"We don't serve your type"

Ken Ibold said:
Story update: I got additional information that clears up the mystery. David owns a magazine and made a deal to trade two years of ad space for a two year lease, with a value of $500 per month. Apparently, the GM approved the deal without knowing the nature of the magazine, and when he learned of it he used the delivery as an opportunity to renege on the deal. He said the car was worth $750 a month. When David balked at paying the difference and asked what car he could get for $500 a month, the offending line came out.

David called the corporate office and lodged a complaint. Within hours, he received a phone call from the GM apologizing for the behavior and offering the car on the original terms. He considers that fair enough. He is somewhat more charitable than I am.
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What Ken posted as I was posting seems consistent with what my dealer/owner contact told me, including the reason for the problem being the deal was for less than the GM felt it was worth. And that could well be the reason for the salesman's termination, too. In any event, calling corporate seems to have been the customer's best and quickest solution.
 
Ken Ibold said:
Story update: I got additional information that clears up the mystery. David owns a magazine and made a deal to trade two years of ad space for a two year lease, with a value of $500 per month. Apparently, the GM approved the deal without knowing the nature of the magazine, and when he learned of it he used the delivery as an opportunity to renege on the deal. He said the car was worth $750 a month. When David balked at paying the difference and asked what car he could get for $500 a month, the offending line came out.

David called the corporate office and lodged a complaint. Within hours, he received a phone call from the GM apologizing for the behavior and offering the car on the original terms. He considers that fair enough. He is somewhat more charitable than I am.
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That makes more sense, it was the deal he didn't like.
 
Well at least that makes some sense. The first story was a total WTF. Customers are customers and people are people. I could care less where a guy goes to church or whatever else he does on his own time. Well, that is unless he has an Obama sticker on his car. Then we need to talk.:tongue:


Ken Ibold said:
Story update: I got additional information that clears up the mystery. David owns a magazine and made a deal to trade two years of ad space for a two year lease, with a value of $500 per month. Apparently, the GM approved the deal without knowing the nature of the magazine, and when he learned of it he used the delivery as an opportunity to renege on the deal. He said the car was worth $750 a month. When David balked at paying the difference and asked what car he could get for $500 a month, the offending line came out.

David called the corporate office and lodged a complaint. Within hours, he received a phone call from the GM apologizing for the behavior and offering the car on the original terms. He considers that fair enough. He is somewhat more charitable than I am.
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Henning said:
Yeah, I've met them too, but they don't become General Manager at a new car dealership.
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Henning, I know by now I can't debate you but these folks do exist and not always in trailer parks.
 
ScottM said:
You'll love this website:

http://www.kissthisguy.com/

It is one where they look at misheard lyrics. The URL comes from mishearing the Jimmy Hendrix lyric "Scuse me while I kiss the sky"
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I feel like a bonehead now. Sorry if I offended anyone - I didn't mean to. Was thinking about that past thread regarding Dire Straits being banned in Canada; thought it would be funny, it obviously wasn't.
 
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Strangely enough, I'm sitting in a diner reading this and 2 gay men walked in wearing earrings and fur coats. No BS!
This reminds me of a story my friends father told me about when he was in the navy. He and a few friends went to a restaurant and a black man who was with them ordered a hamburger. The waiter said "We don't serve n******". The guy looked at him and said "I didn't ask you for n******, I asked you for a hamburger."
 
In my industry, picture framing, homophobics just do not seem to do all that well, for some reason.

I only had one problem in my 45 years of framing when a gay customer must have assumed I was also gay and started into this long story about a gay party he attended. It was one of those "way too much information" deals and I had to stop him and explain that I was not gay. He seemed to understand and changed the subject. He had been a great customer for years, but I never saw him again.

Personally I don't care either way about anyones orientation, it's all a part of humanity, it is what it is. I still feel bad about that incident though. I probably should have let him ramble on and not said anything, I don't know.

John
 
Ken Ibold said:
Story update: I got additional information that clears up the mystery. David owns a magazine and made a deal to trade two years of ad space for a two year lease, with a value of $500 per month. Apparently, the GM approved the deal without knowing the nature of the magazine, and when he learned of it he used the delivery as an opportunity to renege on the deal. He said the car was worth $750 a month. When David balked at paying the difference and asked what car he could get for $500 a month, the offending line came out.

David called the corporate office and lodged a complaint. Within hours, he received a phone call from the GM apologizing for the behavior and offering the car on the original terms. He considers that fair enough. He is somewhat more charitable than I am.
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Good for him. And it sounds like Nissan didn't waste much time, either.

It'd be interesting to know what happens with the GM. I'd still strongly consider canning him, even if the car really is worth $750/mo. - first, that kind of behavior is simply unacceptable ("shocks the conscience" would be the lawyer's term); second, a deal is a deal, even when it's a bad one.

Did he say anything about whether the salesman would get his job back?
 
Everskyward said:
He definitely isn't the sharpest pencil in the box. How do people like this keep their jobs?
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Because they're too stupid to be allowed to interfere with actual operations.
 
Danos said:
Strangely enough, I'm sitting in a diner reading this and 2 gay men walked in wearing earrings and fur coats.
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That sounds remarkably like the first line of a joke.
 
Ken Ibold said:
Story update: I got additional information that clears up the mystery. David owns a magazine and made a deal to trade two years of ad space for a two year lease, with a value of $500 per month. Apparently, the GM approved the deal without knowing the nature of the magazine, and when he learned of it he used the delivery as an opportunity to renege on the deal. He said the car was worth $750 a month. When David balked at paying the difference and asked what car he could get for $500 a month, the offending line came out.

David called the corporate office and lodged a complaint. Within hours, he received a phone call from the GM apologizing for the behavior and offering the car on the original terms. He considers that fair enough. He is somewhat more charitable than I am.
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Sounds a lot more reasonable. Dumb but reasonable.

There are about 12 different ways how he could have handled this without the offensive language and without exposing his company to the risk of litigation.
 
John Baker said:
In my industry, picture framing, homophobics just do not seem to do all that well, for some reason.

I only had one problem in my 45 years of framing when a gay customer must have assumed I was also gay and started into this long story about a gay party he attended. It was one of those "way too much information" deals and I had to stop him and explain that I was not gay. He seemed to understand and changed the subject. He had been a great customer for years, but I never saw him again.

Personally I don't care either way about anyones orientation, it's all a part of humanity, it is what it is. I still feel bad about that incident though. I probably should have let him ramble on and not said anything, I don't know.

John
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Personally, I think you had the right to say that you were uncomfortable with the customer's comments. Everyone has that right, especially when reasonable lines of normal behavior have been crossed. I think you lost the customer because he knew he was out of line and was embarrassed by his own actions/words.
 
Danos said:
This reminds me of a story my friends father told me about when he was in the navy. He and a few friends went to a restaurant and a black man who was with them ordered a hamburger. The waiter said "We don't serve n******". The guy looked at him and said "I didn't ask you for n******, I asked you for a hamburger."
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Excellent come back line. What happened next?
 
ScottM said:
Excellent come back line. What happened next?
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One of the best I've ever heard. I don't know what happened next, but knowing my friend's father, the restaurant got redecorated.
 
Obi Heed Kenobi said:
Did he say anything about whether the salesman would get his job back?
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My guess based on the additional data and my discussion with my dealer/owner contact is the salesman was fired not for dealing with a homosexual, but for making a bad deal which cost the dealership significant money, and thus will not be rehired.
 
Ron Levy said:
My guess based on the additional data and my discussion with my dealer/owner contact is the salesman was fired not for dealing with a homosexual, but for making a bad deal which cost the dealership significant money, and thus will not be rehired.
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In most dealerships the salesman will not make any money unless the sale is above a minimum price where the dealership makes the desired profit. The dealership will always make money before the salesman. Why would a salesman make a deal where he would not get paid? I guess he might have screwed up on calculating the minimum price.
 
Ken Ibold said:
Apparently, the GM approved the deal without knowing the nature of the magazine, and when he learned of it he used the delivery as an opportunity to renege on the deal.
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did everyone else miss this sentence??? or am i misreading it?
 
tonycondon said:
did everyone else miss this sentence??? or am i misreading it?
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I dont think you are misreading it.

On second thought, GM thought that spending $750/month on advertising in this particular magazine was not a cost he could justify. In his attempt to go back on the deal, he managed to find the second dumbest way of going about it.
 
stagecoachco said:
So let me get this straight (pun intended), by your logic you could evict a black man, not for being black, but for ACTING black?

Sorry but bigotry by another name (or tactic) is still bigotry!
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Disorderly Conduct/Disturbing the Peace is a crime, So is trespassing. Acting out is acting out, regardless of the pre-text.

If the story went down as the OP related, then I hope the GM finds himself on the street..
 
tonycondon said:
did everyone else miss this sentence??? or am i misreading it?
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I didn't miss it, what are you reading into it? The sttement in and of itself isn't indicative of anything other than he didn't see the value of advertising in that publication to be of an equitable value.
 
Henning said:
I didn't miss it, what are you reading into it?
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What I read into it was that he was stupid enough to agree to buy advertising in a magazine without knowing the subject matter or audience of that magazine. Then he tried to back out using tactless comments.
 
Everskyward said:
What I read into it was that he was stupid enough to agree to buy advertising in a magazine without knowing the subject matter or audience of that magazine. Then he tried to back out using tactless comments.
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That's about the long and short of it.
 
Everskyward said:
What I read into it was that he was stupid enough to agree to buy advertising in a magazine without knowing the subject matter or audience of that magazine. Then he tried to back out using tactless comments.
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:idea::cheerswine:
 
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