I’ve determined that our realtor is interrupt-driven. Whether this is as a function of my having negotiated his percentage down from “standard” (which is a whole separate, weepy story all its own) or simply engrained in his humanoid operating system, I don’t know. A polling methodology would be acceptable given that the polling period is below, say, a week. Even a cooperatively multitasking solution would fit, so long as our needs get serviced within that weekly timeframe.
But it’s become painfully obvious that he is as immobile as the finest figured Italian marble until he is “pinged” in some fashion and his “oh! I best service the ColdForged household” service routine gets executed. The latest “ping” came in the form of a nastygram that I left on his voicemail whereby I expressed my displeasure that a) I hadn’t heard from him in over a week, b) that he hadn’t followed up with any of the showings that had occured in that time period, c) that the “virtual tour” filmed at my house 7 days ago that I was assured would be on the site within 24 hours was not in fact on the site as of this morning (or 168 hours for those following at home), d) we were completely out of flyers for the house and e) that we, as usual, had no clue whether he was planning on doing the open house that he had mentioned 11 days ago.
The ping had the usual effect of a high-priority task run with other interrupts off: we wake up with an Open House sign on the lawn, an envelope stuck in the door with flyers, the virtual tour magically appears on the website, and he calls Cat at home. He doesn’t call me who I expressly asked him to call. It is possible that he doesn’t call me because when I typically leave nastygram voicemail messages I sound approximately like an irritated bald guy chewing glass and crushing walnuts between my dangerously furrowed brows.
I do not like being serviced by an ISR (interrupt service routine for you non-geeks out there). I like people to whom I’m going to be giving several thousand of my precious dollars to take a bit of initiative and schedule in some time to, you know, handle the things they’re supposed to handle for those several thousand dollars. Autonomously.
This is apparently too much to ask.
4 Responses to “Humans and interrupts”
Well shit, can’t you set up an auto-ping, then? Setup a phone to auto-dial and his number and leave messages with him every monday, wednesday, and friday.
It would be an engineering challenge, but so much more enjoyable than actually interacting with him, you know?
Desiree and I had the same problem when we were selling our house over the past few months – no info, no feeback, no schedule for open houses or other events, and no updates to our online listing. It got so bad that I actually had to schedule a weekly call with my Realtor in which she would give me a status report of all the things she’d done the previous week, all of the feedback from the showings we’d had that week, and all of the plans for the upcoming week.
I do more than my fair share of project management at work; you’d think that I wouldn’t have to do it at home…
To continue the analogy… maybe you should send him a DoS (denial of service for the non-geeks).
The only motivation that realtors have to complete a transaction is their fee. A quick sell of an expensive and/or hot property is probably taking most of his attention, and by diminished his rate, you’ve diminished his motivation to work. [Don't get me wrong -- realtors are leeches that in no way earn the $'s they get, but that's another discussion].
Fire your realtor and find another one who is motivated to sell, even if you signed a “contract” or some other agreement for n days. Let him know that he’s breeching his end of the agreement through non-performance and you are moving on.