{"id":1681,"date":"2006-10-19T16:37:16","date_gmt":"2006-10-20T00:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2006\/10\/yet_another_reminder_why_you_should_never_ever_use_the_phrase_you_work_for_me_to_someone_in_the_service_sector.html"},"modified":"2006-10-19T16:37:16","modified_gmt":"2006-10-20T00:37:16","slug":"yet_another_rem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/10\/yet_another_rem.html","title":{"rendered":"Yet Another Reminder Why You Should Never, Ever Use The Phrase &#8220;You Work For Me&#8221; To Someone In The Service Sector"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You probably think brokers are best seen and not heard . . . then you induldge your inner douchebag and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nypress.com\/19\/42\/news&#038;columns\/rentaldem.cfm\">end up hearing about it in the New York Press<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>They had already found a great place, were in the process of taking it, but wanted to make sure it was a good deal. Did I have anything they could see? Losers from the word go. They weren&#8217;t even bright enough to keep that kind of information to themselves. In fact, they acted as if needing the assistance of a real estate agent was somehow beneath them. They were invulnerable, but if I had a better place than the one they were into, well, they would be generous enough to allow me the time to show it to them. I wasn&#8217;t buying this nonsense (having fell victim to it before), but gave them a quick rundown of the market and some of our inventory, including general price-per-square-foot and so forth. It was one of those days. They were only looking for assurance and I didn&#8217;t mind offering some.<\/p>\n<p>I gave them a fair assessment of the market, but they still weren&#8217;t convinced, so I asked about the specific apartment, &#8220;What&#8217;s the address?&#8221; If I knew the building, I was willing to give them my honest opinion. He answered, &#8220;No, I don&#8217;t know.&#8221; To which I responded, &#8220;You don&#8217;t know the address of the apartment that you are interested in?&#8221; He continued, &#8220;Well, I know it, but I&#8217;m not telling you,&#8221; with an emphasis on you. I said fine, and sat back down, believing that we were entirely finished speaking. I had tried to help. What else was I expected to do? He grunted his frustration at such an abrupt end to the conversation, so I explained that if he wasn&#8217;t willing to share what apartment he liked, why should I tell him which apartments I liked? At this point his wife fired up, &#8220;This is ridiculous, you&#8217;re the agent. You&#8217;re supposed to tell us what apartments are available.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She was indignant, &#8220;You&#8217;re the one working!&#8221; That got me furious, and I responded, &#8220;I work for you? You walk into my office and I owe you something?&#8221; At this point they were crumbling some paperwork and walking out. I was stunned.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The problem, real life broker Brian Carter writes, is that even though renters pay the fee, real estate agencies are ultimately working on behalf of landlords &#8212; and we know that this vetting process <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/10\/then_again_if_y.html\">sometimes has a dark side<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You probably think brokers are best seen and not heard . . . then you induldge your inner douchebag and end up hearing about it in the New York Press: They had already found a great place, were in the process of taking it, but wanted to make sure it was a good deal. Did [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-real_estate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}