Story 1 - (Personal/Family story).

I’m from the Philippines and this happened to my grandfather when he was at a Honda car dealership in Quezon City, Metro Manila. He had stage 4 cancer and was on a wheelchair accompanied by our family driver; despite having stage 4 cancer he doesn’t look very ill at that times, (because he was very athletic and he was also naturally bald).

Both of them were wearing casual clothing (old khaki shorts, old t-shirt and old sandals) as opposed to the other buyers who were wearing corporate attire clothing.

So what happened was, my grandfather tried to get the attention of the Sales Agents to inquire and they ignored him; several minutes had passed and no one was still willing to give him any attention, until he snapped.

(He exclaimed in a loud voice).

• Let’s go!… it seems that these people have no intention of selling us any cars!

The whole store became silent and everyone was looking… as they were about to leave, the Sales Manager approached and politely apologized and asked him… (Sir, what’s the problem?). My grandfather then replied and said that the Sales Agents were ignoring him.

The Manager apologized again and asked what model he wanted… my grandfather said that he wanted the most expensive model, which at that time was a brand new Honda CRV 2008, the Sales Manager then asked what payment plan he wanted and my grandfather said that he will pay it all in cash, the price of the CRV at that time was somewhere between $21,000 to $25,000 (USD).

This shocked the Sales Agents who were ignoring him just earlier since a lot of the other buyers rarely paid in cash… (My grandfather always pays in cash for major purchases).

Before leaving the store, the Sales Manager scolded the Sales Agents and made them apologize to my grandfather. Later that day, my grandfather went to the bank to withdraw the exact amount of cash and he was able to purchase the CRV.

Story 2 - (A popular story that happened to a boastful and conceited local Filipino celebrity).

• This is Gretchen Barretto… she went into a building and boarded the elevator. She saw another lady in the elevator who was dressed casually and Gretchen demanded to her own bodyguard to make the lady leave… the lady went out of the elevator and Gretchen continued on her way to the floor that she was visiting, (An exclusive spa that she frequented)… when the elevator doors opened there were guards already waiting for her and they informed her that she had to leave the building… they accompanied her all the way down to the ground level and there she saw the same lady whom she booted out of the elevator earlier… it turns out that the lady is the owner of the building.

(There are other incidents like this that I know of)… a lot of wealthy or well-off people in the Philippines love to wear simple, casual or unassuming clothes.