brakes, not hand brakes, so I can easily lock the wheels).

The result is to skid several feet, turning my bike sideways to get a sensation, an angle of movement, that feels good and is rare.

I have done this several times before, and I enjoy studying the marks in the dirt afterward.

The house where we live is surrounded by corn and soybean fields. The crops whir by in my peripheral vision on either side of the road as I continue pumping my legs.

Here comes the driveway. I stop pedaling and lean hard into the turn, making sure that my left pedal is rotated high, otherwise it will scrape the pavement.

Riding on asphalt is quiet, but as soon as I hit the driveway, I listen to the sound of my tires crunching on sand and pebbles.

Keep pushing. Get up to the fastest speed I can. While a corn field is to my right, the yard is to the left, and a few pine trees line the driveway.

I pedal under them.

Suddenly, I find myself separated from my bike, flying through the air feet first. I am too startled, too confused by what is happening, to appreciate the weightless travel which I experience for just a second or two.

I land flat on my back with a hard thud. Fortunately, it does not hurt at all. It does not even knock the wind out of me.

Looking straight up at the blue sky through a few pine tree branches, I turn my head in time to see my bike, which must have been standing almost perfectly vertical on the front wheel for a second, crash to the side.

After a few more seconds on the ground, wondering what in the world just happened, I get up and dust myself off.

A crushed pine cone rests under my front wheel. This is amazing. I have run over countless pine cones with no problem. How is it that this one was able to stop my bike on a dime, traveling at my top speed, and send me flipping over the handle bars?

Reflecting on the situation for a couple more minutes brings me no closer to a solution, but I do decide that the whole thing was pretty cool, and I want to try it again.

I head back out to the road on my bike and go through it all once more. Speeding down the driveway, I run over the crushed pine cone, but nothing happens this time- only the slight bump.

I gather more pine cones and set them in a row across the drive way, to make sure that I do not miss, but still, there is no effect. My bike goes over them with no problem.

This is all very disappointing and puzzling.

Though I try for days and weeks after that experience, I am never able to replicate the two seconds of flight time between the corn fields and the soy bean fields.

Star Wars

Las Vegas. 2006

Tonight, it is just Steve and me standing the post outside by the customer parking spaces. It is a slow night, and the rest of the salesmen are off doing other things to kill time.

Steve and I have not gotten along all that well. The fault is entirely his. I have already recounted the episode where he would not answer when I asked a question, and when he warned me not to speak to him when he was with a customer. He ignores me almost all of the time.

Tonight, as we stand alone out under the high lamps illuminating the parking lot, he suddenly turns and stares at me.

He acts like he is wielding a light saber, and comes at me making sound effects to match.

To his surprise, I do not back down, but make my own sound effects like I am activating a light saber and take two steps toward him. We swing at each other and have a mock light saber fight.

"I am Obi-Wan Kenobi," he says, "and I'm about to go Jedi Master on your ass."

We continue our battle.

"No, you are Luke Skywalker," I say. "I am Darth Vader, and I am about to slice off your hand."

I do a quick slashing move, and Steve actually plays along, like his hand has just been chopped off and he has lost his light saber.

"You're a Star Wars fan?" he asks.

"What guy my age isn't?" I respond. I grew up with Star Wars.

Steve nods in agreement.

"The new ones are terrible, though," I say.

"What?" Steve exclaims. "No, they are just as good as all the others."

"They are terrible," I repeat. "There is no way the franchise would be as popular as it is today if Episodes One, Two, and Three were actually the first movies to come out. It's like a different George Lucas wrote them. The stories from those episodes aren't even consistent with the 1977 Star Wars."

Steve has opened a Pandora's box, and I think he realizes it.

"The whole idea of R2-D2 as an action character in those movies is absolutely ridiculous. R2-D2 and C-3PO should not even be characters in Episodes One through Three. I mean, a young Darth Vader creating C-3PO in Episode One? What is the point of that? Vader makes no mention of this in the original movies. Lucas wrote himself into a jam with that one, and his solution is to have C-3PO's memory wiped at the end of Episode 3? 3PO just says, 'Oh, no!'

It is a terrible treatment of such a great character to the original movies. 3PO doesn't even have any good lines in the new movies. The original movies had humor. These new one are not funny."

Steve just quietly listens and watches me as a student would a teacher. He is truly a Star Wars fan, I think, and is interested in what I have to say.

"I'll give you one example of an inconsistency between the original movies and the new ones," I continue. "R2-D2 is Obi-Wan's side kick in Episodes One through Three. I mean, he's right there fighting battles beside Obi-Wan, right?"

"Right," Steve says, curious as to where I am going.

"But in the original 1977 Star Wars, Episode Four, Obi Wan does not know R2-D2, and R2-D2 does not know him."

"Nah, man," Steve says.

"It's true," I say. "When Obi-Wan rescues Luke from the Sand People, Luke says that the droid must belong to him. Obi-Wan says, 'I don't seem to remember ever owning a droid.'"

Steve doesn't know what to say, but we continue talking about various aspects of Star Wars until closing time.

***

I feel a little sorry for Beaver. He recently had to go through some training on sexual harassment. He was too forward with Rose, a very beautiful lady from Nicaragua who works in the warranty office at the dealership. He often put his arm around her and whispered things when talking with her, and she complained about this to management. Beaver means no harm, though. He is only 18.

Now, though, he is out in front of the dealership with me, Steve, Rob and about six other salesmen on a Sunday afternoon. Beaver found this web site that has jokes about black people, and for some reason he thinks it is okay to tell these jokes in front of everyone. Perhaps it is because Rob (one of the three black salesman at the dealership along with Steve and an older man named Desmond) is the one who showed Beaver the site. Rob is laughing as hard as anyone at the jokes.

Some of the jokes are pretty graphic and refer to the blacks' time in slavery. I can not help but notice that Steve is not laughing, but is forcing a grin so as not to appear too obvious.

After our Star Wars conversation, I've gotten to know Steve a little better. He likes American History, too. Somehow, we got on the subject of family trees one day. He does not know much about his own family, other than that they came from Africa and some were slaves at one point. He is impressed that I can trace my relatives on my dad's side to 1835 in North Carolina, and on my mom's side to the 1600s in Virginia, coming from England.

I tell him that he has come a lot further in a shorter amount of time with less of a societal support structure.

Steve likes that point of view, I think.

Anyway, Beaver continues telling those awful jokes, and I have to say something.

"Beaver, you should remember some of that advice you got from management recently," I say.

Beaver freezes and does not look at me. After a moment, he responds, "Everyone here is okay with these jokes."

"Are you sure?" I ask.

Beaver stops telling the jokes.

***

A little while later, I see Steve standing alone by one of the cars, and I walk up to talk to him.

"Black people tear each other down more than any other race," he says.

He is irritated or disappointed with Rob for enjoying the jokes so much.

"We're a larger minority than the Hispanics," he says, "but there will be a Hispanic President of the United States before a Black President."

"Maybe, maybe not," I say.

I try to think of something encouraging. "You've just got to keep doing what you know is right. You should be a role model for Rob. You are older than he is."

Steve seems to take these words to heart. I hope they are helpful.