Incompetence never ceases to amaze me...

INCOMPETENCE

"IF YOU CAN CAST DOUBT ON THE ABILITIES AND SKILLS OF OTHERS, THERE IS NO END TO THE THINGS THAT YOU CAN FAIL AT WITHOUT BEING NOTICED"

EXAMPLE

It has been quite a while since I have last posted a blog on AR (and unfortunately this posting is also a negative one), but as I sit here on a rainy Easter Sunday I couldn't help but think about how some people can be so incompetent in regards to their profession. Don't get me wrong because I know I am not perfect... nobody is, but there should be a law requiring EVERYBODY who is employed or in business for themselves to look in the mirror once a day and ask, "can I really do the job I am being paid to do"? If that were to happen and the majority of people actually remained honest with themselves, we just might slash the incompetence rate to at least 50% of the working population :-)

I have an 18 lot detached townhouse development that I am listing by Martha Lake and I must say we have had our share of "interesting" situations in 5 months of running the site. For example, we have not 1 but 2 different mortgage brokers who each had buyers come to mutual acceptance on 1/13/09 (two different lots though). One of them missed TWO closing dates before finally recording a week ago. The other has missed THREE closing dates and still has not closed to this day (they claim it will close on Tuesday now). Daily fees are accruing obviously, but what I STILL cannot figure out is how it takes almost 3 MONTHS to close 2 slam dunk buyers with good credit, reasonable dti's and funds to close?!? I have never encountered such incompetent mortgage brokers and can only imagine how frustrating it must be for their buyers! To make a long story short, they have no clue what they are doing and have no business in the mortgage industry. There are plenty of good mortgage brokers out there so I am still trying to figure out why I always encounter the worthless ones.

I apologize for only giving you an elevator speech worth of details due to the length of the story, but we're human which means we're impatient and hate long rambling blog posts (or maybe that's just me :-) (kidding)

Basically we were given every excuse in the book, but my personal favorite was "the file has to wait in a long line because all the refi's are backing up the purchases". 

I am sure all you mortgage brokers out there know the validity of that statement ;-)

Finally, Robert I. Sutton from Business Week wrote a recent article about "The Peter Principle" (no pun intended). For those of you that have never heard of it, I suggest you look it up. Here is a little snip from the article that I couldn't help but share:

"The Peter Principle made us laugh, but it also made us aware of the importance of simple competence — and of how elusive it could be. When people do their jobs well, Dr. Peter argued, society can't leave well enough alone. We ask for more and more until we ask too much. Then these individuals — promoted to positions in which they are doomed to fail — start using a bag of tricks to mask their incompetence. They distract us from their crummy work with giant desks, replace action with incomprehensible acronyms, blame others for failure, cheat to create the illusion of progress."

SOUND LIKE ANYBODY YOU KNOW?

On a funnier note (if you don't mind long rambling blog posts ;-) the model home for this same development was broken into last Friday night. The suspects some how retrieved the key from the key box (which is missing) and had free roam in our FULLY FURNISHED & STAGED model home. No damage or vandalism was done. All that was stolen was an inexpensive mirror, an inexpensive picture and a coffee pot. Not the expensive appliances or furniture or various other staging items throughout the 2,335 sq ft home. Apparently there have been model homes recently stripped of EVERYTHING and trashed, yet we get taken for a mirror, picture and coffee pot??? Does that not sound stupid to anybody else but me??? That's even worse than the mystery thief who dug up two matching plants from our entrance right before Christmas. Recession or not, that's just pathetic!