Tea And No Sympathy - Thursday

The phone rings and I look straight to the main office - my door is always open. Negotiator S is already on a call and nobody else is in sight.

I lunge for my handset. Three rings is the optimum, any less and you appear desperate, any more and people start to think they’re ringing an on-line agent - or call centre as we like to name them.

I trill out the corporate greeting, it’s cheesy but at least it’s consistent and gives an air of efficiency. My professional veneer soon strips away though, as I hear idiot savant trainee F’s, nasally whine.

‘Oh, I didn’t expect to hear you.’ Begins F hesitantly.

The choices for arsenic-laced sarcasm are endless but I remember he’s on a string of viewings and might be with a buyer.

‘How can I help?’ I ask pleasantly. That obviously throws the fool.

‘Err, you’re not going to like this.’ Replies F, as my goodwill vanishes faster than biscuits at a Weight Watchers’ end of term party.

‘What is it?’ I say curtly, realising he’s not with punters, or one of our vendors.

‘I’m a bit lost.’

I realised that months ago, but like a hopelessly over-committed gambling addict I need to keep playing. I’ve invested so much so far and training up new staff is….well… a bit of a lottery.

‘Where are you.’ I demand. I know where he should be, he’s got the keys and two sets of property particulars. I checked before he left the office.

‘That’s just it.’ Says F. ‘I don’t know. My sat nav has dropped out.’

Now can call me old fashioned - plenty do - but I never trust some random ex-military piece of hardware orbiting the earth. My old school A to Z of the office area is as well-fingered as a porn mag at a boarding school. Of course, like London taxi drivers made redundant by Uber and the circulating circuity 36,000km above me, I have the knowledge in my head. I know my patch more intimately than a one-eyed pirate. F is due to walk the plank.

‘Wow that sounded angry.’ Says S once I’ve ended my barked directions to the house, where a cash buyer with a deadline might still be waiting for  a jerk in a badly-fitted jacket.

‘He’s lost.’ I tell S curtly. Teeth grinding again. The dentist will be rubbing her latex-gloved hands with glee. I’m pretty sure I’ve paid for a small Polish village to be rebuilt over the last few years.

‘How can he be lost?’ Asks S. She’s trying to remain neutral and doesn’t want to bury her colleague, but I’ve already dug a metaphorical hole that will be challenging Melbourne soon.

‘His sat nav isn’t working.’ I say, as what feels like a lump of amalgam crunches to the back of my throat. Terrific.

‘Hasn’t he got…’ Begins S.

‘A map?’ I interject caustically. ‘ No, it appears those are for old fools with a fear of the future.’

‘I’m fearing for his future.’ Says S, with a disarming smile.

God, she’s good. I’m going to hate it when she gets pregnant.

‘The point of difference between us and some numpties behind a website and a multitiered switchboard in Mumbai, is we should know our area intimately.’ I rant towards S. She just keeps smiling coyly and I can feel myself faltering.

‘If we haven’t got a personal service, with local knowledge and experience we have nothing.’ I tell her, running out of anger as she just smiles back knowingly. If I could bear to lose her, they should drop her into the latest world conflict zone, she’d soon have them all bonding and drinking green tea.

‘Rant over?’ She finally asks gently.

‘For now.’ I answer as gruffly as I can manage. I can feel myself smiling and it’s not a good look with the state of my teeth.

‘Cuppa?’

Yes, she’s good.

‘You’re not going to bollock him when he gets back, are you?’ Asks S, as I sip on the brew.

I try and raise a scowl.

‘Because I know you’re a softy at heart.’ She says grinning.

I’m lost.

-------

Away - using a map - for two weeks. Any Stateside realtors who spot a Brit looking in their window, say hello. It might be me.

Feeding The Machine - Monday

‘Who the f***k invented breakfast meetings?’ Moans H my short of stature, big of ego, rival manager. He’s gravitated towards me at the large rectangular table in this soulless budget hotel we’re in again. It can’t be because he feels superior next to me, at least not until the sales figures are flashed up on the screen.

‘Bloody Americans.’ Replies bulky mortgage man M from across the table. He’s just pocketed a fistful of boiled sweets, from the dish next to the fizzy water that makes you belch horribly, and he’ll no doubt take more than his fair share of the discount brand biscuits when they arrive with the stewed coffee and watery tea. Some mornings I can feel the life force leaking from me like a punctured tyre.

‘Hey my partner is from the States.’ Challenges the woman with the rather too short hair from Human Resources who is due to give a guest presentation on some touchy-feely staff relations issue that we’ll all ignore as soon as the first sale falls-through.

‘Male or female do you reckon?’ Hisses H in my ear, nodding imperceptibly towards the crop-haired people person. Momentary confusion surmounted, I tell him it doesn’t matter as long as she does her job. H looks at me as if he’s stepped in something unsavoury. Not a lot of justice in this world as his office turns over 25% more than mine, irrespective of ill-disguised bigotry - and shoe lifts.

‘Teas and the coffees.’ Announces the eastern European woman in the nylon housecoat as she wheels in a trolley. Her accent is thicker than the dusty tea will be, but she is pretty, in that slightly harsh-featured way borderline malnutrition and a frigid climate seems to breed. Idly, I wonder if she knows my dentist, as she leans across the table rather engagingly and both H and the HR woman check out her rear. That answers one question.

I thank the hotel maid and give her a smile that signals conversation done, but I must have slipped into sales mode, as she engages.

‘You are all the real estate peoples, yes?’ Questions the girl, nodding at me in encouragement. I don’t want to talk property before the greasy bacon sandwiches. And my bean counter boss hasn’t even arrived yet, with a mind-numbingly dull P & L account lecture that would have mathematics geeks trying to fashion nooses with the paper napkins, then looking for sturdy light fittings and volunteers to kick the chair away.

‘Yes, we’re the property experts. Chimes H irritatingly. After several decades I’m still not sure I’d call myself an expert and I’m one of the few to have taken the exams.

‘Yes, he’s big in bungalows.’ Calls M from across the table with a guffaw that is probably masking another of his monumental farts. H ignores M and the Polish waitress ignores H. It seems she want me to say something salient.

‘So,’ continues the woman, whose accent is sounding rather horny in a disconcerting way, after I’ve made a self-effacing comment about knowing a bit about the market. ‘When will people like me be able to afford to buy home?’

‘Come and see me for a financial fact find if you like?’ Suggests M, in between mouthfuls of those not very Nice biscuits. The chambermaid, because that’s the uniform I’m unhelpfully imagining her in now, gives M a look that could freeze vodka.

Several answers race round my head. Replies I’ve toyed with for years. Some serious price deflation, a good round of repossessions, land being released and sold at prices that allows for social housing to be built, the planning process being adapted to make green and brown field site permission conditional on affordable end-unit pricing. But I’m no chancellor. I can’t even work out a sole agency fee without my calculator.

‘Fobbed her off with the usual bullshit then.’ Chuckles H, as the tea-lady exits and the bean counter enters - clutching his laptop and a couple of reams of handouts.

‘First time buyer opportunity?’ Asks the bean counter, nodding at the door hissing shut on the closer.

Not for a while – unless it’s in Krakow.

-----

First time or last time buyer, the book is a gift at £1.53 here:

http://amzn.to/ttGZ4j

US Readers: http://amzn.to/vXpFJf

Once Bitten Twice Shy - Thursday

I’m on my way back to the Polish dentist again, teeth deteriorating in tandem with my career. I know I’m going to stick out like a sore thumb in the waiting room once more as the only man in a suit. Last time it felt like the Job Centre Plus-Size, with a motley collection of gap-toothed, overweight, in-bred unemployables all incongruously wearing tracksuits and sports apparel. 

It’s early enough, pre-work hours, for the traffic wardens to still be in bed but the memory of my last botched root canal treatment with both hands gripping the dentist’s chair and both eyes on the clock, is still fresh. Staggering out twenty minutes later than calculated with shirt collar bloodied, temporary filling already loosening and a mouth so numb I sounded like Jonathan Ross, wasn’t enhanced by the sight of a dark-suited fascist with a ticket machine, appending the fine to my windscreen.

The, ‘I’ve started so I’ll have to finish,’ conversation wasn’t improved by my lisping vitriol splattering the man in sputum as I raged about a slightly spurious medical emergency. The written appeal didn’t go too well either.

As I approach the meter, headache building, a rotund woman in an ill-advised trouser-suit waddles from one of those not too cleverly named Smart cars, the springs still rocking in protest. She looks slightly like I remember my mother before it all went horribly wrong.

I wait, just stopping short of tapping my foot while she fumbles fin her purse and dithers. I’m now within a minute of being late, something I detest with a passion, even if it’s for a cavity inspection by a dubiously qualified Eastern European with limited English language skills.

‘I’m not sure how long to pay for.’ States the woman, turning to me with an apologetic shrug. I really don’t want small talk and I already have my own small change. I smile neutrally.

‘I’ll do forty minutes.’ She announces. I’m not engaging. I talk to people I don’t want to converse with only on the business clock.

‘It’s scandalous.’ Says the woman as she taps at the ticket machine and somehow manages to get the instructions to scroll across the screen in French. Sacre bleu.

I nod in what I gauge to be a sympathetic manner, as her ticket finally disgorges. My own ticket – can’t claim that back, the bean counter would spot the time imprint – placed in the company car I cross the road to the dentist only to find the same woman going through the door. Terrific.

‘Not the best way to start the day.’ Says my stalker, as she sits next to me. I look at her with a slightly plaque-stained smile and suddenly wonder if she’s flirting with me? It’s an unpleasant realisation given my earlier likening of her, made worse by the fact that an unhelpful inner-voice tells me she’s probably about my age.

‘I’ve had better.’ I tell her neutrally, fiddling with my phone to try and give off a better signal than the cheap Nokia I bought, despite every staff member telling me to get smart - with all-you-can-eat data.

‘What do you do?’ persists the matronly figure in what is now in borderline need of a restraining order. I assume my revelation will get the usual pantomime hiss and lose an admirer, but I’m wrong.

‘Oh I’d love your job.’ Says the woman wistfully. You wouldn’t.

‘I adore looking at houses.’ She continues, as I think, yep you are pretty much a textbook time-waster.

‘I expect you need all sorts of fancy qualifications.’ Trills my new best friend. I tell her the stark truth and she frowns.

‘Really?’

 Really.

‘Are you on any daily medication?’ Asks the Warsaw woman, distilled through a white facemask and an equally thick accent. Not yet, I want to say but it’s only a matter of time. She pokes around with that unsettlingly sharp surgical implement, while her mono-browed female assistant fails to operate the suction tube effectively and I wait for a filling to collapse. I’m beginning to pine for my agent-loving admirer who gave me a wonky-smile of encouragement when my name was called. Hmm, she has my name…

It might become painful.

-----

Missed the free download period? Still a virtual giveaway at £1.50...

 

http://amzn.to/ttGZ4j

US Readers: http://amzn.to/vXpFJf