Rising Rental Rates and Why I’m not Going to Lunch

Rental rates are increasing. The radio told me that this morning, but when I heard it I was all like, “You aren’t telling me anything I didn’t already know, Mr. Radio Man.” Two of my friends in the past three weeks have told me about their apartment rents increasing. One by twenty dollars and other by ninety. The twenty dollar rent hike was part of a new “package” the apartment rolled out that basically meant they were increasing everybody’s rent. The ninety dollar increase was due to management remodeling some apartments within the complex.  Not my friend’s place, mind you, but some other folks’ apartments. The nerve.

If you’re in my friends’ shoes, you should at least consider the benefits of a (stupefyingly low) same-every-month mortgage (and your own kitchen and laundry room and walls you can paint any color you like).

Enough of that. We just got out of a team meeting. Why? Because James found an app for his iPad that creates flowcharts, so he conjured up some phony meeting agenda in hopes to showcase his flowchart skills.

Exhibit A:

He’s serious.

After every click of his app, a new flowchart showed up on the screen he had us staring at. That’s when he’d let a little pause pass in anticipation of one of us suckers complimenting the flowcharts. Everyone sat silent instead. I’m not sure how much everyone got out of the meeting:

Rachelle studiously attends the team meeting.

Though his delivery was, ahem, questionable, the real purpose of the meeting will mean a better experience for our borrowers (hey, that’s you!). See, as he has been for his entire career, James is obsessed with perfecting team processes. If he suspects any person on the team of doing a task that’s better suited for another team member, he’ll whip up a forty-minute flowchart meeting and put that issue to bed quick-like. Though I make fun of his tendencies, they are the reason clients tell us, “You make everything so easy!”

I’d like to leave you all with a picture. James sent an invite out to the team for a lunch outing this week. I ignorantly clicked “attending” before investigating the “restaurant.” Here’s an unfortunate picture I found later from the first page of their website. This is what they’re, like, highlighting on their menu:

He’s serious.

Um, no.

If you’d like to dine with me somewhere besides this for lunch on Thursday and discuss mortgages and rental rates and possibly Glamour Magazine, give me a call.