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“No one’s going to want to buy it,” Marty was telling Rebecca. “Not with that ugly wallpaper there. We should have replaced it.”
“The wallpaper looks fine,” she said back to him. “You don’t have an eye for this kind of thing because you’re a moron.”
Nobody would notice the wallpaper. That was the last thing anyone would care about when buying a house. It could be replaced with an afternoon’s time worth of work and, at most, a few hundred dollars. This house was listed at just over a million.
Marty shook his head and went to the wall.
“A moron, hey?” he said with a devilish grin.
“What are you doing?” Rebecca asked.
“Something I should have done a long time ago.”
“Mr. Dyer,” I said, trying to stop him, but it was too late. He peeled the edge of the wallpaper off, tearing it unevenly in the process.
Under normal circumstances, that wouldn’t be a huge problem. It would slow down the sale as we’d have to spend a day fixing the issue. But Marty had unknowingly exposed something bigger that rose to the level of catastrophic.
“What the fuck is that?” he asked.
He’d revealed a large black splotch below the paper. I knew exactly what it was but didn’t want to say it while there were guests touring the house.
I didn’t have to, though. The buyers had made their way back downstairs and saw it with the rest of us.
“Oh my God,” the wife said. “Is that mold?!”
“Thank you for your time,” the husband said, huddling his wife in his arms as if to protect her from it. And the two of them hurried out without giving me the chance to say goodbye.
Crap. The house was certainly unsellable now in its current condition.
CHAPTER4
***WESLEY***
Ireceived an email from the workplace climate team containing the office’s first report. Skimming through the file, there wasn’t much to it. An auditor had come in a week or two prior, spoke to me as well as several members of the team, and put her observations down in this form report that, fortunately, didn’t seem to indicate we had any problems with harassment.
Towards the end, however, I was taken for a loop as they indicated low marks in office morale.
Employees indicated a high level of anxiety related to expectations and demands of their jobs. We recommend offering weekly meditation sessions to help employees learn how to better manage stress. This can be done in the office or through providing subscriptions to a smartphone app. See below for specific recommendations of platforms as well as bulk pricing details. Additionally, several interviewees indicated the lack of guidance and amicability from upper management. By offering more clarity and assistance to your workers, we expect you might see a 20 - 30% improvement in morale. Additionally, a friendly, casual demeanor should increase employee workplace satisfaction.
These weren’t merely suggestions. Reading between the lines, the auditors needed to see that we were following through on their recommendations. I suspected that they received a cut of the profits from the smartphone apps they were recommending, but that was simply money. It would cost the company a few hundred dollars a month — an amount that we could afford even in this difficult market — but it would demonstrate that we cared about employee satisfaction, which meant we could write the cost off when it came time to do taxes.
The second demand of more involvement from upper management, was more of a pain in the ass. I would need to document ways in which I was helping individuals in the office to achieve their goals. Gone were the days of sink or swim and, instead, employee failure was now a reflection on their supervisors. I didn’t make my way through twenty-five years of selling real estate to get to this position just so I could continue doing the work of a sales agent.
I began typing up a response to the report to indicate I received it and also to document the actions I would take to correct the concerns raised by the auditor. I was barely through the second sentence when there was a knock at the door. I wanted to tell the person to go the hell away — didn’t they know what a closed door meant? — but that struck me as more than a bit hypocritical for me to do while typing up an email saying I was going to take greater care to work with my staff instead of throwing them out to the wolves.
“Come in,” I said.
The door cracked open, and Sloane stepped in cautiously.
“Do you have a minute?” she asked.
I mumbled an affirmative. It was true that I didn’t want to see anybody, but if I had to see someone, at least it was her.
“I could come back later if you’re busy.”
I shook my head no and pointed to the seat across from me. As beautiful as she looked, there was a bit of concern in her expression. It was a sign of vulnerability and fearfulness. And, as such, weakness.
That skittishness wouldn’t get her far in our dog-eat-dog world. I should have told her to leave and come back in with more confidence and forcefulness, but this was already taking time out of my day that I didn’t feel like sparing.
