Spoons

A house deal is a venerable car business institution going back to the days when the first Ford dealer’s brother-in-law wanted to buy a new Model T, and the managers were too lazy to go out and land the guy on a car themselves. House deals are often called a “HD” for short. Many times a HD is turned over to a salesman to do the legwork. The amount of work he does on one of these “freebee” deals can vary greatly. Sometimes he only plays the minor role of finding the right car for the customer. Sometimes it is as much work as a regular car deal with the Car Man doing all the work including closing the deal. Sometimes it is as easy as the salesman being handed a report of sale to slap on the windshield of a car.

Which salesman gets the HD is an interesting process. Sometimes it is fairly given out to the Car Man who is next on the “up” list, or a salesman who just happens to be standing in the right place at the right time. It might be given out as a reward to someone who has done some extra work around the lot or helped a manager out with a special project. Sometimes a HD is given to a guy that is in a slump as a way of pumping him up.

A “spoon” is a derogatory term for a HD, usually applied to a salesman who seems to get more than his fair share of house deals, as in “Hey, they just gave that asshole David another spoon!” Getting a spoon implies you are being “spoon fed” like a baby being given pureed carrots.

HDs are often given to the manager’s favorite guy, usually the one who is most adept at kissing his ass. This is when a house deal officially becomes a spoon. A salesman who consistently gets a lot of spoons is a sore point among the other Car Men. It will get them grumbling and can cause the animosity level of the crew to rise precipitously. They really do not like the salesman who seems to get all the house deals. I am sort of an expert on this topic, because, you see, back in the day I was the one who used to get most of the spoons.

I worked for my brother, Danny, for twenty-three years, and let me tell you, it was not always easy being the younger brother of the sales manager and later the dealer. At the beginning of my career Danny gave me deals as a way of helping me survive the rigors of learning the business and for generally being a dumb shit. Later, it made sense for him to turn deals to me. People were referred to him because he was the owner, and they did not want to be pawned off to—God forbid—a salesman! But handing them off to his little brother, hell that was almost as good as dealing with the owner himself.

This type of logic did not help me with my fellow Car Men. I was getting two or three extra deals a month and it really pissed them off. I understood their point, but what was I supposed to do, turn the deals down? Hey, lets be realistic about this; I had a family to support! It got to the point where every time I had a car deal, my fellow salesmen would suggest it was a spoon. Their nasty comments began to get to me so being the devious bastard I can sometimes be I developed a plan.

When you brought a car deal to the sales office the first thing you did was write it on the sales board. There was a spot that asked for the source of the deal. After years of enduring my colleague’s bad vibes, I decided that every time I boarded a deal, whether it was given to me or not, I would draw a little spoon on that spot on that asked for the source. It made everyone nuts!

Sometimes revenge is sweet.

A spoon can be a great thing for a struggling Car Man desperate for a deal, but it also has a down side: It is the quickest way to a mini-commission. Let me tell you it was not a great feeling being called into the sales office on a Saturday when everyone was rockin’ and rollin’ out on the line to help my brother with some jerk-off banker who wanted a sweet deal on a new car. Sometimes these deals cost me more money then they made me, but what was I going to do?

To this day I am sure a lot of guys I worked with in the old days still think most of my deals came from Danny. That was not true—not by a long shot, but if we ever meet again at a Car Man’s reunion and they ask me about it, I will tell them, “I never got a deal on my own in my life!”Talk to you later,


David