I was looking through a few of my old (selling real estate in Illinois) blog posts – and this one made me smile. I wrote this on February 12, 2014.
Super happy to now be living in Florida – getting ready to take Pearl for a walk in 79 degree weather.
Winter can go ahead and go away anytime now.
I know some Realtors put up with far longer and far worse winters than we have to deal with here in the Midwest, but the last month or so has really been brutal.
I hate winter to begin with. I’d much rather sweat than shiver. But, when the weather starts to impact my day-to-day business – and I mean, REALLY impact my job – I just get angry.
Here are just a few complaints I’d like to file against Old Man Winter:
- You threw a significant wrench in what was a relatively smooth-going transaction when you decided to freeze that one little pipe. I don’t know what made you think my buyers would appreciate a giant water feature in their finished basement, but you were wrong. You’ve stalled closing by more a month, cost everyone more money, and you’ve given me about eight new grey hairs as a direct result of trying to figure out how to handle insurance companies, acquire further inspections, and negotiate additional repairs. Thanks for that.
- You broke my rubber mallet and made me look like a crazy person in the front yard of one of my (thankfully, vacant) listings. Signs will NOT go in the ground right now. I tried standing on my sign. I tried jumping on my sign. Laura and I tried standing on the sign together. I tried the big thing my dad made for me specifically for putting signs in frozen ground – and NOTHING! So with no other option. Laura held my sign in place and I wailed away with my rubber mallet. I hit the sign as hard as I could as many times as I could muster – screaming obscenities the whole time. After a little while, there were little black ‘things’ flying past my face. “What the $#@% is flying around my head?!?!?” I screamed. “I think they’re pieces of your hammer….” Laura tentatively suggested. And, sure enough – one whole side of my mallet had disintegrated. So, I turned it over – yelling and hammering with the other side of the thing until my sign was settled in the ground about an inch deep. I then piled up some snow around the sign legs and walked away.
- You made me get stuck in my own driveway. (Which I guess didn’t really impact my work… I wasn’t late to an appointment as a result.) But I had to PUSH my car while Laura spun the tires – embarrassing me in front of my mail-lady.
- You make me wear outfits that I don’t like. Snow boots do not go well with dress pants. I have completely given up on trying to look nice for now. And, my boots weigh three pounds each – so I’m three times as tired at the end of the day after clumping around in big heavy shoes.
- You’re forcing several of my sellers to diligently study the weather forecast, because I told them we need to hold off on making any changes to their listing until we achieve a 10-day forecast with no snow. Because as soon as anybody so much as thinks about setting up a few showings, we’re hit with another few inches of snow and three days of single-digit temperatures and all the schools are cancelled – and when school’s cancelled the rest of the world may as well stop turning. (Except for Target… no matter how bad the roads are or how low the temperature plunges – it seems it’s always safe for parents to take their kids to Target.)
- You have forced other sellers to seek warmer weather in Florida so when they received an offer on their house, I had to mail them all of the paperwork. And, then you sent a winter storm to Atlanta (where my package of paperwork was apparently stranded alongside the road for days).
Thanks, winter. You’re done here. Let me get back to work now.