A week later, the doors again hiss open and the man in the suit walks in. This time, he has his wife with him. The salesman sees them coming, checks in vain for any colleagues and realises - despairingly - that he’s alone.
“Morning, Sir.” the salesman says, mustering some enthusiasm from the depths of his soul.
“Morning,” says the man, “this is my wife. She’s the one who really makes the decisions round here.”
The salesman and the man’s wife shake hands, sitting down across the desk from each other.
“Right.” says the wife, “About this car...”
“Ah yes,” our hero responds, “the car. It’s here - I’m just having it brought round for you. The mechanics have been working on it all week to get it ready. All we need to do now is sort out how you’d like to pay.”
“Pay?!” she says. “What do you mean, “pay”? We wanted to make sure it was right for us first, before we bought it. I mean, we’ve got three other cars we’re trying out at the moment before we make a decision.”
“Right. So we’ve spent a week working solidly to get your car prepared as you wanted, now you’re telling me you have three others to try out and you don’t want to pay for it anyway?”
“Yes, that’s right,” she says, nodding, with a smile, “you prepare the car the way we asked, then we drive it around to see if we like it. If we like it, we might buy it - but it really depends on how much we’ve got after finishing building the conservatory.”
The salesman stares at her, blankly. “OK, you want a test drive, yes?” he asks.
“Oh no,” says the man, “we want you to build the car to our specification, then we drive it around for a bit along with three other cars we’re trying out. Then, after three months, we might buy it.”
“...if we’ve got enough after the conservatory, darling.” the wife adds.
The salesman - who needs to pay the rent on his showroom, his staff’s salaries and the taxman his ever-expanding wedge, quietly walks to the doors and turns the sign round to read “Closed”. Then, he walks out of the showroom to find a nice, quiet, stress-free job in bomb-disposal.
2 comments:
Well I was So hoping that there would be a twist in the tail, that might end up explaining the '3' month test drive. Like perhaps they had been let down - or had a disagreement with the Finance company etc etc.
But a good story.
I MUST dig out the story of the soap bar, in a London Hotel, may take me a while .. it is so funny.
Good story though :)
Should teach everyone to check before they spend any money in any direction on anything ... And never assume ... get things in writing !
Thanks Claire. I wondered about a twist in the tail of the tale too, but decided against it. Why? Because there so seldom is in real life and I'm a pragmatist. Dull, I know.
Looking forward to your bar of soap story though...
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