Car salesman asked how I owed on my trade in.

Don’t get all Wise-Ass with ME, PAL.

The other posters remark was

Car sales is no longer my profession. The last time I sold cars was in 1993.

Your statement would be like if you flipped burgers 20 years ago, before graduating to a Macy’s shoe salesman. So while surely this analogy is not far off from reality, still, would it be OK I classify your profession as a short order cook?

I can’t answer this other than my observation has been that the salesman doesn’t pull the trigger on a deal without the consent of a sales manager.
I imagine that the sales manager has the task of fitting the salesman’s incentives with the dealer’s profit.
As a sales manager I wouldn’t want my salesman to lose a deal (and profit for the dealer) because he didn’t want to eat the loss on on component of a multipart deal.