I will never forget an incident I had with a customer back when I was selling new and used Saturns. It happened close to 10 years ago when Saturn had SC2 coupes. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Saturns, the SC2 coupes were very small three-door vehicles.  

On this particular day, I went out on our lot and greeted a customer. The exchange went something like this:

“Hello, welcome to Saturn! Is this your first visit here?”

“Yes”, said my customer, “I just came by to test drive one of your three-door coupes.”

“Great!” I said, “I happen to have one right here.”

The customer looked at me and said rather belligerently, “I am a big man and I just want to make sure the car has a comfortable fit.”

Now this was no ordinary guy. He was easily 6’2” or 6’3” and easily topped the scales at 350 lbs. I just looked at him and thought there was no way he was going to fit into this car, but who am I to judge, right?

Well, after a few tense minutes of contorting himself into the right shape to get into the car, he actually fit inside, was able to close the door and roll down the window. Man, was I relieved!

About that time, my mouth got ahead of my brain and I blurted out, “Well, it looks like you fat pretty well! Oh, my goodness! Did I just say that?!”

I couldn’t believe what had escaped my lips. My face turned three shades of red. I stammered out, “because you are so tall and …” What else could I say at that point? Needless to say, I didn’t make a customer for life that day. He didn’t buy the car from me and left as quickly as he could pry himself out of the car.