I had a bizarre dream overnight in which I replaced my current car with an eccentric sporty number. I can’t recall the make of car I’d purchased, but one of its main selling points for me was the velvet drapes that circumnavigated the car below the window line.
It turned out to be a foolhardy impulse buy. One where I didn’t even have the common sense to ask how the drag from the drapes affected the vehicle’s fuel consumption….. My dream personality is obviously less of a tight get with money than my wide awake one. Although the sleep persona has more of a midlife crisis by the look of things.
The car salesman who dealt with my sale was a bit of a shyster. He’d promised to have the car fully serviced, valeted and the curtains dry cleaned prior to my collection later in the week. Unfortunately he didn’t deliver on those assurances.
A few days after signing on the dotted line, I excitedly turned up to pick up my motor to find it hadn’t been valeted. Additionally, the drapes not been cleaned and some of the curtain hooks were missing from the curtain rail.
To my chagrin, the salesman didn’t appear motivated at resolving my automobile snagging list. He was obstructive, crass and unprofessional in his approach to addressing my gripes. At one point telling me “You buy shit, you buy twice!”
According to this shyster, it was all my fault as “What sort of idiot buys a car with drapes?” He also scornfully jibed “In my dreams, I buy good quality performant automobiles that are easy on the eye. Not velvet draped motors that do five miles to the gallon.”
Angered at his intransigence, I asked to speak to someone higher. He walked towards the offices, stopping on reaching a high performance Audi outside his office. It was a lovely looking car, cosmetically enhanced with vertical blinds, along with hanging baskets full of primulas attached to the wing mirrors.
Anyway he drove off at speed, with blinds and hanging baskets swinging like pendulums in its slipstream.
At this point I walked disgruntledly to the manager’s office with my brother Ian, who’d just appeared from nowhere on my left. This confirmed I was dreaming, as in waking hours he always appears from thin air to my right.
Once in the manager’s office, I laid the sheet of car snags onto his desk and politely asked for them to be resolved pronto. I also asked for a courtesy car while his staff rectified my issues.
Without taking his gaze from the snag list, he initially didn’t respond to my requests.
After around half a minute, he told me “Look Mr Strachan, I appreciate your annoyed about the customer service you’ve received, not to mention the oversights in pre-pick up. Unfortunately, I’m not paying my valeting team and drapers £18 an hour to put right a car in one of your dreams.”
As I stood open mouthed at his refusal to make my new automobile fit for purpose, my brother Ian chirped “Sounds fair enough to me Gaz! ….. In an hour or so you’ll never see the car with curtains again and I’ll start appearing to your right from thin air again!”
“I tell you what Mr Strachan, I’ll give you a voucher for the cost of the car with curtains, which you can use if ever you venture this way again in your dreams.” the showroom manager offered, seeing I didn’t seem enamoured with his initial comments.
Before I had chance to answer and get my voucher, I was woken by a message ping from my mobile.
On awaking, I was mightily relieved I hadn’t actually bought a car with curtains on the outside. I stretched for my iphone to see who had sent the message to wake me.
Gazing through tired eyes, I didn’t recognise the number of the sender. I’m sure, though, I’d heard the message of “You buy shit, you buy twice!” somewhere else before.
