I worked on a little used, (pre-owned for you socially conscious peeps) car lot, we sold the crap cars we couldn’t wholesale to other dealers to people who couldn’t afford more than about $2000 for a car.
It was always slow, and what customers I did talk to, couldn’t buy a donut. They didn’t have enough downstroke, (Okay, dammit, down payment), though they told me they could make them monthly notes, no problem.
One particularly slow weekday morning, after the last particularly slow morning before, I was doing the crossword in the paper after I was done reading it after I had my get ready coffee or three, and after gazing at the sunlight coming through my front window. I braced for another long day looking at the dust settling on the cars outside.
My boss stopped in to see how I was and he noticed my malaise, I suppose, and told me I should go out and re-arrange the lot. It wasn’t an order, he didn’t really care if we sold the crap we had, he made his money selling high end used cars to other dealers. We sold the dregs.
For me, the worst job in the car bizz is moving cars around. But, it was still cool out, and I went out to do it. I started moving cars off the front row and pulling them into the aisles and then moving the ones behind into the slots I opened up.
Ten minutes in, cars scattered all over the lot, a customer pulled in. There were no parking places, I had cars parked in them sideways and backwards, so he just parked right in the entrance.
I showed him a couple of cars and sold one to him. While he was signing up the paperwork and giving me money, I saw someone else drive in and squeeze past his car in the entrance and block the rest of the drive. I sold him a car too.
I sold one more car before 2PM and finally got the lot all re-arranged and nice-looking, all lined up in perfect rows, and nicely numbered with those handy little stickers that tell you the dreamboat is a low, low, $1995.
I sat in my office, finished my crossword puzzle, listened to music, played poker with the salesman from next door until 6, and went home.
Clean and tidy just sits there until it’s dusty. Messy makes things happen. Perfect lesson. That’s why, all you greenpeas in the car bizz, we go move the lot around. Chaos theory.