Baby you can buy my car

It's very interesting to learn about the world of negotiation. One of the ways I get to learn about this is in a little car building game I play with Daddy. In this game, we take my Tomy car building set and build a vehicle. The vehicle is always outrageous with wings, smokestacks, and the like. Sometimes the vehicle is multi-use: it's a car, and a plane, and a helicopter. When it's finished, I put it out at Aidan's car lot and wait for customers to arrive.

The customers, who are often stuffed animals, come to check the car out. They test drive it and decide whether they like it. If they decide they want to buy, we then negotiate. Usually, I make the initial offer, which often consists of more than googol dollars. None of the animals can afford this, so they will typically make a counteroffer, like one dollar. We then negotiate back and forth until we arrive at an acceptable price.

So far so good. But here's where the real profit opportunity comes in. I've found that if the stuffed animal does not immediately drive the car off the lot, there's an opportunity to sell the same car AGAIN to the next stuffed animal to come along. This really boost profits since I've managed to sell the same car twice. What I've discovered, though, is that the animals are none to happy to learn that they've both bought the SAME car and that there's only one car. Often, they ask for a refund.

I learned another thing too. My cars are not always very sturdy. Recently, a box of crayons bought a car (after the usual haggling) and proceeded to drive it off the lot. Shortly thereafter, the car broke into two pieces. The crayons demanded their money back citing a California lemon law. I countered that the crayons had bought a car and not a fruit so the lemon law did not apply. I later learned that when a car goes bad shortly after purchase, it's called a "lemon" and that's what the law referred to. This car business is pretty tough.