Groundhog Day Again - Wednesday

‘How do you do it boss?’ Asks trainee F, breaking a silence I hadn’t realised had descended.

I look across the empty office. How do I do what? I think. Put up with an idiot like you, when it’s clear I’m never going to need a silk coin-carrier, let alone try and fashion one from an even-toed ungulate’s lughole.

F looks back at me earnestly, the kind of doting gaze you might get from a slightly simple puppy  hoping for a doggy-treat, as opposed to a kick up the arse and a P45.

‘How do I do what?' I finally respond, wondering if F is going to ask, for the umpteenth time, how to re-set the colour printer, credit the franking machine, or make a cup of tea without those strange greasy globules floating on top.

‘Start again from nothing every year.’ Answers F, profoundly. He looks wistfully out the window where the last saps traipsing round the January sales are passing by, clutching goods they don’t really need and almost certainly can’t afford.

It’s a question I’ve been asking myself for more years then I care to remember. The lot of a salesman is one of those Sisyphean tasks, just when you think you’ve reached the summit, some weasel-faced accountant, whose been over-promoted because he can fiddle figures, shoves you back to the bottom again, with an extra 10% added to the mountain top, by next December.

‘You don’t want to overthink it.’ I tell F. Realising, even as I say it, that there’s no danger of that happening.

His face creases in concentration.

‘No you really don’t.’ I urge. ‘Or you might cry and that’s not a dignified thing to do. At least not before the end of the first sales’ quarter.’

‘Cup of tea?’ Asks F, brightening considerably.

‘Yes please, just maybe wash the mug first, it’s been there since last year.’

‘I’m not an idiot.’ Says F, disappearing to the kitchen, humming tunelessly.

Hmm. You say that…..

The phone rings and I nearly jump out of my seat. The dead zone between Christmas and new year makes you forget how an active office should sound. Now with the new year and the latest set of targets upon me, I can expect the traditional influx of valuations and new instructions where the proximity of family, in overheated houses, has tipped a fair few over into finally separating and selling the marital home - at least until the lawyers get involved and they learn what half their house will buy them in the real world.

‘Morning tosspot.’ Crows a familiar voice, after I’ve parroted the corporate telephone greeting. It’s H, my vertically-challenged rival manager. I need his juvenile crowing, like another chocolate from the depleted tub, sitting on top of the filing cabinet. Just those mini Bounty bars to finish. I still dislike them, but the influence of parents who remembered ration books, lives on long after you’ve buried them.

‘You busy yet?’ I ask, regretting the question before it has finished echoing round the office. Even if he hasn’t had a single punter through the door since 8.30 am, H will lie. He can’t help himself. It probably started when the lady in the shop with the monopoly on over-priced uniforms, asked him his height, as he prepared for infant school.

‘Having it away, already.’ Trills H, predictably. ‘Two sales agreed, four new sole agencies and a couple of lettings to losers who’ve been kicked out of their homes by angry women, who found out they’ve been cheated on. God I love, social media! It’s so much easier to expose adulterers.’

H didn’t do charm school. That was obviously too much of a reach.

‘Anything else?’ I ask, despite myself. I may not have the goth haircut and multiple body-piercings but I can do self-harm as well as any angsty teenager.

‘Three cheeky contracts exchanged, to get the January invoices off and running.’ Replies H.

I know most solicitors are still skiing, or holed up in second homes in the west country, so there is no way these deals have happened this year. He’s cheated the system again.

God, I hate estate agents.

Dancing With Wolves - Friday

The monsoon-like rain is lashing against the office window again, as I think of that outstanding planning application for a green field new-build site, just downhill from the river. Just hope once the money has changed hands that they don’t call the development The Meadows, or Waterside Gardens, because sure as night follows day the roads are going to flood and the thought of Kevin Costner resurrecting his sunken film career by jet-skiing through a forest of soggy For Sale boards, isn’t appealing. Waterworld II - just when you thought it was safe to throw up some cheap timber-framed homes, with no effective drainage system….

‘This weather is just the pits.’ Says trainee F, gazing at the downpour. I had penciled in a leaflet drop for the limp-brained buffoon, but even I have some conscience intact. Some.

‘Was it always like this?’ Asks negotiator S, looking at me with that disarming smile.

‘What’s that meant to mean?’ I demand. ‘I didn’t crew for Noah’s Ark you know.’

S goes slightly red. ‘I just meant you’ve been around for a lot longer….’

‘Careful.’ I caution. The leaflets are still on the printer and some people would pay good money to have a top-heavy woman in a wet t-shirt, run up their drive.

‘She means you are as old as the hills and might have seen a few floods and the odd ice age.’ Says lettings lush B, with a chuckle. She’s no spring chicken. Just because she shags blokes half her age, with names nobody can spell - including the owners - doesn’t make her the fountain of youth.

‘She has a point.’ Contributes fat finance fiddler M unhelpfully. ‘You have been in the business about double the time anybody else in town has. They’ll probably stick a blue plaque on the office when you finally move out.’ The others all laugh and I glance at the stack of A4 leaflets once more. It would be churlish - but tempting. Instead the phone rings.

‘Who’d like a viewing on the grumpy bloke’s flat in half an hour?’ Asks S once she’s fielded the call. The office falls silent, just the soft hum of the computer hub for company. Assistant manager T cracks first.

‘In this weather they must be serious.’ He looks at S and she blushes again. ‘Or complete time-wasters.’ He adds suspiciously.

That’s the problem with this business; you try and qualify people, ascertain their means and motivation but it’s an art not a science. Every agent has tales of afternoons spend with complete messers who have no intention of buying anything. They’ve been aroused by watching daytime televised property porn and fancy a ride in a base model Vauxhall with someone accommodating and well-dressed, who doesn’t charge by the hour. Conversely we’ve all dismissed someone as a fantasist, who promptly went along the road and bought a home you were also selling, from the opposition.

‘I think they are wasters.’ Says S, hesitantly. ‘Although….’

‘Although what?’ Demands T. He won’t want to get those designer-framed glasses steamed up, and the prissy over-priced raincoat he brings in each day has more absorbency than a sponge. Style over substance - pretty much sums-up T.

‘Why is everybody looking at me all of a sudden.’ Says F colouring up, though not as attractively as S.

‘Because everyone shafts the trainee.’ Says B with a smirk. Please, she can’t be doing him too? Not that I would accommodate her in a month of Sundays, but it’s bit hurtful not to be even asked.

B has a point, although a somewhat Dickensian one. When I started in the industry - in a drought as it happens, but a sales one rather than a water shortage - it was the hapless youngest, least experienced staff members, who did all the crap jobs nobody else would. Licking envelopes, franking mail, photocopying particulars and foot slogging to viewings in homes no other staff member would enter without rubber gloves and wellington boots.

I try to be a more modern manager. Try to be inclusive and even-handed.

‘Not that again ’ Says T looking at me dismissively.

Head or tails?

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Help To Cry - Tuesday

‘Seen this guys?’ Questions fat finance fiddler M, as he sways into the centre of the office, waving his laptop.

There’s a long, indifferent silence. If it’s the McDonald’s website again and a Happy Meal offer for morbidly obese chubsters who blame genes, not intake, I’m not interested.

‘What is it?’ Asks negotiator S, eventually. She’s far too nice for this industry.

M spins his laptop, an action that causes the hint of an exhausted wheeze, and shows us a banner headline followed by the sort of facts and figures, interspersed by indecipherable graphs, that still make me shiver nearly forty years after my last math’s lesson.

‘Over 23,000 mortgage products to choose from currently.’ M replies, with a podgy grin. ‘That’s why you lot need to keep wheeling the confused and desperate in to me.’

‘Didn’t think you could tuck them up with endowment mortgages any more.’ Says assistant manager T, sarcastically.

M scowls at T. ‘That was along time ago,’ he says defensively. ‘And anyway products are much more sophisticated nowadays.’

‘People still don’t understand them though.’ Ventures trainee F. He’s right, but not the best advocate as he still hasn’t grasped how to work the franking machine, without clearing our complete credit balance on one mis-stamped envelope to Spain. If only I could post him somewhere….

‘What you mean,’ argues T. ‘Is there are more ways to confuse vulnerable borrowers and flog them insurance policies they don’t need, that won’t pay out if they are actually terminally ill.’

‘That’s a very jaundiced view.’ Snaps back M. ‘And you might not want that repeated at the next sales managers’ meeting. Particularly with your level of introductions.’

There’s an uncomfortable silence, one I feel I need to fill. But then I’m more aligned with T, than M. I hate flogging mortgage and insurance products, I’m here to sell my clients’ homes at the best possible price. But sometimes you have to swallow your pride, particularly as individual targets leave you more exposed than a flasher on a breezy beach.

‘We are a team.’ I say, unconvincingly, as loose lettings’ lush B, totters through the door on inappropriate heels. She ignores us all and heads for the kitchen, where I hear a kettle filled with enough water for one.

‘It’s not the product range that causes young people a problem.’ Says S, with raised eyebrows in the direction of B and her solo beverage. ‘It’s the fact that people will never be able to save up enough for the deposit, if they are paying rent at the same time.’

‘Exactly.’ Agrees T. ‘And that government Help to Buy scheme was a shambles. You save, they are supposed to add to your pot and it turns out you can’t use the funds for the 10% deposit. It’s a joke’

T is spot on. The hastily launched proposals, like most Government plans for UK housing in the last two decades, were clumsy and without detail. But as ever, by the time the schemes were called in to question, the clowns who launched them were long gone and lunching in the city on a lucrative consultancy deal, with a featherbedded pension. Come the revolution….

‘All you need to worry about is getting them in front of me.’ Says M, with a queasy smile. ‘I can do the rest.’

‘Yeh, but I’m nor sure I’d want any friend of mine taking on a thirty-five year mortgage.’ Counters T.

‘Or my granny being coerced into an equity release plan on her house.’ Adds S.

‘Yes, but I’d like my own flat with an en-suite and a gym in the basement.’ Says F, with a glassy-eyed stare.

‘That’s more like the attitude we need.’ Concludes M triumphantly.

‘They not need any financial advice?’ Quizzes M, later.

I’ve just seen new clients to the door. They’ve verified my draft particulars, signed up on a sole agency, entrusted me with the sale of their home and I really want them to do well. I don’t want them hurriedly stitched up, they can go to A & E on a Saturday night for that.

‘Got their own financial advisor.’ I tell M, fingers crossed under the desk.

A man needs some integrity.

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The Threshing Machine - Wednesday

‘Oh come on, who hasn’t topped up the franking machine?’ I grumble.

‘You, probably.’ Fires back assistant manager T, cheekily. He knows I can’t work out how to reload the unit on-line, but that’s not the point.

‘There was a time when I stared in this business we didn’t have franking machines.’ I tell T sagely, as we puzzle over the convoluted instruction manual and look in vain for any sign of negotiator S returning from lunch. She knows how to top up the mailing machine remotely. T and I clearly don’t - remotely.

‘Well we won’t need a franking machine for much longer anyway.’ Opines T, as he stabs at the reset button aimlessly. 

‘Why’s that?’ I ask, knowing the answer, but not liking it much.

‘Because hardly anyone doesn’t have an email address now, wait a few years for the old buggers to die off, or be shipped to nursing homes, and we can send everything out electronically.’

I’ve only just got used to having a franking machine. Technology keeps galloping past. I feel like a carthorse on a racecourse.

The door opens and trainee F rolls in, whistling in a key no musician has ever heard of.

‘Can you top the franking machine up?’ I ask plaintively

F frowns, then says hesitantly.’ I’m a bit short this month, can’t we use petty cash?’

Sometimes I wonder if it’s just me? Perhaps the world has moved on to another level and I’m some anthropological throwback just waiting for the mercy killing of extinction.

‘He means how to reload it on-line.’ Says T coming to my rescue and saving another expensive trip to the office swear box.

’S usually does it.’ Replies F unhelpfully.

‘What if she’s run over by a bus?’ I snap angrily.

‘She hasn’t been has she?’ Says F, eyes brimming up. Good God. In the office, out with pernickety punters, in the high street battling shoppers - you are sometimes never more alone than in a crowd.

‘These were new fangled not that long ago.’ I tell T and F as collectively we stare at the franking machine handbook. It might as well be written in Swahili for all I can fathom. 

‘What did you do. Deliver by hand?’ Asks F to a snort of derision from T.

‘Stamps!’ I shout with more volume than I intended and a side-order of spittle. ‘We used to get A4 sheets of stamps from the Post office and fill, fold then stick.’

‘It must have been like the dark ages when you started.’ Says F after we’ve given up hearing a Fax machine screech every time we unsuccessfully tried to credit the franking machine. S will be back soon, unless the Number 10 really does wipe her out.

‘Well,’ I begin warming to a theme. ‘You didn’t just push a button and upload details to a property portal.’

T moves away, saying flatly. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

‘And you couldn’t take a dozen photos on a digital camera and retouch them when you got back to the office.’

‘Did you still get dustbins in the foreground back then?’ Shouts T from the kitchen, impertinently.

He knows I hate badly framed photos, with no thought taken before snapping. Company cars in the picture, or the numpty taking the photo reflected back in a window, are two other pet hates.

‘We used to have a film company collect the 35mm rolls every day and bring them back twenty-four hours later.’ I tell F, as he stifles a yawn. ‘So you had to make sure you got a good shot or you ended up with fifty sticky-backed mini-prints to go in the bin.’

‘Did you have one of those retro black and white numbers?’ Asks F, seemingly interested again.

‘He means Polaroid, the instant ones.’ Says T plonking two mugs of grease-flecked tea on the desk.

‘I did as it happens.’ I answer dreamily. Fondly remembering the huge plastic cameras and the excitement of waiting for the pull out print to develop.

‘Good for revenge porn shots and selfies?’ Asks F lewdly.

Never more alone.

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