Relative Happiness, Part 1 (Long, Hopefully Worth the Read)

Sorry I haven’t been posting much lately. I actually have some pretty exciting news to report, which will make clear why I’ve been busy.

As of today, my girlfriend and I are officially homeless. No, I’m not busto. She’s currently between jobs, and I can play poker from anywhere, so we decided to go (at least) a few months without a permanent residence. The plan was to buy a large car, throw most of our belongings into a storage facility, and then travel the country doing some combination of camping and short-term rentals. There are some cool websites where you can find people either looking to rent out their apartments for a week to a month or a so while they are on vacation or who just have an extra room that they rent out for far cheaper than you’d pay at a hotel.

Buying the car was a really unpleasant experience, which is annoying because it’s such a major purchase and an important decision. I feel like it ought to be fun and exciting instead of stressful and high-pressure. We even made an effort to visit only dealerships with a reputation for not being particularly sleazy or pulling standard car dealer tactics. We thought we’d found a place we liked, and while we were test driving, our interactions with the salespeople were far more comfortable and pleasant than they’d been at any other dealership. Truthfully, that might actually be a liability, as I at least would probably have an easier time negotiating a price with a sleazy used car salesman than with a sweet, grandmotherly woman or chummy outdoorsy guy.

Anyway, we finally made a decision about the car we wanted. This place bragged loudly and often about being an “Undealership” where they didn’t play a lot of games, but the second we started talking about money, the whole tenor of the conversation changed. We sat down, I made an offer that was deliberately low but not absurd, and the heretofore friendly guy who’d shown us the car basically snapped at me and gave me, in a very condescending tone, an explanation of their pricing.

I made a slightly higher offer, with the promise to buy on the spot at that price, and he warmed up immediately but did the whole “take it to the manager routine”. He left us waiting for 15-20 minutes, then came back, in an aggressive mood, with a price that was $100 below sticker. When we balked at this and asked a question about the car, he basically told us he wasn’t going to waste any more time with us if we weren’t serious. Even though we really had little option but to buy this car very soon, we walked out.

On the drive home, I was visibly shaking and could feel the adrenaline coursing through my body. Frankly, as a poker player, I was ashamed. I’ve kept my composure when bluffing for thousands of dollars or playing for far more than that at the WSOP, but I get worked up about haggling over a couple hundred dollars? Something about the whole experience was just really upsetting to me, and I think it has to do with the nature of the “game” being played.

At the poker table, deception is entirely expected and accepted as a legitimate tactic. Thus, I’m perfectly comfortable bluffing or blatantly staring down an opponent to figure out whether he is trying to deceive me. I think I would feel similarly comfortable if I were negotiating at a dealership where, although they certainly don’t say it, they don’t really make a secret of the fact that you’re going to have to put up a fight if you want a good price (though maybe not- I understand they can be quite adept at making you uncomfortable).

Outside of such situations, though, etiquette and social norms exist that discourage this kind of behavior. When interacting with others, I strive to be friendly, polite, honest, and to put my interlocutors at ease. These social conventions exist for a reason. Even though it might benefit an individual to behave otherwise in any given situation, we generally recognize that human society functions better when everyone adheres to these standards of behavior.

When people exploit these norms for their own advantage, I feel taken advantage of and it upsets me. It’s like angleshooting at the poker table. I’m comporting myself in a particular way in good faith that those around me will reciprocate. When they don’t, and especially when they take advantage of the fact that I am being presumptively courteous to them, it pisses me off. If it were clear to me up front that this was going to be no-holds-barred negotiation, I would have been a lot less forthcoming during our preliminary conversations and opened with a much lower offer. I took them at their word, and was literally speechless when it became clear to me that that had been unreliable.I think that I was so upset not so much because of the stress of the situation as because I felt betrayed.

I should add that the next day, we got a follow-up call from the guy’s supervisor and worked out an acceptable price over the phone. I think it was no more than $300 more than what would have been their lowest price had it not become clear to them that we were set on buying this car. There wasn’t any pressure to buy an extended warrant or rust coating or any of that bullshit, and we actually managed to get the paperwork and what not done rather efficiently, so it wasn’t an entirely negative experience. I am confident that there aren’t going to be any unpleasant surprises with the car now that we have it, which has to be a consideration when buying a used car.

This is getting long, so check back soon for Part 2, when the title of this post will make more sense. Thanks for reading, if you made it this far!