The Others

My friend, Pablo, first turned me on to the term “The Others” to refer to non-car people. I was immediately taken with it for it perfectly describes the disconnect many car men feel when dealing with those who are not in the business. And to make things worse, the longer you sell cars the gulf between you and them grows wider and wider.

For me the gulf began shortly after I started selling cars nearly forty years ago. A friend of mine asked me, “But what do you really want to do with your life?” Now in retrospect the decision to get into the automobile business might have been a crazy one, but I was making more money than any of my friends and was driving a brand new car for free, insurance included. (Alas, the demo days are gone!) Life was good!

But that was the beginning of the rift between me and The Others that continues to this day. You go to a party, maybe one with your wife’s business associates, and you don’t want to tell them what you do for a living. How could they possibly understand? Anyway, the fact that you sell cars for a living is usually met with a combination of disdain or horror. Even those who are not turned off by your profession like to revel you with stories about how they screwed a car guy.

Years ago I worked with a guy named Eddie Alexander. Eddie told me he wanted nothing to do with non-car people. Couldn’t stand to be in the same room with them. I didn’t totally understand this at the time, but boy, I do now! They don’t understand us, and we understand them all too much. We deal with these idiots every day, and we certainly don’t want to go out and have a drink with them!

The down side of all this is that many car guys become isolated from the outside world. We spend all day talking to people, why would we want to spend our off-time talking—especially to people who do not understand us? Give us solitude, a beer, and a baseball game on TV!

Many auto rows have a bar that caters to the salesmen. (There was a place in Oakland that was called The Bluebook. I don’t know if it’s still there.) These bars are places where a car man can go and relax and exchange war stories with people who accept and understand them. It’s kind of like a group therapy session with martinis! Unfortunately, some of these guys develop an aversion to going home.

Selling cars, especially if you do it for a lot of years, can be damaging to a your psyche, and might negatively effect your family life too. The Others beat you up everyday, and you are the one who is considered the bad guy!

For a car man life is tough—and then you die.


Talk to you later,

David