Confesions of an estate agent

For this story to make sense there are a few facts you need to know.

- My job is Mon - Fri, with a stint every 3rd Saturday, accompanied only by a young lass who, only, works Saturdays.
- My company has 5 offices, and I'm able to offer any property from any of those 5 offices.
- This all happened on the weekend I expected my pay cheque to have cleared. It hadn't so I had no money on me. Not a penny!

My 1st Saturday

I had only worked 2 weeks before I had to do a Saturday, and unlike during the week when there are 4 staff, for a Saturday, there is only 2; yourself plus Nikki, the Saturday girl. Obviously I had not met Nikki yet so did not know who or what to expect as I arrived for work that day. I was holding keys for a property in the Islington office, having done a viewing on one of their properties the previous day. I had a 12pm viewing near their office and intended to drop the keys back then.

Only 5 minutes into the day Islington rang saying that they had a viewing on the property I had the keys for, in an hour! Not knowing what to do I asked Nikki is she could cover my 10.30 appointment while I hotfooted over with the keys. On my way back I gets an angry call from my manager. Nikki could not get into the property and the office was not meant to by unmanned either! I picked up Nikki from the house, apologised to the viewers, whisked her back to the office where we discovered she had taken the wrong keys, having mistaken tag 13 for tag 18! I then rushed back to do the viewing only to find parking meters everywhere! I had no money on me so had to drive back to the office with the car and then run back to the house to do the viewing!

Once back I had to cover a viewing in Stoke Newington. The problem was when I got there in was all parking meters again so I had to park about a mile away and again run to the property. The keys were with the landlord and because, being new, I had no business cards, the landlord would not let me have the keys! Luckily, Toby from the Islington office was there too, and he vouched for me. I was 10 minutes late, but the viewer was later still. All which meant I was not going to make it back in time for the next viewing! I had to call Nikki and ask if she didn't mind breaking protocol again and leave the office unmanned to do my viewing.

I was not having a good day and I don't think I was making a good first impression on Nikki, everything was going wrong. Thankfully the rest of the day was smoother but there was still a lot of back and forth. Luckily Nikki and I had each others phone numbers now, and we used them a lot that day as we tried to recover.

After work, which was only 4 hours, the longest 4 hours of my life! I thought I would pop into my old office and say hello to the old crew. Everything was fine until i got onto the A406 to Barking. There was a massive traffic jam and it took me an hour to get from Redbridge to Ilford! And then the Ilford turn off was at a standstill! Obviously I had given up on going to Barking during my hour stewing in the jam but had to take the gamble of trying to turn around a Barking, hoping that the traffic would be lighter. It took another 30 mins to get to Barking, by which time I was so fed up with my day that I headed straight home. I finally got home at 4.45 after leaving work at 2pm. Plus because I had unexpectedly had no money I had not eaten a thing all day!!

I haven't even got round to telling you how I set the alarm off in a million pound house, which had a police response, and how my manager got shouted at by the vendor and had to spend most of the day tying to get reset code from the alarm supplier and how she is now the only person allowed to do viewings.....