Have I done Any Good In The Motor Trade

Have I done any Good in the Motor Trade?  Have I made the World a Richer Place? That was the question I asked myself today.

My first customer at BC Cars was buying a car to try and cheer his Wife up, they had just lost their 21-year-old Son to Brain Cancer, I couldn’t bring myself to profit from their misery so I donated the money I had made to charity When times were good I tried to support, Breast Cancer, Leukaemia, Water Aid, Children’s Cancer, Derian House, Guide Dogs, The Duke of Lancaster Regiment and a couple of others, BC Cars also supported a little Boy in Ghana from the age of 6 right up to him leaving school which as luck and his education would have it coincided with me closing the business. Have I done any real good or did I just create one gigantic carbon footprint with all the cars I sold and all the electrical items that I used to have in my office?

The thing is that every time I do try and do something good it backfires and comes back to bite me, I don’t particularly like children and wouldn’t want any of my own, I can trace this mindset to when I was a kid myself, every Christmas Day my sister and I opened our new presents but we also knew that it was the time to say goodbye to a lot of our old toys as my Dad would round them up (no matter where I hid them) and take them to the Children’s Hospital at Manchester, my favorite toy ever was my pedal car, sure I was too big for it but I still didn’t want to give it away, even then the Motor Trade was in my blood it didn’t seem right to give it away, I could have valeted it and put a price board in ready to attract my first victim and my first ever sale,  the kids in Hospital may well have been less fortunate than I was but at the time I hated them.

Many years later and with thousands of car sales to my name the prestige franchise I was working for had a really good selection of toy cars they were an exact scaled-down model of our new car range, complete with an electric motor no pedaling for the offsprings of rich people, at Christmas Time these cars had proven very popular and often became part of the negotiations especially when they had brought their kids with them, Parents with unruly kids who were left to run wild always had to pay the price at our garage, Junior used to make a beeline for the Toy Car that was displayed in the Parts Section and before long he was zooming around the showroom, the parents were left in peace to conclude a deal but there was no way they could get out of the showroom without taking a toy car exactly like the one that Mummy or Daddy had just bought or the spoiled little brats would scream the place down.

There is a lot of “luck” involved in Sales and this telesales lady couldn't have timed her call better, It was shortly after Children in Need and I still hadn't recovered from The Band-Aid Concert years before (I can’t listen to the song “Whose going to drive you home” without feeling choked) with age I had started to mellow, I still didn’t like Kids but neither could I stand to see them suffer,  I answered the phone to a lady from the “Children’s Hospice” who was seeking donations for their Christmas Auction, she had done her homework well and she was hinting that the “Little Electric Cars” always brought a fantastic price, I put her on hold and ran upstairs to get my Bosses permission to use some of our advertising budget to give away the toy car,  I explained that the Auction would be attended by a lot of our customers and it would be great publicity, even though he had 3 kids himself his answer was an emphatic “No”.

The Lady from the Children’s Hospice was delighted when took her off hold and I said “Yes” but with "conditions" and they were that I wanted NO publicity or recognition of any kind anywhere.

I was still furious with my Boss as I knew he had sponsored some stupid Rugby Match for one of his mates which was really a "Piss Up" for the boys, and he used  money from my departments profits, my accounts revealed several other equally suspicious transactions in the guise of “Goodwill” he would give money to them but not to a really good and deserving cause, as I wrote out the works instruction for my new demo I thought “Balls to Him, I donated my only means of transport when I was 4 but it was definitely about time that I did something else to help ” So I included an Electric Car on the Parts List, and delivered it to the Hospice that night, the Parts Manager knew what I was doing and had invoiced it out at cost, I had also promised to pay for the car at the end of the month which was a good thing as a few days later my boss appeared at my office door, "Do you know anything about this" he asked holding up a local glossy magazine with a picture of the Electric Car being presented to the highest bidder of the night, it was next to a big sign saying “Kindly Donated by #### “.

I didn’t have to pay for the car, and my Boss adopted it as one of his better ideas

But please heed my warning!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No GOOD Deed ever goes unpunished


Barrie Crampton