Thursday, January 16, 2014

A Lost Afternoon

Yesterday was a lost day.  No, I didn’t come down with amnesia.  I wasn’t wandering the "Alice in Wonderland" streets of DC.

seda-cars-peopleI spent the day at the Nissan dealership buying out the lease on our car.

You’d think that would be a pretty straightforward process.  Sign a few things, shake a few hands, and on your way.  Ha.

No, our car had to be inspected first. I was told I needed new tires to pass inspection.  I pointed out that if Nissan didn’t put such crappy tires on their cars in the first place, I wouldn’t need tires after 25,000 miles, but thank you, I knew that and would be stopping for new tires on my way home.

“Oh, we can do that here,” they said.

“Oh, how nice,” I said.

My Odyssey had now begun.

I spent the rest of the afternoon shuttling from person to person.  I saw the service manager, the salesman, the lease specialist, the appraiser, the business manager, back to sales, back to service.  I learned their first names.  I met the cleaning people.

Now it worked out OK.  In fact, everyone was very polite and courteous.  They all apologized continually about the process and thanked profusely me for my patience at every opportunity.

I was given a loaner because they kept our car overnight to do the tires and alignment.  Which could be considered pretty devious once I'd already decided to keep the old car.  But that's another story.

The bottom line is that despite spending a lost day, and now a follow up later today to get the car back, the end result was good.  Took a while to get there, but here we are.

It was like having the flu for a day.  At least you get to choose which day.  And on the bright side, nothing can make you quite as grateful for an ordinary gray Wednesday afternoon in January, as driving away from a car dealership with a fat envelope of carbon copies and a complimentary pen.  This must be what a caught and released bass feels like!

I couldn’t help but wonder though, while I was wading through this process, if this kind of paper work, background checking, DMV statements, papers signed to verify that I signed other papers, is what you go through to get a gun?

And, if not, why not?

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