Successful Real estate agents are typically attractive, well dressed characters often with inflated egos. Think Annette Bening in American Beauty or the cast of Million Dollar Listing. When you’re in sales, being attractive gives you an advantage over your less attractive counterparts. Why is this you ask? It simply comes down to sex. According to University of Chicago’s professor, Dr. Dario Maestripieri, from his article in Psychology Today, “a door-to-door insurance salesman is better able to sell to customers who find him attractive because the customers will be more likely to buy if they think it will increase their chances to have sex with him”.
How primal.
But no matter how attractive and sophisticated you are, underneath the shiny clothes we all share the same very basic human functions:
- Eating
- Sleeping
- Shitting
Sometimes that last one creeps up on you at the least opportune times…
A couple years back a good friend from my firm and I listed a gorgeous 2 brm triplex in a chic Greenwich Village condo. Our first open house was on a Thursday evening from 5-7p. I had a scheduling conflict at that time so my partner held the open house solo. Everything was going well until approximately 6:30pm when he called me in a panic.
Frantically he explained that while showing the apartment to some prospective buyers he started to feel quite ill. He quickly rushed them out, locked the front door and ran up to the en-suite master bathroom where the call of nature took over. And take over it did. So much so that the state-of-the art commode couldn’t handle the mass and up it went, stopping dangerously close to the edge of the seat.
While I felt for my partner and our precarious situation, I couldn’t help but laugh. I don’t think he’d ever plunged a toilet a day in his life and the thought of doing so was like something out of Fear Factor. Regardless, the clock was ticking. In less then 30 minutes the sellers would be home so he had to get to work.
I stayed on the phone with him like a 911 operator as he plunged his heart out, sloshing malodorous toilet gravy all over the bathroom floor (luckily there were no rugs in there). When it was clear plunging wouldn’t work it was time to wave the white flag of surrender, let every last ounce of ego go, and call the building’s superintendent.
He did, hastily explaining the dire situation to the kind fellow who thankfully came quickly, fixed the toilet, and promised not to tell the owners. My partner tipped him generously, lit a bunch of matches and let out a HUGE sigh of relief.
The sellers came home and never knew any different but it was a humbling experience for my partner to say the least.