One of our field inspectors is on maternity leave so I am having to work the field much more than I really care to but you do what you gotta do.  I’ve been trying to get out early and stay until the job is done each day and it’s been a pretty big challenge since I am filling in for a rep that is 25 years younger than I am and has been working the same zip codes for about ten years or so.  Needless to say, I am not nearly as efficient as she is and I am looking forward to her return.

A year or so ago I gave up working in the field full time so other responsibilities magically became mine.  It’s a thing about nature; some kind of equillibrium law or something like that.  Anyway, since I had to do something to earn my keep around here I inheritated the responsibility of putting the approval stamp on what others in the office do while I’m out.  I don’t run the office, or the business for that matter, so these requests for stamps of approval all come up “after the fact.”

So, after working two zip codes today and out for about seven hours or so, I come in and am told one of our office staff’ had yet another bruising coercion from a company rep.  Of course after ten years of dealing with bullys, idiots and thieves and performing  hundreds of thousands of inspections and doing battle with the worst of the worst companies, this incident really belongs in the “same ole, same ole” pile.  But, I thought you might like to hear about it – so here goes, from start to finish:

This all started about two weeks ago when we received an occupancy verification inspection order for a property in a zip code that has been worked by the same rep for over five years.  The rep lives in the same area as the house and  inspects thousands of properties a year in the area.  We returned the inspection request as “unable to locate” after (1) not being able to find the house, (2) being unable to find the property address on the street, (3) being unable to find the property in the tax roles, (4) receiving a “does not exist” from 911, police and fire departments and (4) being unable to find the mortgagor in the tax records, voting lists or other sources we have.   We are very thorough.  Yes, we do make mistakes – just not too often.

About five days ago, we were contacted by our company rep who told us that we “had” to find the property.  To justify her case, she gave us the truly worn out “this property has been found before”.  We asked for more information …. surely we were wrong since “this property has been found before”.  They sent us a picture of the house.  So, our rep returns to the street and one-by-one visits every house on the street.  Guess what?  There are no houses even close to the picture we received.  We returned the inspection request as “unable to locate”.

Now, you would just have to think that if the court house has no record of the property, 911 has no location on file and the mortgagor can not be found in any public records, it might be time to think something is wrong.  But, not our company rep.  After all, “this property has been found before.”

Now, we get a phone call from the rep; just before I get home today.  I can imagine how the discussion went even though I’m going to be told the whole story anyway.  It boiled down to this:  the rep wanted us to verify that the picture is the house.  How can we do this, we ask?  Your picture means nothing.  Who took the picture?  Have you asked the picture taker to verify their own work?  Have you ever known a rep to lie?  Ever heard of table-topping?

Poor thing.  She’ll probably loose her job right here at Christmas time all because she could not intimidate us enough to lie for her.