Over the weekend, my eldest son purchased his first “adult car”. The experience is what any of us who have been to that rodeo a few times would expect. It was tedious, painful, long, boring, and on the shady side. My son didn’t get his fair, bottom line price until my husband insisted that they were leaving the dealership without buying a car. Even then, the haggling didn’t stop. The sales people desperately wanted my son to get his financing through the dealership, even though my son already had good, fair financing procured and he did not want to change it. My son prevailed, but the final paperwork took so long that he had to go back to the dealership the next day to finish signing papers. This was not a fly-by-night car dealer. This was a large dealership of a major American brand of cars. How sad! Had the managers of the dealership had good long-term vision, they would have seen an opportunity to make a successful young man, a brand loyalist for life, by making his first-time car buying experience fair, painless and easy. That chance was squandered over ridiculous, short-term, aggravating bargaining and by constantly trying to up-charge a vulnerable young consumer.
Also over the weekend, I was eavesdropping at my nail salon. (those of you who are my regular readers know that I do that – shame on me.) Anyway, one woman was telling another woman that after getting hassled over a $5 return at her local Walmart, she stopped going there for ten years. This was a woman who had five children. Walmart lost out on probably thousands of dollars of business over a $5 return. When I told this story to my husband, he reminded me that we have essentially done the same thing with Best Buy because they did not honor a computer warranty, on a stupid technicality. We have four kids. We have bought a lot of tech items since that incident many years ago, and not one of those expensive items was purchased from Best Buy.
It’s amazing that just like retailers, we can get stuck on the small stuff, losing sight of the bigger picture. We build small aggravations up to the point that they balloon out and block our vision of the bigger journey ahead. Perspective can so easily be lost and unfortunately, the cost is sometimes great. With everything that upsets me in life, I try to ask the question, “Is this a hill worth dying on?” Sometimes, the answer is yes, but at least it is a thought-out response with the long-term consequences being considered, and not a knee-jerk reaction that has soon passed, with costly ramifications that cannot be repaired.
“Life is about perspective and how you look at something… ultimately, you have to zoom out.” – Whitney Wolfe Herd