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Old 12-14-2003, 02:05 AM   #1
lumberjim
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funny work stories

these two are ironic in that they happened on the same day and they both relate to car business euphemisms.

hurry up! my customer is peeing his pants!

translation: (salesman) I have been waiting so long for you to bring this guy in to do his paperwork, that I have run out of anecdotes and distractions, and I'm afraid my customer might come out of the ether, so could you please hurry the fuck up? And he's in a hurry.

Old guy.....yup....he actually peed his pants.

that was in the morning.

I shoved him into the car

translation: used a strong tack and bullied the customer into buying a car right then

this one's a bit longer


Ok, so it's 5 minutes after closing time, and everyone but one salesman is gone. I was the salesmanager at the time, and the former finance manager and I are waiting for the salesman to finish with his "up" and leave so we can lock up and go home.

The salesman, John, is a superpolite, 30 yrs of experience pro. The customers weighed 900 lbs together, easy. the husband is a good 550 of it. Arm in a sling. terry cloth v neck mumu-shirt. The wife has one of those canes with 4 feet on it.

Wife and John are outside looking at a car, and husband is wandering around the showroom. He is stalking this poor little red PT Cruiser that is sitting there in the showroom minding it's own business. Rich(the former finance manager) and I are standing around talking or whatever, and Hubby opens the driver door. My eyebrow went up. (just one) I can see it aint gonna work. he can't, apparently.

I didn't think he'd try to get in, but he did, well, almost. he got about 1/2 way in, realized that it wasn;t going to work, as the seat wasn;t even all the way back, lost his balance and wound up jammed in between the steering wheel and the seat, with his arm (the one in the sling) hooked over the top of the door.
then he started screaming.

oh.........my.....god.........

it sounded like MR Bill

I didn't know what the hell to do, so I just reacted, and tried to help him up. he was sweaty. and really hot to the touch. he eventually got his feet back under him and was able to hoist himself out of the tight spot he was in. He was OK. phew!

i couldn't get outside fast enough......it took a herculean effort to maintain a concerned, but unperturbed expression on my face, and not embarrass the poor guy. "y'all right? You sure? do you want to sit down"

after about 10 minutes I had settled down, but John is still with these two. apparently the problem with the seat not being back all the way was because the battery had died in the showroom. So john, ever the optimist, gets a booster box, hooks up power, puts the power seat all the way back, tilts the wheel all the way up, and they're going to try again. jesus.

this time hubby gets 3/4 of the way in, but cant get his foot up over the door sill and he's still pressed up against the steering wheel. i had to look away.....thankfully i was still outside looking in through the plate glass, so they couldn't hear us wincing and " oh, dear god!" ing. When I looked back, John is literally shoving this guy into the car to try to get him past what ever he was hung up on.

they gave up.

then they got in their Eagle Talon?!?!? and drove away!
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Old 12-14-2003, 12:27 PM   #2
wolf
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As an Eagle Talon was the former, beloved wolf-mobile, I can attest to the fact that the front seats of a Talon/Eclipse/Laser are wide, comfortable, and easy to manage, even for an extremely large person. (The only real trick for the extraordinarily obese with respect to a Talon is the need to get UP out of the car ... it sits so low that you need a fair amount of leverage to get your ass up out of the seat.

Oh, and one extremely huge (400+ pound) friend of mine broke the seatbelt retractor by overextending it, but other than that ... she was able to get in and out, just so long as you were able to give her a pull on the extraction.
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Old 12-14-2003, 09:26 PM   #3
dar512
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That reminds me of a story. That's how these things get started you know.

A friend of my wife's, back when they were both teens, was out with her parents looking at cars. They'd gotten down to dickering and were with their salesman in one of those little glass rooms down the hall from the showroom.

While they're talking things over, they can see another salesman talking to some other customers - all while backing down the hall toward them. His customers are still in the showroom and this sales guy is still selling them his pitch as he backs partially into their glass room and - rips a huge one.

At this point the guy puts it into forward again, and at no point did he pause in his sales presentation. He never did realize he had blasted anyone else.
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Old 12-15-2003, 09:23 AM   #4
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OK, this is a classic.

Some areas of our building have had trouble with rodents. Well, it was my turn this morning. I opened up my desk drawer to retrieve a piece of gum and a mouse was standing on the right edge of the drawer. We kind of surprised each other and he scampered back into the desk somewhere. (Now keep in mind I'm the IT director.)

So I call up our physical plant and their receptionist answers. I said, "There's a mouse in my office. I was hoping somebody could come get rid of it."

"Umm... you have a mouse... and you want us to get rid of it?"

"Yeah, that's right." [At this point I'm thinking, she doesn't seem to care. She sounds like she thinks it's my problem and she can't figure out why I'm bothering her.]

"Well, did somebody drop it off at your office?"

At this point my light bulb goes on.

"I'm talking about a live mouse here, not a computer one."

"Ohh!! You mean a rodent! OK We'll send somebody over."


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Old 12-17-2003, 10:57 PM   #5
ThisOleMiss
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Once, in a former life, I was a help desk technician for a computer company that shall remain nameless but packs their products in a cow print box. I get this call. Woman says she has spyware in her system. And it's reading her mail. Not her e-mail, mind you, bu the stuff that gets deliverd by the post office. And it's watching her. All the time. Obviously this women needs some serious help. Then she asks if she can take the computer back to the local retail store. My cue to get the loony off the line before she kills my talk time. No problem, put it back in the box and take it back to the store, give them this incident number (fully document by me and my supervisor because when she started the part about 'it's watching me' I signaled for him to start listening in) and someone would be glad to help her (like call the dudes with those nice white coats). Then she asks what she can do to keep it from watching her until then. I told her to unplug the system and throw a blanket over the monitor and it'd go into sleep mode. It worked. She thank me profusley. And they wonder why the company has such a high employee turnover rate.
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Old 12-17-2003, 11:41 PM   #6
lumberjim
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seen her yet, wolf?
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Old 12-18-2003, 01:13 AM   #7
wolf
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No, but I have admitted an optometrist who sees things.
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Old 10-04-2006, 04:05 PM   #8
lumberjim
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last week we had a post operative transsexual purchase a car. there were the typical jibes and jokes, which i'd heard before and didn;t really prompt more than a chuckle. So, anyway, yesterday, I'm packaging up the deal preparing it to send in to the lender. This entails going through every piece of paper in the deal jacket and sorting it into piles based on where it will go next ( bank, titlework, internal, and 'junk') One of the papers is a letter addressed to the customer about some insurance issue from a previous car.

It begins:

Dear Sir/Madam,

the end
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Old 10-04-2006, 11:09 PM   #9
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I alway wondered who those letters were written for.
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Old 10-05-2006, 03:24 PM   #10
wolf
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lumberjim
last week we had a post operative transsexual purchase a car. there were the typical jibes and jokes,
Ah, but did anyone ask the two most important questions ...

1. After the surgery, did she lose the ability to parallel park?

2. Why give up comfortable shoes for high heels?

I, with great seriousness, have asked these two questions of a couple of the M->F's that I know.
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Old 10-05-2006, 04:33 PM   #11
limey
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wolf
Ah, but did anyone ask the two most important questions ...

1. After the surgery, did she lose the ability to parallel park?

2. Why give up comfortable shoes for high heels?

I, with great seriousness, have asked these two questions of a couple of the M->F's that I know.
C'mon wolf, what were the answers?!?!?!
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Old 10-05-2006, 05:18 PM   #12
Cyclefrance
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Back in the 80's, I was working with a group of guys in shipbroking - they're the middlemen who take a commission on deals negotiated between owners of vessels and charterers who have the cargoes.

We had an office over a shop in the east end of London in a market area known as Petticoat Lane. It was a pretty rough area and we weren't surprised to have a break in a few months after we set up. The items stolen were our beer from the fridge, desk calculators, and a Michael Jackson 'Thriller' video. So, no big deal (bar the beer), but we felt vulnerable.

The police decided that someone must have left a window open. We guessed who it was out of our team who'd done this but the guy concerned took offence and refused to accept that he was the root cause of the incident.

Time passed and the incident was forgotten.

Then, we turned up one morning to find all the office windows open. We went inside but nothing had been stolen, but our 'friend' had been the last one to leave the office the previous evening, and he hadn't arrived at the office yet either.

Nothing had been stolen, but we thought we should teach him a lesson. We'd make it look like there had been a robbery! Calculators were concealed in drawers, some drawers were turned upside down with contents left to spill on the floor, and then the coup de grace - our newly acquired TV was placed inside the secure cabinet and the door locked. It looked convincing enough - sure, we could have had a robbery.

'One thing missing though.' said one of the guys. 'What's that?' 'No police interview...' 'Oh, I don't know...' We'd been to a bar the previous week to celebrate another broker's birthday and they'd arranged something that was then quite novel - a strippogram. We had the girl's card - she did a police-woman as well. A phone call ensued.

About 10.00am our 'friend' turned up. 'See what you've done, leaving all the windows open last night? We've been done over again!'

'Friend' denied it all. Claimed he wasn't the last to leave. Accusations and counter accusations flew between him and the rest of us. Time also flew, and then there was this knock on the door. In walked a policewoman.

She interviewed me first so that I could give her the lowdown. Then she asked who was last to leave the office. As she was pretty damn attractive we weren't surprised to see our friend own up this time!

'I'll come quietly!' he said. She played it well. 'you don't appear to be taking this seriously' she retorted, and proceeded to ask hiim awkward questions. You could almost believe she was a policewoman, until she declared it was getting hot and did she mind if she took off her jacket... you can guess what followed (blouse, skirt, shoes, stockings... you've got it!).

'Friend' took it well, 'You got me there, ' he said after it was all over, following me towards the secure cabinet. I opened it as he still rambled on and I removed the TV.

He suddenly stopped talking, looked at the TV , then at me, then at the TV again, then eventually: 'you mean we weren't really robbed....?'
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Old 10-05-2006, 05:22 PM   #13
wolf
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For Limey, the best answers:


1. After the surgery, did she lose the ability to parallel park?

"I couldn't parallel park before the surgery!"

2. Why give up comfortable shoes for high heels?

"It was never about the shoes, but I still wear flats because I'm too tall for heels."
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Old 10-05-2006, 08:29 PM   #14
xoxoxoBruce
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Quote:
He suddenly stopped talking, looked at the TV , then at me, then at the TV again, then eventually: 'you mean we weren't really robbed....?'
Doh
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Old 10-25-2006, 09:13 AM   #15
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This doesn't belong here but there's nowhere else for it. As a huge fan of the "Dukes of Hazzard" it was common practice to leap across the bonnet of my Datsun 180B then fling myself through the open window into the drivers seat. Until one day emerging from the supervalue supermarket, fantastic leap, attempt at entry. Wrong car, broken drivers window, permanent scar, dislocated kneecap, fractured coccyx.( more like a crack really but thats what the report said) true story unfortunately. Yeeeeeehaaaaaaa
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