For most of my adult life I have believed that female real estate agents are the most evil, manipulative, dishonest, disrespectful and downright rude professionals in the entire world. Worse than lawyers, worse than advertising reps and worse than politicians (although, all are pretty close).
My reasoning for this is based solely on years of apartment hunting and little else but, frankly, that is enough. In my experience, these estrogen-infused snobs have always treated myself and whomever I was looking at the apartment with like we were just moving out of a crack house and we were surely going to pocket the rent and start a fire in the living room. One woman demanded that we put an $1100 deposit down on an apartment just for the right to think about it for a few days. Another once told Monica that not having a washer and dryer on site is better for us because it will 'motivate us to do chores.' Perhaps the most egregious action was taken by the woman who helped us in to our current apartment. After calling everyone under the sun for reference checks, she got a hold of my boss at the newspaper. Not expecting her to tell me what sort of questions she asked, the agent grilled my boss on my work ethic, my status within the company and my reputation away from work. Completely, totally inappropriate. This woman would also not give us keys to the apartment until I had changed all of the utilities in to my name, which despite her insistence is not, in fact, a rule, and has still failed to return my calls requesting keys to the back door and the basement bulkhead.
Some of you may be wondering why I am singling out women here. Quite simply, my experiences with male real estate agents have been much better. In those cases, the information was delivered in a straight forward manor, the only background checks were the standard calling of the old land lord and a credit check and, most importantly, none of them spoke to me like I was a drug addicted 14-year-old who had no business looking for an apartment.
I go on this tiny rant for a reason. That is that I no longer think that these female real estate agents are the most evil people in the world. No, that distinction can now be pinned to a new group: secret shoppers. Living life seemingly for the sole purpose of screwing people out of jobs and getting things for free, secret shoppers have long been the bane of my existence at work, as we are forced to jump through ridiculous hoops when helping customers in the remote chance that one of them may be in the building. Still, I had never really thought about how much I despised these people until yesterday when we took the baby to a place called Monkey Joe's.
For those of you who are not familiar, Monkey Joe's is essentially Discovery Zone without the piss-filled ball pit. For a kid, the place is magic. It is basically a series of inflatable bouncy bounces and a few video games. There is pizza and you can win prizes. Monica and I took Av there yesterday to play in the toddler section and she had a blast bouncing around the play area and horsing around with other kids. I really don't think I have seen her have that much fun in a long time. Maybe ever. For us, the trip was cool, too. I mean, there is literally nothing to do for an adult there, but they let us in free and only charged $5 for the baby. So, we pretty much got to kill a few hours and let Av have some fun for only $5. Cool.
At one point during the visit a woman came up to Monica and started to ask her questions. After a few short "why the hell are you talking to me?" answers., the lady revealed that she was a secret shopper and was having trouble with some of the questions. Monica gave the place a good review, but the whole situation irked me. It made me think back to work- back to having to recite some useless speech every time someone sits down at the bar just in case they might be shopping me. Seriously, who gives two shits that we have other locations? They are at this location. If they want to know where the other ones are they can ask. Or maybe read the menu. Or the coaster I gave them. Or the signs on the wall. Surely they don't need me to tell them that seconds after they have sat down. Unless they are secret shoppers, of course. Or how about the fact that handing the menu to them and pointing out the specials isn't enough. I am supposed to suggest one beer and one dish to them before they order. Well, you know what? I am pretty sure that everyone has different tastes, so I can tell you what my favorite beer and my favorite burger is, but if you're in the mood for fish and chips and a glass of wine it doesn't fucking matter, does it? How about you put on your big boy hat and if you have a question or want to know how something is you just ask. We are adults here. I am a bartender, not a babysitter.
Sorry. As you can see, I am very passionate about this. My point is this: Where the hell do these people get off going in to mine- or anyone else's- place of business with their judgmental attitudes and their criteria? This doesn't happen to doctors, or lawyers or anyone in the corporate world, for that matter. That is because those people have respected jobs. That is what this comes down to. Those people- shoppers I am talking about- have no respect for anyone. I don't know how it works at Monkey Joe's, but if we don't get certain things right on shopper reports, or just get a bad score, our jobs are in jeopardy. Luckily, our managers are somewhat understanding of certain situations, but I have seen people lose their jobs over something like that. Furthermore, nine times out of ten the shoppers don't fill out the reports correctly, raising the question, how much can they really be trusted? I mean look at the situation yesterday. That lady has probably never worked with kids in her life and she wasn't even smart enough to figure out how to answer the questions on her sheet. It is the same thing in a restaurant. I am willing to bet that most of those people that come in to judge us have never waited a table in their lives. All they want is a free meal. That is just wrong. The end.
As for Av she had a blast at Monkey Joe's, just like she had a blast on Sunday when we took her to the farm to pick berries. She is really beginning to understand the concept of most things now, and really seems to have a grasp on how life works. Throughout the past few weeks what I have really noticed is how much better of a parent Monica is. Maybe it is just the teacher in her, but she has the ability to talk to the baby and teach her things at the same time. Pretty much the entire day is an enriching experience for her. As I have said before, I look at myself as more of a supervisor. Eye candy, even. I am good for playing and emergency supervision, but Monica is in charge and we all know it, especially Av. I think it is going to be interesting for the both of us next week when Monica takes her graduate school class. Then it is back to dealing with me from 8-3 every day. Lucky Av.
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