#trinilikesalt

PREACH DIS, SISTREN!! OH GAAAAWD I wish people would stop asking me this question!

Columbus Day isn't really observed in California. I can't remember the exact year but I know by high school we weren't getting the day off. I know the banks and courts are closed today but for most of the state, it's business as usual.

I looked up if they still celebrate Columbus Day in The Bahamas. We used to refer to it as "Discovery Day" as the island Chris first stepped his big feet on was Guanahani or as Chris renamed it, "San Salvador." This day is now called National Heroes Day "to honor Bahamian national heroes." It's weird because Bahamians do take an weird pride in being the first place he landed, or at least they used to. I think that was something learned from the Euro-centric education system, though. Would like to know what trinilikesalt has to say about this rather dubious holiday.

So Car shopping. I bought my Honda Civic in 2002. My very first Brand New Car! and my first time going through the whole Car Dealership process. Even way back in 2002 I was able to do a majority of the work on-line. There was this website, you put in your info - what you were looking for, what you could pay - and then local dealers would contact you if they had something that matched. I was able to show up at the dealership with a price quoted to me by someone in their shop, which cut down on the haggle. I was pre-approved for a car loan, too so there was nothing to deal with there. However, once the jump from "I want to buy this car" to "I'll take it" was made, there were still hoops. The first being that the car they said was there for me, wasn't. Fine - I was okay with going with another color. The second was what they were gonna give me on my trade-in, which was close to nothing. I countered with, "I drove it here and I can drive it home, so how about at least $500?" Of course, he had to "go talk to his manger" which we all know means he walked into his managers office, closed the door, and then they talked sports or something for 3 minutes. On and on - took about 2 hours. For a car I'd basically pre-bought online.

Jump to 2014. My mom is ready to buy a Brand New Car! and knows what she wants. Isn't financing it. Has a quote from one of the sales people she met with two weeks prior when she did a recon on the car. Should be easy, right? Besides test driving it (which took about 5 minutes) and deciding which color she wanted (maybe 10 minutes?) it still took close to 3 hours for us to drive off the lot in her new car. 3 hours!

The other thing I noticed? All of the salesmen were just that, men. The only other women were the receptionist/front desk person and two others in the finance department. Guess people want to buy their car from a man but are okay with hearing, "you don't qualify for a loan" from a woman? I don't know. 

Went through a similar thing when my sister bought her car last year - the first part of the process went pretty quickly, especially when they saw she had a wad of cash for her down payment, but as they had to bring her car down from LA, the bullshit started to happen over the weekend. Finally, it wasn't until she told them she'd be over there to get a refund on the down payment that they got their shit together.