Kaboom! Thwap! Thwap! That’s what I heard as I sat behind the polished walnut steering wheel of a brand new, shiny, black Jaguar XK convertible–an $80,000 car–a car that was not mine. I knew it. Of course, something horrible would happen if I were to get anywhere near a luxury vehicle. What fools would ever trust me with this car? I wondered. The fools at the car dealership who just hired me to sell cars, that’s who.
One of my co-workers, also a recently hired salesperson, Marcelo, sat in the soft, tan-hued leather passenger’s seat beside me. We weren’t even out of the dealership lot, on our way to get familiar with this Jaguar convertible on a test drive, when we heard the horrific kaboom! The car shook. Then another thwap!
The car shook again and again.
I sat in the driver’s seat. Marcelo sat to my right in the passenger seat. After the first Kaboom, I looked over at Marcelo, a Brazilian whose chatter was as fast and plentiful as the Samba in his home country. He just stared straight ahead, eyes wide open and his mouth closed.
“Marcelo,” is all I could say through clenched teeth, too petrified to move even my jaw.
After sitting momentarily frozen, the two of us gathered enough courage to look back through the rear window. We discovered what had happened. The guard at the gate had clumsily released the heavy wooden arm of the gate before we moved the car forward as we were about to leave the lot. The Kaboom we heard was the gate arm slamming down on top of the trunk of the Jaguar.
Marcelo and I both jumped out of the car to survey the damage. After thoroughly examining every inch of the metal exterior, we looked at each other, and laughed hysterically, the way people do when they realize they just escaped something horrible. Incredibly, there was no damage–nothing but a dusty smudge from the padding on the gate arm. After I pushed my heart back down into my chest, I looked over to the guard who was at fault. She just shrugged her shoulders and shuffled back to her booth.
It was only my second day on the job, after two weeks of training. What else could happen in the days to come?
That morning, I had awakened at five am, still in a foggy sleep state. I was so certain I had only dreamed I worked at a car dealership, that I pulled the covers back over my shoulders to return to sleep. I quickly bolted upright when I realized it wasn’t a dream–I did work at a car dealership.
Once I’d wrapped my head around that fact, I crawled out of bed and dressed myself in a gray pencil skirt, black high heels, crisp, white, a fitted, cotton shirt, and a black blazer, complete with my shiny new metal car name tag. I pulled my shoulders back and prepared to be the best car salesperson ever.
After parking, I walked two blocks to the car dealership with a bounce in my step. It began to rain. Prepared, I popped open my red umbrella. This was the new me, the new organized Michele. The old me would never have prepared for rain. As I approached three stairs, I caught the eye of a fellow car salesman. He smiled at me, and said, “Good morning! How are you today?”
I smiled back, about to answer him, when–clunk, clunk, clunk–I slid down three rain-slick stairs. “It is a good morning! I didn’t fall,” I said as I walked away, glancing back to see the car salesman’s mouth hanging open in disbelief. His expression said it all: our dealership hired her?
I entered the luxury showroom where I worked, ready for an exciting new day. Today, I told myself, would be the first day I’d sell a car, as I walked toward my office with chin up and arms swinging confidently.
The receptionist stopped me. “Uh. Your name tag is upside down.”
So began my career in car sales.
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You can read my book, “Craving Normal,” now. I’m currently working on my second story collection, “How to Stay Broke and Influence Nobody.
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