Truth, Dissembling, Lying and the Wisdom to Know the Difference
Ever since I put my first shiny nickel into my pocket, walked into Woolworth’s and bought my first bag of M&Ms, I have been comfortably ensconced in the predictable world of a fixed-priced economy – an even playing field for consumer goods and services, based on the naïve concept that the price of something should reflect the manufacturing cost plus a profit margin. I recognized that a few things that fell out of this paradigm. Most notably the price of cars and large appliances were negotiable, but these opportunities were never aggressively pursued by my father, who was in charge of such large purchases. My father grew up in family where bargaining, or more pejoratively dickering or haggling, were considered unseemly. And if you left some money on the table at the car dealership, so be it, that was just one of the privileges of having enough wherewithall in the first place.
I don’t think that my father ever bargained for a car, he would walk in and pay list price. Dad used to drive these big huge sedans – the kind of gas guzzling cars that don’t exist anymore – and one of them had something wrong with the pressure such that the side window would shatter on hot days when the air conditioning was running full blast. After the first episode, the car dealer assured him that it was fixed, but a window shattered again. This time it was on the driver’s side and even worse, my father was driving with a client. The window exploded with a loud bang and shards of glass flew everywhere. One stuck into Dad’s neck, producing a trickle of blood that oozed into his shirt collar. The client yelled out, “My God, Ralph, you’ve been shot!” and it certainly sounded plausible. Dad simply returned the car and bought a different car at a different dealership. Even as a young teenager, I realized that my father’s inherited aversion to any type of bargaining was way over the top. My basic premise was if you’re bloody and think that you’ve been shot, the car dealership should fawn all over you and give you the choice any car on the lot, no questions asked. There’s bargaining and then there is being taken advantage of. Continue reading →
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