Car Buying 101: Overcoming Gender Bias and Incompetence

This week's episode is about an experience at multiple car dealerships over a few years. I have been perturbed and extremely bothered by strange and probably sexist behaviour towards me.

The main story starts when my husband and I were expecting. Yes, he was pregnant. No, I was pregnant. At the time, we both had been individual owners of small, two-door cars, which, when it comes to children, are pretty much useless. It's hard enough having a child, so imagine opening a two-door car and pushing your front seat forward to squeeze in with your baby. Ugh. What stress. It would be too much for us, and we knew that. So we knew that we both had to sell our cars, which we did, and then merge into a small, compact SUV. 

At this point, we were very against minivans. In fact, I am still currently against minivans. It's a lifestyle choice for me. We are also those people who are clinging to downtown, urban life and a lifestyle without moving to the suburbs. I'm not trying to put down suburbs at all, as I have enjoyed visiting many of my friends' suburbs. As a stand-up comedian, I appreciate being downtown and walking distance to local shows where I get paid in drink tickets (I don't even drink) and eat their snacks. 

Dealership #1: Salesmen, SUVs, and Strollers 

Anyway, we visited several dealerships and got a sense of the ones we liked. We visited a specific Swedish dealership that I will not name—in case they decide to sponsor me or run an ad campaign in the future—my DMs are open. 

So my husband and I went to this dealership to look at a small compact SUV, and our salesman was an older Caucasian gentleman. He was very polite and gave us all the attention in the world. We were having a nice time, and then he took us around to the back end, the ass of the car, and opened the trunk. As you may know, in an SUV, the trunk opens this way. 

He looked only at me in both my eyeballs, with no acknowledgment that my husband was even there in this one moment. He looked at me as he opened the trunk and said, "Now you will be interested in this trunk space. It would fit a baby stroller, no problem."

I was standing there with my seven-month pregnant belly, and we had not acknowledged or talked about the pregnancy so far. My response to him was to look him dead in the eye and say, "Why? Oh, do you think I'm pregnant? I'm not pregnant." And this guy turned red. I'm talking beat fucking cherry red, Porsche or Corvette, whatever your reference is, red. He started to stammer. He's like, "Oh my god, I'm so sorry." Like, I actually made him think that my seven-month, giant, extended, distended belly came from somewhere other than a pregnancy. And you know what? I made him feel very horrible—and that was intentional, ladies and gentlemen and everybody else listening. 

He fucking 100% assumed that I would be the one to be the primary caregiver and the only fucking person pushing a stroller and folding it and putting it into a fucking car. And he was wrong, which I needed him to feel bad about. 

So after he shit his pants and went to change into another pair of boring Dockers khakis, he came back—no, that none of that happened, but in my mind, that happened—and he was so embarrassed. I said, "No, I am really pregnant," and then we both laughed it off because I still like to have a good experience. 

We hadn't negotiated yet for that SUV, and I was determined to get a good deal, as I always am, especially as a woman who goes into a car dealership because they do not act the same to women as they do to men. 

Outdated Small Talk and Assumptions  

At any rate, I made him feel very, very embarrassed, and he said, "Oh, thank God, because just last week, I assumed a man was there with his daughter, but it was his wife." So yeah. I feel bad for this old man because he definitely has to update the references inside his head. He was doing his best with the worldview that he had, and his worldview included that a man and a woman would be married and be roughly around the same age. I don't know what that other couple's situation was, but I imagine it was pretty funny too. 

And let me tell you, he made the wrong assumption. After I gave birth to my daughter, I did not take maternity leave. I was off for four weeks, whereas my husband was the official parental leave taker. Although this was only a few years ago, it made me realize that society is not as progressive as I would like it to be, or as progressive as I believe my family is and should be. 

Anyway, we had a fairly nice time, but I ended up hating him, and we didn't get the car, which wasn't due to this interaction. The small, compact SUV they had at the time wasn't what we wanted. 

Anyways, that's all the boring details, and that was not even the worst experience we had.

Dealership #2: Why Car Salesmen Have Bad Reputations

The next bad car dealership experience was just a week later, when we visited another dealership, and this time it was a German automaker known for its nice cars. 

So when you go to a dealership, there's an intake, almost like a hospital.  You go in, and there's a receptionist who assigns you to a salesperson based on some criteria. The person at or around the desk was, we believe, the manager, and he said, "I've got the perfect guy for you. Rory is one of our best salesmen. I'll go get him now." 

He walked to the other end of the very large, spacious showroom and started back with the salesman. I leaned over to my husband and whispered, "For I don't know why." They were very far away, but it makes it seem like we're having more fun when we whisper (something my husband and I do often). We whisper these secrets and these like inside voices to ourselves. 

I said, "This guy's going to be an idiot," because I knew he was going to be an idiot. Spoiler alert, he ended up being a giant fucking idiot.

I could tell his shoulders were slumped, and his suit was too big for him, and he looked sad, not like a sales shark. And you know what? That's what I want. I want a worthy opponent at a car dealership because I know that this is going to be a very major negotiation. I want someone who's going to do their due diligence, knows how to answer questions quickly, is on the ball, and doesn't fuck around. 

But this guy looked like a giant toddler in a large, cheap suit, just because the dealership called him one of their "best salesmen." Have they said that about all of their salesmen? 

As we become acquainted, he gives me the limpest fucking flaccid handshake ever with weak eye contact. So he's taking my husband and me around the German cars that they've got there, and he's just saying basic shit. We're asking questions, and he's answering them. He's letting us take our freedom and try out these different cars. 

We went upstairs to the roof, where they had cars parked outside, and I noticed seats I liked. So later, when we went back to his desk, I asked him about these seats. And he said, "Oh, I don't think we have seats like that." And I said, "Yeah, you do. We just saw them in the car upstairs." Then we brought him back upstairs, and he said, "I've never seen these before." He took a moment to peek inside the car and marvel in his own little world, leaving us standing there. It was a big, giant turn-off. Looking back, I don't like these seats at all. I got wrapped up in the Germaness of it all. I think they were red and black, like a Michael Jackson Thriller costume. 

The Worst Car Salesmen, Ever

All right, so we're sitting there, moving on, and what he does next is turn around and grab a photo frame with a photo in it from behind him, and he turns around and brings it in front of me. He presents me with this photo frame, and he makes me look at it, and he says, "My wife is Korean."

And I said, "Oh, my husband's wife is Korean," because I don't know why. I just wanted to be a bit of a dick and not give him the satisfaction of getting the response that he wanted. I didn't want him to be able to excuse his fucking laziness and lack of smarts by relating to me and saying, "I have an Asian wife." I fucking hate that shit unless it's a good situation like a discount or something like that. At that point, I was already really annoyed with him because he wasn't a good salesperson. So I gave him nothing, and then he just put the picture frame back. 

So as we wrapped up at this dealership, I said, "All right, we'll be in touch," and we left. Later, I emailed him about the price of those black and red seats. He wrote back, saying, "I've looked everywhere in our catalogue, but I can't find those seats." Despite showing him the seats in a car in their dealership, he just attached a giant, voluminous document and said, "See if you can find it." 

At that point, we were fucking done, and this guy was fucking dead to me. I will say I Karen'd out here, but it was justified. So I sent the email correspondence to the dealership manager, who claimed that this was his best salesman. And I said, This is how stupid your guy is. Look at this email. Look at this giant document that he wanted me to look through to do the work for him, because he's a fucking idiot. And I said something like We will be buying a car somewhere else, where you work on commission, right? Well, we ended up getting this other car instead. We got another German car. And fuck those people.

A Message to Car People

I was more passionate about the second story than the first, but the first story is what came to mind, because it was an attack on my womanness. The second part wasn't an attack on my womanness. The second one was an attack on my fucking brain. How stupid are you to think that you can relate to me for being a Korean woman, just because you're married to a Korean woman, and this is only after you have dropped many fucking balls. And they're like gigantic balls. They're not little balls that can fall through your finger. They're not difficult questions that we asked. They were just like basic fucking questions that any competent salesman would be able to answer, but he was too lazy or stupid to do it. That's not even the end of my stories about car dealerships.

I think I was more impassioned about the second story than the first, but the first story is what came to mind because it was an attack on my womanhood. The second part wasn't an attack on my womanness, it was an attack on my fucking brain. How stupid are you to think that you can relate to me, a Korean woman, just because you're married to a Korean woman, after you have dropped many fucking balls? We asked basic fucking questions that any competent salesman would be able to answer, but he was too lazy or stupid to do it. 

There are many reasons why women dislike dealing with their cars, whether it's the mechanic, getting their tires changed, or buying and selling cars. It's not because we're not smart enough or capable of doing research. It's because this is the way we're fucking treated. 

I'm just so mad. I need a drink of water or an electrolyte. 

Rory, if you're out there, you are a fucking moron. There's no excuse.