I took my car in to be fixed. The mechanic was nice enough, the dealership shiny and large. Emblems and logos, everywhere. I normally sit in the lounge, where they have a chef that makes sandwiches and soups, one of each per day, as well as some cookies and snacks. I like that lounge. I brought my car in because it made a rattle that I didn’t like, and so I sat in the lounge while the mechanic determined the cause. I wondered if the noise came from the wheel. But it couldn’t come from the wheel because I felt it in my seat when I went over a bump. Maybe it came from the chassis, though a rattly chassis would be much worse than a rattly wheel. I waited. What was taking so long?
The mechanic’s name was Jeff. He had greasy hands and greasy nails, and I thought that there would be no way for him to clean those nails. I thought that some days he must have his hands perfectly clean, and when he does he probably looks at them and makes sure people notice. Like he’s a hand model. But he was under the car, standing there with a flashlight, looking at the various parts and thinking. I know he was doing this because I left my seat in the lounge, threw away the paper plate that my chicken pesto panini was served on, and walked around the parts department to the shop. Then I stood under the car next to Jeff and turned the flashlight on my iPhone and stared at the underside of the car as if I had seen one before.
I had, after all, once almost changed a tire. I had a flat when I was driving to Minnesota, and before calling AAA I had considered changing the tire by myself. I even looked around for the spare tire, but when I realized it was in the trunk, under a bunch of things I had packed for my trip, I decided against the action. I suggested to Jeff that this metal rod might be the culprit, and I reached up and shook it violently. I told him that he needs to consider that the rod is the problem, and that we needed to sit down and have a meeting about it, because I, the person who nearly thought about chaining a tire once, have determined that this is our problem. The tie rod.
Jeff ignored me, even though I shook the tie rod again to remind him that it wiggled when I did so. Jeff said I should leave the shop now, because I “didn’t know what I was talking about”. I told him that this was no way to speak to a customer, and he told me that’s why there are nicer men and women with name tags who work at the computers outside of the shop, the ones who don’t have greasy nails. He said I should leave. I asked about the tie rod. He said it wasn’t the tie rod. I shrugged my shoulders and said it was the tie rod. Then I fired him and took my rattly car down the road to another dealer, where I stood with a mechanic named Brian and shined my iPhone light under the hood with him.
I didn’t really do any of these things. But I do speak with sellers every day, and I am as Jeff, or maybe Brian, and they are me. They tell me that they know better than I do. That the market isn’t really a market, but rather the market behaves in the way that brokers tell it to behave. The suggestion is that if the brokerage community gets together and enforces a strict $5MM minimum list price on all lakefront homes that, in some time, this will be the norm. A 50′ lakefront home will sell for $5MM, and a 200′ lakefront home will sell for $5.5MM. Sellers of unique or otherwise overpriced properties have terrific ideas as to how to accomplish those market defying goals, except that all of their ideas are the equivalent of me, violently shaking that tie rod.