Savoir Faire

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Inconsistent.
Sometimes I have, sometimes I have not.


I wish it's consistent -- I don't care if it's always have (though this is better) or always not have as long as it is consistent.

I already had my chocolate frozen yogurt so I voted for "I'm not sure"

Most of the time I feel like I don't know wtf to do and am pretty anxious and scared to some degree...always.

But I have to recognize there have been times where I have known; where I just acted or spoke without much thought.

To this end I would say I have pretty good instincts and if I rather familiar with a situation I can do alright. But in unknown situations, particularity socially I am at a lost. So I just end up standing around trying to not look as anxious as I feel.

in the army, when they made me [very low-paid private] do kitchen police, they threw away wholesale quantities of food just to mess with our heads, but i did my part of counteracting that by acting like a human garbage disposal, shoving food into my mouth, which kept me from withering away to nothing on the starvation rations they gave us out in the field.

I've had one experience of that, in a group. I was the one who noticed and pointed out that it was irrational to do as the dealer suggested and take cars he hadn't told us the price of for test drives. Like I said, we knew what we wanted to spend, so why waste time test driving a car if we didn't know it was within our budget? This led me to formulate a rule:

Don't test drive cars if you don't know the price is right. It's very likely just a ruse to get you to fall in love with it and end up paying more than you can afford.

Also fairly axiomatic is that it's not smart to turn up knowing nothing of Blue Book prices or otherwise relying on the dealer to tell you what their cars are worth. Ditto for reliability of the model and year of any car you contemplate buying. The dealer might be tempted to play up the value and reliability of his cars. He wouldn't be in business if he under-rated those parameters.

Another thing I noticed was that during the process of dealing with you, the big dealers have a tendency to stick you in the waiting area for hours while they attend to other things. Best guess is that they do this to wear you down, hoping you'll just cave in to whatever they want you to agree to, simply because you want to go home. It also does them no harm to waste your time while they get on with more lucrative things. Therefore, don't make other plans for the rest of your day. You can in theory adjourn the project and resume another day, but they might counter this by saying that the "great deal" they're offering you today won't be there tomorrow.

Another difficulty is that they'll probably try to come over as if they're your personal buddy. They aren't. They're simply using that trick to appeal to your sense of generosity towards friends. If they can sell you a heap of junk at an inflated price, they'll probably do it. Your buddy wouldn't, unless it's an uncommonly bad buddy. See the dealer like you would see an opponent in a game of chess. It's likely to be a contest.

So yes, I suppose it is quite a complicated skill, though the overarching principle is fairly simple. It's a battle between one person who wants to overcharge (and is very good at doing that) and another who wants to acquire a genuine bargain (who therefore needs to be very good at doing that). Don't take on your opponent until you've sussed out the art of the game pretty well by researching and asking around.

consumer reports has a new-car-buying service that takes all the drama out of dealing with those bloodsuckers. it is well-worth the money. what is really needed much more, however, is a USED-car-buying business! THAT is where the lions' share of dirty dealing happens, is in the used car market.

I have always bought used cars from people with a good reason to sell a good-working car. I can see right through a "Sherwin-Williams Overhaul" - cosmetic paint - but I'm also able to fix rust myself. Over the last 25 years, since I stopped riding a bike almost everywhere to access cheaper, more remote housing, I have averaged under $200 pa for parts and depreciation on reliable, economical, unfashionable cars. The most I've paid was $1,000, far less than the loss of value from driving a new car off the dealer's lot.
Some junk yards are happy to let you browse around carrying tools, and others are outraged at the suggestion, so I've learned to ask.

what is an example of an "unfashionable" car?

My current example is a re-badged 3-cylinder Suzuki Swift from the 90s, but in general, you want to look for low-glamour origins, dull or even mismatched paint, minor wrinkles, low performance (the slowest car can still beat a loaded moving truck - it is not a problem) and/or public opinion regarding missing macho values. Taken too far, you can wind up with high cost parts due to scarcity, but may also have a win on re-sale value of a "classic" after several years.
These days, I'd also ignore any car that I couldn't sleep in if necessary.

can you sleep in a swift?

I can live out a week's rain in a Swift and emerge ready for a job interview: https://youtu.be/EKoq3B8PRIg

^^^wow imagine what you could do with a Kei car!

How my head spins. My sole interest in cars is its functionality. Since the 1960s I can barely tell them apart from their outward appearances, and I'm mostly unaware of their names.

i love the concept and execution of the citroen ds-21. more attention, MUCH more attention, needs to be paid to ride quality over rough pavement.