Life and Death
“Burke, you gotta come get me,” Hoss called me at least twice a month to rescue him. It was always keys locked in his car, an ex-wife ready to kill him or a jealous husband.
“I forgot my wallet and these guys are threatening to kill me. It’s a matter of life and death.”
It’s […]

There was no blog yesterday. I’ve been suffering from narcolepsy, or some other ailment that makes me sleep eleven hours back to back, punctuated only by the rustlings of my fifty year old bladder.
Enough medical talk.
The Moonie girls have resurfaced. Our little car lot is on the border of metropolitan Knoxville. There’s a […]

(Before we get started, I suggest you read; THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy.)
My customer’s name is Mrs. Bilbrey. She’s five foot of pure psychopathic rage. She’s been a part of my life for over two weeks now, every day, five hours a day. She made a grand entrance ten minutes ago. Right now she’s yelling […]

Two crooked little chowder heads named Clovis and Ernesto worked at the Dodge store for a few weeks. They were inseparable. No one else would spend time with them so they had to buddy up. Combine slicked back hair-dos and pencil thin mustaches with chalky skin and tight purple wardrobes and they looked like […]

There was a greasy little butterball at the Nissan dealership named Ratcliff. Of course we renamed him Rat Clit. We had no choice. He deserved all the scorn we could heap on him. First of his sins, he tried to bully women.
“You better get outta my way girl,” he told a saleslady one […]

Not long ago I worked at a Dodge dealership. We used to sit for hours watching traffic go by. If you sit in one spot long enough something interesting will happen. That morning a police car was stopped at a red light. The back door popped open and a chubby little woman fell out. She […]

I was being punished for making “smart-ass remarks” in the morning sales meeting. My punishment was in the form of cold calls.
The cold call room was in the basement . It was windowless, dank and smelly. It’s where they sent us to think about our sins and make calls to strangers in the city directory. […]

Everyone’s waiting for the new models to come out. Hearts are racing. Pacemakers clacking like castanets. There’s a salesman that’s been here twenty-seven years. He’s done well for himself. His main problem is the attrition rate of his clientèle. He’s like the tobacco industry, his buyers are dying out. They dwindle down with each […]

The Nissan Dealer hired some very damaged individuals during the five years I worked there. None more damaged than Gribble. He was crooked. Not in the way most people think of when they call a car salesman crooked. This guy was warped. His body described an “S” curve. His head floated off in […]

I had great intentions before I left for the training session in Nashville. Daily reports on funny characters and incidents. But after eight hours of absorbing knowledge my brain couldn’t form the stories. This meeting was actually helpful but my brain was fried at the end of each day. I’ll get back to the daily […]