Reflection

As I watch “Men of a certain age”, I find myself having a self-reflecting moment. I was always proud of my achievements as a licensed realtor and my affiliation with the real estate practice, however; I found myself questioning my business ethics, but not till now years after my affiliation. I remember holding the hands of families as they searched for their new or first home. I helped them negotiate their asking price and would find myself essentially handing them their keys on closing day and congratulating them when I really should have been warning them of their HUGE new debt that would essentially be with them for the next 30 years if they were fortunate enough to avoid multiple mortgages or foreclosure. Back then I would smooth things over in my mind by telling myself that the bank approved them so they must be able to afford it, even if I did see their financial records proving otherwise.
After a few years I left the real estate business, which seemed to be the best timing I have ever had, I was hired as a car salesman for a reputable dealership in Tennessee. I say “salesman” because in this position and in the geographical location I was in it truly was not meant to be a position held by a woman which, if you know me at all, made me want it even more. I have always thrived in a sales position and I thought that it was due to my friendly and honest demeanor, however as I was training for a positions in car sales I found myself picking up on the little tricks of the trade. In reflection I feel as though the training course was a subliminal or brain washing approach to hook, line, and sinker the consumer.
As I began selling new cars I was able to focus on finding the consumer what they wanted in a car. Most times they came knowing what they wanted and since the cars were new on the lot the prices were no secret and listed for the consumer to see. The main objections I had to overcome were with the features of the vehicle. When I was asked to be a part of the used sales team I was thrilled! This was a place that all salesmen wanted to be and there were only 6 slots and one was mine…my own desk and bragging rights. Let’s be honest, I didn’t know much about cars and found myself trying to brush up on my product knowledge every morning but I could never keep up with the different cars that came on the lot. With my first few sales I noticed that people didn’t want to know about the car…we live in the information age where everything is online and the consumers would already know everything about the vehicle.
It didn’t take long for me to become top “saleswoman” (and yes they even started calling me that) in the entire dealership! Not only was I pushing cars off the lot, but I was “making bank” for the company and myself. This entire time I never knew what the company had in each vehicle, this made it easier, they told me how much to sell it for and that is what I did. I am not sure when or why it happened, maybe it was an attempt for my manager to teach me how the business really worked, but he began to inform me of the mark up on cars. It didn’t take long till he was telling me the numbers and I was setting my own price on cars, giving me more room to negotiate. I convinced myself that as long as the client was happy who cared how much I was getting them to pay…right….wrong.
I had so many happy clients sending me thank you cards and referrals; I was winning bonus incentives at work for the first car sold for the day or the most money made in a week. I even won the company seats to the Titans game. I remember feeling guilty for making such a large profit on a car and when I asked my manager if I could cut a deal, knowing that I could do it, he told me, “do you go to their job asking for their paycheck”? For a while that made sense to me, they were paying for my service of selling them a car, but was this ethical? I can’t help but think that I was contributing to a society that has blurred the line of business ethics so much that they have become nonexistent.
As I watch the footage of the Gulf oil spill, I wonder how many unethical decisions were made which led to this tragedy and how one bad decision probably led to many without them even realizing the ramifications of their decisions. I feel that as a society we all need to start actively thinking about the consequences of our actions. I am sure we can all think of a time that we have made a decision based on satisfying our ego, instead of what would benefit the masses. Like most lessons learned in my life, I take the hard way but thankfully have learned a lot from the many employment adventures I have taken. I look forward to taking what I have learned and applying it to my teaching practices.

I guess this is me just “paying it forward” in a sense and hoping that we can all become more aware of what is right and wrong.