Life Lesson # 695: Never help a Korean woman to purchase a car...ever!

Greetings fellow bloggers and web surfers. As you might have guessed from the title of this entry, I've learned one of life's more important lessons today: "Never help a Korean woman to purchase a car...ever, ever, ever!!" OK, I got home early yesterday afternoon (i.e. a little after 5:00pm) and boy was I ever hungry! Pebbles had work to do and I didn't feel like going by the fireside either, so we ended up ordering a pizza. Fatigue beat me to the ground at around 10:00pm and I was dead to the world at 11.

Woke up this morning with a minor case of indegestion (damn pizza!) and checked my cellphone...apparently, our friend, Kim Chee had been trying to reach us all night. Pebbles was working and, as I said, I was dead to the world. Called her up around 8:30 and she told me about this 98 Mercury Sable *read: Ford Taurus* that she desparately wanted to see. Now, based on my experience with Ford, I know they're really good cars UNTIL they approach that 80k-90k mileage, then they have all sorts of issues. Well, I made up an excuse as to why I couldn't help, but my guilt (and Pebbles) overrode my better judgment and I ended up calling her back and telling her I'd help her out.

Well, the Sable was looking pretty sharp (but the mileage, remember?) and the guy said he did most, if not all the maintenance himself, therefore there were no real maintenance records per se. The steering wheel was unstable at 70+mph (probably needs balancing) and he sort of ignored my question about the noise we heard in the back. When he said that they didn't have any mechanical problems with the car, a warning bell rang in my head and I sort of figured that the car would probably experience some mechanical problem (soon!).

Anyhow, suffice it to say, Kim decided (wisely I think) that she was going to get the Accord instead of the Sable, so we headed to my house and I took a quick shower, grabbed my teaching stuff, and we were off to the bank for her to get a cashier's cheque for the car money. Somewhere along the line, she managed to piss off the bank teller (the poor lady). Every time the woman tried to count out her cash, Kim would interrupt her with some dumb question (three times she did this!). Finally, the lady gave her cheque, money and receipt and we were off to the dealership.

Forty minutes later, we arrived at the dealership and we were sitting around waiting for them to finish cleaning the car so that we could leave. This point in time I'm thinking to myself, "damn, I'm gonna be late for work if they don't hurry this transaction up!" Wouldn't you know it, the delay in the paperwork was due to Kim trying once again to negotiate with the salesman! I'm like "the car is worth over $10k, they marked it down to just over $9k, we talked him down to $7500 and this girl still wants to negotiate!!!" Poor salesman, I could tell he was annoyed, but at this point I couldn't do anything but watch in horror as she haggled over the price of the car she'd already bought. To make matters worse, she even went to the sales manager while he was drafting up the paperwork and tried to haggle with him too!! In the end, she paid the previously agreed upon price for the car, I was 15 minutes late for work, the salesman was glad to get rid of her, and she left with a coupon for a free oil change valued at a whopping $23.

Now, a friend of mine named Victor (who happened to be Korean) told me a long time ago that Koreans were, in general, a very proud and aggressive race of people and the women were exceptionally beautiful and exceedingly annoying (as if it weren't enough for them to be aggressive as well!). Victor attributes the aggressive nature of Koreans to the fact that the country is a little island stuck between Japan and China and had belonged to either country at one point or another in history. Now, I'm not being racist, this is honestly what Victor told me.

Oh well, the moral of the story is that if you ever find yourself face to face with an annoying Korean woman, do the following:
1) Look her straight in the eyes and try to make yourself look as big as possible.
2) Step back away from her slowly, repeating "no, no, no" in a firm, confident voice.
3) If all else fails, give her what she wants and run away!

Anyhow, dinner is calling me, so I will sign off here.

{arf,arf}

Comments