Death of a car salesman

There are lots of people out there who can get very excited about buying a new car. I am not one of them. Despite my disinterest, this week I had to trade my car in and buy a new one. This nearly resulted in my being sent to jail for murder most foul.

The person I normally get my cars from has nothing at the moment that fits my particular requirements. As I needed to get this whole thing done and dealt with as quickly as possible, I widened the search and found the perfect charabang online. The whole thing went downhill from here.

This gets me to the real reason for this blog entry. It is not to bore you with the details of me trying to buy a car but for me to vent my rage at the intolerable, endless and appalling sexism and general uselessness of car salesmen.

Let's make something clear. I am not a bra burning feminist. I like my bras for one thing, and I have no objection to having a door opened for me. I don't think that's sexism, I think it is gallantry. However this particular experience was filled to the brim with old fashioned, patronising and excruciating sexism from an older man towards 'the little woman'.

The prat that I dealt with was consistently patronising, and at the same time shockingly stupid. He had obviously decided that as a girl buying a car, I could not possibly understand what I was doing, despite me explaining that this was the third car I had traded in in as many years. He ignored this fact and instead spent his time explaining things in a deliberately slow voice as though he were dealing with a lunatic. Things that I already understood and didn't need explaining to me.

At the same time he wouldn't actually answer my questions because 'you don't really need to know that dear'. All this while he constantly called me by the wrong name, didn't listen to me when I explained what I wanted and told me to 'calm down dear' when I exploded with rage as he ignored me for the umpteenth time.

I longed to just walk away from the sale rather than deal with him but I didn't have the time. So I bottled my ire and headed to Lincoln to fetch the wretched thing. It turns out that the prat had no idea where he actually worked. He had insisted that it would take me no more than 2 hours to get from central london to Lincoln. Try 3 1/4 hours. He then gave me such terrible directions to the showroom that it took an extra half hour to backtrack and find him. I am good at directions - my job entails me finding new places three or four times a week and I get lost about twice a year. Even the other people in the showroom looked baffled when I showed them the directions I was given. He didn't even apologise. He just mentally patted me on the head and said 'well you got here didn't you dear'. How did I not stab him there and then with my car keys?

Where do they get these people from? How are they still alive, let alone employed? This man was a dinosaur and needed to be made extinct. I longed for a comet to land on him and leave nothing but a charred pair of shoes and a smoking crater. I mentally put my hands round his scrawny neck and choked him to death, laughing maniacally, then put him through a potato chipper and burnt the remains before driving over them in my newish car. The whole experience was hideous because of him. I am getting cross just typing about him. AAAAAAAARRGGHHHH

I am glad to say that it is rare to come across this sort of attitude, but invariably when you do it is in a car salesmen. Do the dealers go out looking for sexist, stupid idiots to patronise us? Do they think to themselves 'hmm, next to a house, this is the biggest purchase most people will make so let's make it as hellish and insulting as possible?' If that was their plan then they succeeded. And as for me? I am going to drive this car for the rest of my life so that I NEVER have to deal with a used car salesman again. Ever.