Scratch Beginnings_ Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream - Adam W. Shepard [75]
Wow. Get a load of that aggressiveness, huh? Using the windows and radio as leverage, I had cut the price in half. But my face didn’t show it. If we were playing poker and I was holding a straight flush, he wouldn’t have known.
“Seven hundred and fifty dollars?” He looked at me with the same look as he had when I started taking the first pickup off the lot. He laughed at me again. He really did think I was kidding. I didn’t mean to but he was clearly insulted, as in, “Get the hell outta my face before I sic the dogs on yer ass.”
But I persisted. “Yeah. I mean, is that too low?”
“Too low? Boy, you’re at the wrong place to try to make deals like that.”
“Well, why don’t you just give Mighty Max a call and see what he says.” Mighty Max? Ha. It was going to be a long weekend for me and my wise-guy attitude.
“I’m gonna call ’im. And I’m gonna give ’im yer offer, but he prolly gonna hang up on me.”
But Max, good ol’ Mighty Max, didn’t hang up. We negotiated back and forth through his son Jimmy Jr. and after a lot of huffing and puffing and shrugging and hard thinking on both sides, we settled on $1,000.
In hindsight, though, I wondered if Jimmy Jr. was even on the phone with his dad or if there even was a Max at the helm of that dealership. I wondered what was really wrong with that truck that he was letting it go for $500 below his asking price. Chances are I had been played just as bad as I thought I was playing them. Probably worse.
But none of that mattered. We’d made the deal, and both sides were happy even though we both kept shaking our heads, swearing we were giving away the deal of a lifetime. I got my truck for the price I had set out to spend, and Jimmy Jr. unloaded another automobile off his lot. We did the paperwork, and I drove off in my new ride—a huge stride toward what I had set out to accomplish.
I hadn’t worked with Derrick on Thursday or Friday, and by the weekend I had discounted the idea that I would ever get to work with him again.
But that turned out not to be the case. I was assigned to work with him and Mike again on Monday. And Tuesday. And Wednesday. On Thursday, Derrick told me that he thought it would be a great idea if we formed a crew. Forget a poker face; I couldn’t hold back my enthusiasm. I acted as if I had just been given a promotion, and I was giving my acceptance speech. “Oh, man. That’s great. I promise I won’t let you down.” I’m pretty sure I hugged him. It wasn’t embarrassing, though. By that fourth day working together, Derrick and I were on the same wavelength. Even though I was the driver and theoretically the head of the crew, we both knew who the boss was, and he knew that I would pretty much do anything he asked. We had hit it off from the beginning, and it was looking like ours was going to be a long-lasting relationship.
Working with Derrick was like starting over again at Fast Company, except more challenging. I had to unlearn everything that Shaun had taught me (which wasn’t necessarily wrong, just less efficient), and then learn the way Derrick did things. His system. Fortunately, Derrick was very patient with me, recognizing that I really wanted to learn his profession, and that no matter how bad I was and how many mistakes I made, I would work hard in the process. Identifying the limits of my capabilities early on, he found ways to take full advantage of my strengths. He could tell that I wasn’t particularly strong (“Man, that’s all you got?” he would say), but he also knew that I had the stamina of a Kenyan in the Boston Marathon. I could work all day long without stopping. For the first month or so, he and Mike would take care of the pieces that were terribly heavy, but as time passed, I began to get stronger.
Getting to know Derrick was way different than getting to know Marco. I can tell now that my relationship with Marco was doomed from the beginning.