Day CCCLVI

Too Many Agents

     She became an agent’s agent, and had about twenty agents working for her seven days a week. But on that day, she burst my bubble. It was a time when a lot of people were reworking their mortgages, often taking a floating rate. I never liked the idea, but it wasn’t my place to counsel anybody. My job was to identify them; make sure they were whom they said they were; observe their signatures, and initials where they needed to be.

     The business works through agencies that often abuse the drones, us. Agents sign up with as many agencies as they can to ensure a flow of jobs. They close deals, then have to wait a freaking month to get paid. Often agencies want notaries to work for as little as possible, and it’s a constant struggle getting a fair commission for any deal. But everything is negotiable. Many times you do a job, and it turns out you worked your butt off for peanuts. New agents come into the field, and they prostitute themselves for the deal, thinking they will make it up in volume, they will get more work. That doesn’t really work out very well, they just make it worse for everybody else, as agencies then want to pay everyone the same.

     One day an agency out in Long Island calls me up for a job, which I wound up calling the horsey job.

     “Can ya do a signing diz aftarnoon?”

     “Wa?”

     “Right in ya bakyahd, da Marriot out in East Corona.”