It's good to be Carlos Beltran.

Whoa! "According to a Houston television report, the Astros have offered Beltran a five-year deal worth $70 million to stay an Astro." ... The New York Post. That's a lot of freakin money. But I guess you have to pay the big bucks to keep the great players on the team. That comes to $14 million a year. How do you even begin to spend that kind of money? What a lucky guy.

Now on to one of my biggest pet peeves. I work for a commercial real estate firm that specializes in apartment properties. In other words, we list and sell whole apartment properties. In order to sell those properties, we have to create marketing packages that show what the property makes from rents, and also what their immediate/area competitors are making, which will then show what the subject/listed property has the potential to make if they are below market. It's all pretty logical stuff.

My job in all of this is to do some of the research. I have to call the competitors of a particular property and convince them to give me their correct current rents and specials. Not as easy as you would think. Most apartment communities are paranoid and don't want their competitors to know what their specials are for obvious reasons ... If the competitors know what my specials are, they could match or beat those specials and potentially steal my leases. So, you have to lie to them to get information from them. My story is that I work for a real estate firm that is trying to send them my clients (potential leasing clients) and I have to update my files so that the customer has the correct information (only partially a lie). Of course, they want you to send them leads so they are more than happy to give you the correct information, for the most part.

Most of these properties have anywhere from 3-20 different floor plans that all have different prices. I'm not a stupid woman. I understand, because I used to be a leasing agent for an apartment community, that they are pretty busy most of the time. For this reason, I always ask them to just fax over a pricelist with their specials listed and they are off the phone in less than a minute and I have the information I need. Sometimes, I get, "I don't have a hard copy of a pricelist." Now, I consider this pure laziness. Have you ever heard of that new invention, it's called a computer and it's located in every freakin office in the free world and almost always comes with a software program called Microsoft Word. You could use that to create a pricelist, because I know damn well I'm not the first person to call you and ask you for a pricelist. Again, I know this because I used to be a leasing agent. The alternative is that you spend the next 5 minutes on the phone, going through your 20 floor plans to give me the prices for each one, all between calls and people walking into your office with more important tasks for you to complete. Yuck. No one wants to spend that much time on the phone with one person when they've got 5 other lines ringing at the same time, like me.

Another thing they do that bugs the crap out of me, and this only happens with properties that have 20 different floor plans, is this ...

"Hi, my name is Reagan. I work for so-and-so. We're a real estate firm in Houston. I need to update my files real quick with your current rents and specials so that I can send some clients over to you. I see that you have several different floor plans. Do you have a pricelist available that you can just fax over to me?"

"No, I don't." Of course not, because you're lazy.

"Ok, well can you tell me by square footage what each of your floorplans are priced at?"

"Sure, go ahead." You lazy freakin bastard.

"No, I need you to tell me what your prices are!"

"Why don't you go through them and I'll tell you if your list is correct." Because I don't feel like going through your 20 floor plans just so you can repeat the correct information back to me. You do it, and then only one of us has to talk.

Makes sense to me, but apparently that's just incomprehensible to some people. Double-Yuck!