Pocketful of Joules

I hate waiting. Hate, hate, hate it. I am NOT a patient person and I like my gratification immediate instead of delayed. Picture me stomping on the floor and flailing around my arms to get the real picture of how I feel about waiting. Yeah, I totally realize that you’re staring at your computer with a total lack of surprise on your face.

My point is I feel like even though our world has gotten so much faster with all of our technological advancements, some things just seem to go soooooo sloooooooow. Of course, it could just be that my expectations of how much time things should take have shrunk due to me being plugged in 24/7. Now when something takes what would have previously been a ‘normal’ amount of time, it feels like it takes forever.

Anyways, long story short – I still don’t know anything about whether that person is interested in my house. I spoke to my Real Estate Agent on Monday and was enthused/massively hyper/6 year old with a mouth full of icing ecstatic at the thought that a contract would be coming in this week. Maybe even THAT DAY! Of course, this is all in my head as nobody actually said that a contract would come in that quickly.

I haven’t heard anything. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. In an effort to contain my crazy, I have not called my agent because if something happens she will obviously call me. Of course, it is very possible that they said they weren’t interested after all or even that they’ll be holding off for a week because the person is out of town on business. Without communication though, I’m just left to sit here and imagine what might be going on.

That is my other point: people feel a lot more relaxed when there is communication.

Let’s say you order an expensive item off of ebay and an automated email tells you when it’s shipped out. Days and days and even a week go by without the item arriving at your door. At this point, you’re freaking out thinking that you’ve been scammed and you’re getting ready to leave the seller negative feedback. If the seller would have just sent you an email saying, “I delivered the item to UPS on Friday and it is expected to take 5 – 7 business days to arrive,” then you wouldn’t even worry.

How many of you have applied for a job in the last couple of years? You see the job description and think “Wow, I’m perfect for that position.” So, you work really hard on writing a great cover letter, tweaking your resume to better highlight the experience they’re looking for and email it to their HR department paying special attention to your subject line and spelling. Then you wait. And wait. And wait. You wonder if your email was lost in cyperspace or maybe just got accidently deleted. Your excitement about the position turns into negative thoughts about that stupid company that couldn’t even let you know it received your information. After a while, you totally forget that you applied for the position at all. Most likely you never hear from them. Or, you could be totally surprised (like my husband was) and receive a call a year later asking if you’re still interested.

Obviously in either of the above situations you could follow up and ask when your package will arrive or if they received your resume. But wouldn’t it be nice if people communicated a little better so that you didn’t have to follow up with everyone?

Think about your expectations and give other people the same considerations you’d like.

Oh yeah, and buy my house please.

I tend to be one of those people who when I get excited, I get really, REALLY EXCITED! I also happen to be someone who believes in ‘signs’ and ‘feelings’ as dorky as it may sound (even to me). So, now that you know both of these things about me you won’t really be surprised that I’m crossing my fingers, wishing on a star and hoping as hard as I can that we get a contract on our house this week.

Let me back up a bit. We originally put our townhouse on the market last May and over the summer we had a bunch of showings but no actual contracts. In September, my husband’s job was up-in-the-air, which would have impacted where we would live, so we decided to take the house off of the market until we figured everything out.

Well, for 6 months I worked like a demon to get as many house projects done as possible. We replaced our kitchen appliances with all stainless steel models, rearranged the living room to include a dining area, updated two bathrooms with new vanities/mirrors/lights, and repainted and fully decorated our finished basement to look more like a den. Then, we relisted our house for the exact same price as before.

I know, after all that work and money we spent it would have been nice to get a little more money out of it. However, it’s not like we were fighting off the offers before, so hopefully we’d get at least one this time. So anyways, we relisted our house in the middle of March and at that time I told my husband that I’d be really, really happy if we could get an offer by the end of April.

Fast forward to this past weekend – we had a showing on Sunday. Unlike many showings where you can’t even tell that someone has been in your house, I could tell that they actually looked around. There were shower curtains out of place, telling me that they looked to see if the tubs were in good condition. There was a smudge print on my basement stairs, which told me that they walked out the back of the house to check it out. They even took THREE of the house flyers that I left out on the kitchen table. (Yes, I know I’m a regular Monk/CSI/Bones). Anyways, I had a ‘good feeling’ about it.

This morning, I woke up in a great mood… even though the sound of my husband accidently setting off our house alarm is what got me out of bed. I saw my lucky number a couple times on my way into work and came into the office with an obviously dorky skip to my step. I wasn’t even surprised when my Real Estate Agent called this morning to tell me that the person’s agent had asked for more specific information on the number of parking spaces and age of our roof. Apparently they’d like more information and may also want to see our house again.

Of course I’m thinking that I might get my wish of a contract before the end of the month.  I know I should reign in my excitement and try not to get ahead of myself. But this kind of excitement/passion/supernova happiness is what makes life worth living!

So do me a favor and throw a wish my way that we get a wonderful and competitively priced contract on our house. Cross your fingers. Wish on a star, a butterfly, your lucky number on a license plate or even a flyaway eyelash. Any little bit will help. Right?

When you were in school, how many of you were the ‘straight A’ students who actually looked forward to receiving your report card in the mail so you could show your parents? Yeah, me either.

I got good grades in the subjects that interested me, especially in college when I could concentrate on my major (communications). However, there were other subjects that were part of my required curriculum that I struggled to pass. Even though I worked my butt off (and even graduated cum laude), I still had that fear of negative feedback on my report card.

Apparently a lot of people are not afraid of negative feedback… and they really should be.

My SUV was recently hit, causing damage to part of the bumper and wheel well. Since the vehicle is pretty new and was in great shape before the accident, it was important to me to have it repaired at a reputable shop that would make it look perfect again.

My husband knew of a body shop a couple minutes from our house, so we dropped it off for a quote. However, while I was waiting to hear back from them I decided to google the shop’s name along with the keyword “reviews”.

Holy Crackers – the reviews were TERRIBLE!

A dozen people took the time out of their day to post reviews on yelp, yahoo, google and more. They complained about the terrible customer service and that it took a really long time to get their vehicles back. Not one person posted a favorable review on the body shop! Seeing nothing but bad feedback resulted in me immediately deciding not to use the body shop for my repair. I hadn’t experienced their supposedly terrible customer service, but decided that I didn’t even want to give them the chance to ruin my day (or my SUV). Based on this negative feedback, they not only lost the money that I would have spent, but also all future recommendations that I give to my friends.

There are millions of internet users and I know I’m not the only one who looks for feedback before making purchases. Whether it’s checking tripadvisor.com to determine if that hotel is really as nice as it seems on their website, or looking to see how many stars an ebay seller has, other people’s feedback has a huge impact on future decisions.

So here’s my tip for all the small (or large) business owners out there, keep an eye on your feedback. Make it a point to google your company’s name to see what people are saying about you. If you’re the ‘face of your company’ it’s also a good idea to google your own name to see if it pops up anywhere.

Don’t forget to come back and visit Pocketful of Joules, I’ll be writing a future blog post on what to do if you see negative feedback on your company.