We'll call her Lori. I could hear the stress in her voice over the phone. She freely admitted that she was calling me because I was her last hope to make some desperately needed money.
I've received these calls before and the consultation isn't always pleasant.
I pulled up to the smallish house...the lawn hadn't been tended to in some time. The foreclosure notice on the door was wrinkled and faded, having been tacked to the door for months. Underneath the body of the notice, the occupant scrawled "I still live here. Please call me."
I'm a solutions kinda guy. If there's a way to solve a problem in a way that works out economically for everyone, I can usually figure it out. Today that wasn't going to happen.
Lori showed me the interior of her home. It was neat and well cared for... in stark contrast to the exterior. She was visibly rattled...fully aware that the sheriff could arrive at any moment to evict her. She called me to remove some belongings and sell them at auction with the hope that I could solve two problems... money and an inability to move large items from the house. Unfortunately, the items she showed me were of little value and were hardly worth moving. Seems her mom had a different take on the value of these items and stressed that she "needed" to get a certain amount for them. My response was, "Not on this planet." It wasn't what she wanted to hear. I explained the simple economics of demand and changing tastes and that I can't control what the general public desires or doesn't desire.
"But it MUST be worth more than that! I'll just keep it then because I just CAN'T tell my mother that all this isn't worth what she thinks it's worth. I just CAN'T." In fact, what she was presenting to me for sale was only a small portion of what was in the house. The rest of the (much more salable) items all had a lot of sentimental value. There was a trunk that belonged to her deceased husband, a chest that was her grandmother's...and so on. She couldn't sell any of those items and refused to sell any of the "junk" if we couldn't get what her mother said she should get for it. Upon making these statements, she broke down, curled up on the sofa and cried. Some days, I don't like my job very much.
I took a deep breath and prepared to explain to her the true gravity of her situation. I explained that I understood about sentimental value, but that she intended to tote around items that reminded her of her sad past. "Do you want to look forwards, or back?" I asked her. "How are you going to move them?" Then I looked right at her and asked...."If you stood out on the lawn with your back to this house and in an instant it all disappeared, would you feel relief?" She didn't hesitate to say "YES."
The reality was that she had no way to move any of the contents of the home. She had no job and barely enough money to eat and at any moment she could be forcibly removed from her home which the bank had foreclosed upon some months earlier. Odds were that she was going to lose everything when the bank changed the locks and the law escorted her from the property. I knew that, but she didn't seem to understand that impending bit of reality. Through the sobbing and the hard luck stories she continued to cling to and be paralyzed by the belongings that surrounded her. If she couldn't accept reality, I couldn't help her. Through her emotional breakdown I could hear her say that she "couldn't live like this anymore" and that "nobody would help her."
It was hard to witness and sadly, I enter into just such a scene or variations thereof on a regular basis now. I see the ravaged lives that recession causes, but in my experience much of it is preventable. If we could just get past the attachment to things...that desire for more and bigger. I know my view is a jaded one and I couldn't help but think this poor girl was hanging onto things for comfort as everything around her fell apart. I get it. My last words to her were "Lori....they're just things....let them go. You don't have a choice."
I realize those words could be interpreted as self-serving, but they weren't. I really wanted her to see the world for just a moment through the eyes of someone who deals with this sort of thing almost daily. Lori looked up at me, attempting to compose herself, and said...slowly..."This stuff is weighing me down. It's keeping me from moving on and I don't know what to do about it." She wasn't hearing me at all and I felt powerless to do anything about it. She murmured something about going back to Spain and I told her that she should do just that. I apologized for not being able to help her, wished her good luck and before I left, I heard her say "You were my last shot. I thought for sure you could help me. I got all this stuff together for you."
One of the things I learned quickly is that in business, you NEVER, EVER let emotions dictate business decisions. Lori was paralyzed. I couldn't help her. Chances are that by the time she understood about letting things go, it would be too late.
Enjoy Spain, Lori. Start again. Don't get attached to things. That goes for everyone.
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| Are a few pieces of furniture worth this sort of anguish? |
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