home renovation

On Friday, after I got off work, Chad, Meredith, and I went to test drive cars. Specifically, we went to try one of these little babies:



We know that in the next year we will be buying a second car, and the Mazda 3 has definitely caught our attention. First of all, it's just a super cute car. Secondly, it gets great gas mileage (a MUST, because despite our undying love for Mr. Four Runner, we're sick of paying over $50 to fill up our gas tank, and watching that money quickly disappear). Thirdly, it's fairly affordable. Lastly, it has GREAT reviews. They hold their value unbelievably well, and the reviews we've read have had a hard time coming up with anything bad to say about the car. We're also considering a few other cars, but this one is kind of topping our list right now.

So, we headed into the Mazda dealership on Friday evening and the vultures were waiting to greet us. Four vultures. They didn't look like this:


And they didn't quite look like this:


But, frankly, they were just as frightening as the images depicted above. First of all, we were very upfront about the fact that we were NOT looking to buy a car that day. AT ALL. Nor were we even looking to buy in the next month or two. It's something in the not-so-distant future, but it's still in the future. We don't even know where we are going to be EMPLOYED at the end of the summer, so we certainly aren't going to be dumb enough to aquire a car payment.

Well, the vultures did not take the hint. They trusted that their handy-dandy-trusted-salesman-vulture tricks would get the job done. What I don't understand, is why they had to be SO pushy. Seriously. One, nice salesman would have been enough. In fact, it wouldn't even have annoyed me, because I would have realized that the gentleman was just doing his job. I would have felt guilty for not giving him a sale, but I would have enjoyed learning about the car from him, and having his Mazda expertise. Having FOUR different individuals approach us, and having to repeat FOUR different times what we were looking for, was a little bit over the top. Which my husband not so discreetly vocalized . . .

We took a cute little Mazda 3 out for a spin, and we really like it. Much to the sales staff's utter chagrin, we did not buy one. Nor did my husband give the pushy man our phone number. Nor did we "sit down" to talk over the "specials" going on. We made it out still breathing, with all of our vital organs still intact.

Had I been in there on my own, they would have eaten me alive.

Thank goodness my husband has a little bit more of a backbone than I do when it comes to this kind of stuff.

It makes me dread going to test drive the other cars on our list to try, not to mention the actual buying part!