Why I Hate My Job

I absolutely hate the lack of respect my clients have for my boundaries. I am not alone, this is a complaint for agents everywhere. Even when we outline our boundaries, clients don't think it applies to them. They have no idea how obnoxious they can be. Which is too bad, because they wouldn't treat their doctor, lawyer, nail technician or kid's teacher this way.

There are many examples in my years in real estate. Here are two three four that come to mind.

1. I was helping a woman find a rental home. She needed it in eight weeks. I told her repeatedly she was looking too soon. So what does she do? She calls me at 2 a.m. When I don't answer, she calls again. And again. Then, she texts me to tell me she has found three houses she needs to see and she is free two days later to view them. I wrote her back and told her she was rude and would never treat any other working professional this way, and for that reason, she was fired. The next day her mother called, yelling at me because I wouldn't help her adult daughter find a rental home. Perhaps I wasn't the first agent to fire her?

2. I once had a buyer call me at 5 a.m. because he found a house to see. I pointed out it was 5 a.m. and he said, "If you don't show it to me, I will find someone who will!" I hope that worked out for him.

3. Inga sent me a weird text at 11 p.m. this past Friday night. It made no sense, partially I am sure because of autocorrect and perhaps partially because English isn't her first language. Her text was missing verbs and had way too many pronouns.

I wrote her back telling her I didn't understand and perhaps we could discuss whatever issue she was having in the morning. That started a firestorm of texts from her telling me how sorry she was to have bothered me with her personal problems and not to misunderstand her intentions. Nowhere in her messages did it say anything about the fact she contacted me at 11 p.m. (granted, I wrote her back). I wrote back saying, "It's fine, let's talk tomorrow. Good night." which did nothing to mollify her, so I turned off my phone. In the morning I found seven more messages from the night before her saying she was sorry for bothering me and not to misinterpret what she wrote.

A couple hours later, on Saturday morning she wrote me another message asking me to disregard all of her text messages the night before and how sorry she was to get me involved. I wrote her back and said, "I have no idea what the first message said. I still don't. Please note, I am off this weekend. I am happy to take your calls on Monday."

4. Ari called me while I was at lunch with my family Saturday morning. He was losing his mind because he was afraid the loan would fall through. I told him I had spoken in-depth with the loan officer the day before, and I did not get that vibe. We certainly weren't closing on time (because of the loan officer Mama picked). But, falling through seemed to be a bit of a stretch. That did nothing for Ari's meltdown. I offered to call the loan officer and clarify, maybe I missed something. The loan officer said Ari is overreacting and if worse comes to worse, Ari's folks will co-sign. But we certainly aren't at that point. I also called the selling agent just to make sure he was on board with a late closing. The loan officer had called him the day before and told him what was going on. So, there was nothing new as of 3 p.m. Friday afternoon.

The entire phone tag exchange took more than 45 minutes. The ordeal was a result of Ari's imagination or his phone calls with his know-it-all mother. In the end, I said to Ari, "You have loan questions, and those really should be addressed to your loan officer. Why don't you call him?"

His reply, "I didn't want to bug him. He is probably doing family things on his day off."