Anna's first week as showroom manager was less glamorous than her promotion had sounded. She still had the fourteen-vehicle proposal to finish, but now she also had a staffing schedule to reorganize, a reception team needing clear procedures, and salespeople who wondered whether their new manager was there to punish them for Derek's mistakes. One employee asked privately whether every customer would now be allowed to take a test drive before showing any ability to buy. Anna explained that the dealership could still use legitimate safety and qualification procedures, but those procedures had to be consistent, documented, and based on actual requirements rather than clothing, age, or the vehicle a person drove onto the lot.
"I don't want us to waste time," she told the sales team at her first morning meeting. "I want us to stop wasting it in a different way. Every person who walks in should get a greeting, a question about what they need, and a clear explanation of the next step. If someone isn't ready to purchase, we can still be useful. A person doesn't become less deserving of courtesy because we aren't going to earn a commission today."
Ben Carter, who had told the investigators what he saw, raised his hand. "What if a customer wants something we can't offer?" "Then we say so, honestly, and if we know where they can get the information, we tell them," Anna answered. "There's no value in making a promise we can't keep. But there's also no value in making somebody feel ashamed for asking." She asked Ben to help prepare a written list of dealership services and appropriate referral contacts, and his surprise at being given responsibility was visible.
Anna did not want her new title to become a reason to stop doing the things that had earned it. She spent the afternoon confirming manufacturer allocations and talking to the commercial service director about the response agreement Gloria had requested. The director, a man named Peter Dorsey, warned that replacement vehicles could not always be made available immediately during regional shortages. Anna told him to put that limitation in writing rather than burying it behind a line about priority treatment. "If the customer plans her routes around a promise," she said, "then the promise has to mean something when the engine doesn't start."
Meanwhile, Gloria went on running Hayes Transportation. The morning after the showroom confrontation, she arrived at the depot before sunrise, reviewed a driver absence, approved a repair invoice, and sat through a call with a university transportation coordinator who wanted two evening routes combined. She did not tell the coordinator that her son owned the dealership where she was negotiating a large vehicle purchase. The purchase was a business decision, and she intended to make it that way.
At eleven, Anna called. "Mrs. Hayes, I have the revised service terms," she said. "I can bring the final agreement to the depot tomorrow if you'd like to review it with Emma and Calvin there." Gloria glanced at the clock. "Tomorrow is fine.