Just because a business earns a profit does not mean it's well run or maximizing its potential. We worked with lots of medium sized businesses ($10-15M gross rev) that succeeded in many ways in spite of themselves.
I didn't actively work in the electronics store I owned a piece of, but I'd pitch in at the front counter for some Saturdays leading up to Christmas, and I would encounter the occasional moron customer, but for the most part people were pretty cool to deal with. Yeah, we'd have some outrageous freaks, but they were rare.
I know reading Cord's thread that dealerships have more (way more..?) than their share of morons, time wasters, and ridiculous freaks through their doors. This is unfortunate for the sales staff (a post above comments about loving to screw with dealerships, so I suppose we see some of it right here...) but in many ways I think that the blame needs to be directed at the selling system that the auto industry has created. And then they try everything to propagate the adversarial process with heinous sales tactics that sometimes break the law (evidently) but also make it so that well adjusted folks dread buying a new car.
Interesting about the Mayfield Toyota paperwork posted above. We bought our Corolla from them, and found the process simple, straightforward, and the salesperson was genuine and great to deal with. Their new-car process had no additional fees, no upselling of garbage (they had a brochure for factory extended warranties) and we completed the process quickly and painlessly. In complete contrast, we literally raced off their used lot after meeting one of the most stereotypical and horrendous salespeople we'd seen in a long time.
