by Liz Zuercher
To see the whole Love Street picture you need to know my side of things, too, my world in the
Bella Vista sales office. It’s not
just about the homebuyers. It's not just Eddie Petrocelli’s story, or John and Kristin Weber’s or Emily’s or
Marcy’s or Mitchell’s or Marla’s or Little Chad Grissom’s. What happened then touched all our
lives in one way or another, so I’d like to introduce the people of Monterey
Homes – the ones I work with and the ones who are the boss of me.
Team Bella Vista – The Ones I Work With
Sarah Bryson
First and foremost there is Sarah. Sarah has worked for Monterey Homes for fifteen years. We’ve been sales partners for ten
years. She’s ten years older than
I am and has been married to David, a landscape architect, for twenty-five
years. They have three great kids,
Mark, 22 and entering med school at UCLA, Julie, 18, a freshman at
Northwestern’s drama school and Justin, 17, quarterback of the high school
football team.
Sarah’s more of a sister to me than my real sister, more
friend than any friend I’ve ever had and more family than co-worker. She’s my rock, the one who keeps me
from going stark-raving mad. She
knows me better than I know myself, and I don’t know how I could do this job
without her. We are both precise
about our paperwork and have perfected our methods to the point of being a
well-oiled machine. We are a great
team at work, but we don’t see each other much outside of the office. Sarah’s days off are Thursday and
Friday, while mine are Tuesday and Wednesday. We both work every Saturday and Sunday and are way too tired
after work to socialize. Plus, she
has a family to take care of.
Sarah’s tall and elegant, but not particularly slender - not
fat, but not skinny either. Just
right, I think, but she’s always worrying about her weight. She wears classic tailored clothes that
make her always look put-together.
She’s a natural down to the fact that she doesn’t even color her hair,
letting beautiful pearly gray strands weave their way into the dark brown. She wears it in a neat chin-length bob
that frames her face.
Sarah’s always calm and professional, except where it comes
to our boss, Skinny Bitch, who can really light a fire in Sarah’s belly. Sarah hates incompetence and rudeness,
so it stands to reason she wouldn’t get along with Skinny Bitch. In fact, it is Sarah who started
calling Tina Skinny Bitch, which surprised everyone. The fact that Sarah, who never has an unkind word about
anyone, would dream up this name gave it instant credibility. Now everyone calls Tina that.
That’s the power Sarah has, even if she doesn’t realize
it. She commands respect just by
who she is and how she carries herself.
But she’s always questioning herself and her abilities. I don’t understand that. She’s a beautiful, intelligent woman
with an infectious smile who makes people feel at ease, yet she’s always
putting herself down. I guess
that’s one reason she has never wanted the responsibility of a sales manager’s
position. I for one am glad she
hasn’t had that ambition, because then I’d have lost her as a partner. No one
would be able to replace Sarah.
Judy Williams
Judy’s our temp.
That’s someone with a real estate license who really works for a temp
agency, not the builder, and doesn’t have any say in how the office is run or
who we sell to or any of the important stuff. The temp does whatever the sales manager (me at Bella Vista)
asks her to do. That usually means
greeting the customers, handing out brochures, making copies of price sheets,
answering the phone, baking cookies, filing, etc. You want someone who is cheerful and malleable, who doesn’t
balk at instruction or question why you’re asking them to do something a
particular way. It takes a while
to break in a temp and along the way they will screw some things up that you’ll
have to redo. So, it’s a happy day
when you’ve gotten your temp trained, they settle into the routine and you
don’t have to keep telling them what to do.
Judy’s at that point now, but it took a while. She’s a bubbly twenty-three year old,
newly married to her high school sweetheart who works for a mortgage
banker. Sometimes she’s a little
too perky, but she’s smart and knows when to back off if she sees I’m stressed
out. She respects the boundaries
Sarah and I have set for her. Most
important, she gets our jokes and likes the Krackels in the Hershey’s miniature
assortment, which is good because Sarah and I don’t like those and they would
go to waste. Plus it means she
won’t be going after my Mr. Goodbars or Sarah’s Special Darks. Chocolate is important in our workplace
– chocolate and laughter - because the tension can get pretty thick. If you can’t laugh and eat chocolate,
you’ll end up in the panic room screaming.
Judy wants to get hired on permanently with Monterey Homes,
so she works hard to do what Sarah and I expect of her. Most of the temps want to get hired,
but many of them are really aggressive about it, in your face all the time
about recommending them. Oh, the
stories I could tell about conniving temps, as well as just plain obnoxious
ones, offensive, clueless, undependable ones. You never know what you’re going to get when a new temp is
scheduled. Judy’s a good
one, a gem really, but she’s still got a lot to learn about this business. I like her spirit, though, and she
makes me feel young. I hope she
stays around awhile.
Doug Prince (AKA
Satan)
I’d do almost anything to change the fact that Doug Prince
is the Bella Vista construction manager.
It was a sad day when he showed up to replace the superintendent we
started out with – Marty Simms, a real prince of a guy who threw a monkey
wrench into the whole works when he quit and moved to Texas one month into
construction. We loved Marty. We had a great team then.
Doug got off on the wrong foot the first day when he
swaggered into the sales office to introduce himself. His reputation as arrogant and difficult to work with
arrived long before he did, but Sarah and I decided to give him the benefit of
the doubt. Neither of us had ever
worked with Doug, but we figured he couldn’t throw anything at us that we
couldn’t handle. After years of
happy cooperative relationships with Construction, we were confident Doug would
not pose a problem. Boy, were we
wrong!
The first thing he said when he came through the sales
office door was, “I’m your new Construction Manager and I’m here to get this
place back on track.” Like we were
way off track.
Not, hello, I’m Doug Prince, your new CM, and I’m looking
forward to working with you. Or,
how can I help things run smoothly between us? Or let’s all order some pizza and get acquainted. Or even, call me whenever you need
anything. Well, actually he did
say that last one, but not exactly with a nice guy spin on it. What he said was, “Don’t ever talk to
my assistants. They report only to
me and only do what I tell them to.
So, don’t ask them to do anything for you. You can only ask me.
Clear?”
Well! At that
he stared hard at me, then at Sarah and when we were too dumbfounded to
respond, he said again, this time louder, “Are we clear?” When we nodded, he gave us a smarmy
smile and said, “Follow my rules and we’ll get along fine.” Then he turned his back on us and
strutted out to the parking lot.
“A real charmer,” Sarah said.
“Boy are we in for a rough couple of years,” I said.
Here’s the thing, in new home sales you always want to be on
good terms with your construction crew, especially the superintendent. It’s the only way you can make it
through all the ups and downs of a two or three year project and deliver
well-built homes to happy customers and keep your sanity in the process.
We salespeople are on the front lines, the only ones who are
supposed to communicate with the buyers.
If we don’t have good lines of communication and cooperation with the guys
in the field, we can’t keep the buyers updated. If the buyers feel like they’re in the dark about the new
home they’re spending huge chunks of money on, they aren’t happy campers. They get skittish and angry and they
blame the sales girl, even if the sales girl is just as angry because she can’t
get any information from Construction because the superintendent will only let
her talk to him and he either doesn’t answer her calls or he flat out lies to
her about what’s going on. She
unwittingly passes the lie on to the buyer who then finds out what she told
them was going to be done, isn’t at all what happens. The buyer’s then really upset that they weren’t told the
truth and thinks the sales girl is a liar when really it’s that scumbag of a CM
who’s the liar. So when the buyer
moves in and gets his satisfaction survey to fill out, he gives Sales a 1 out
of 10 on the question, “The sales representative was honest and trustworthy”. Since the only time the buyer met the
CM was months before on the Construction Manager’s tour, and the CM was all
smiles and reassuring and made them feel like he knew what he was doing, when
they get to the question about whether the CM did a good job, they fill in the
10 box.
Okay, I guess you can tell that I don’t like Doug
Prince. He has made my life
miserable from the first day he darkened my door, so I started calling him
Prince of Darkness, which eventually evolved into Satan. We are locked in mortal battle – good
versus evil - until one of us gets handed our walking papers. It doesn’t make for the best possible
working environment. We’re
supposed to be TEAM Bella Vista, after all, and he’s not a team player.
I could put up with his abrasive personality if he did his
job well, but not only is he a liar, he’s incompetent. And, as is often the way with such
people, he has pulled the wool over the eyes of his immediate boss, Phil, and
the VP of Construction, George, who both think he’s a star and I am the one who
is causing all the friction on Team Bella Vista. When we face off on an issue, Satan always ends the battle
the same way. He grins at me and
says, “I’m gonna tell Phil about this.”
Sure enough, the minute he’s out the door he whips out his phone. Within the hour I’m getting a call from
the Project Manager telling me to shape up and start getting along with
Doug. My only hope is that one of
these days they all start seeing through his smoke screen, but that’s going to
take some big screw-up on Satan’s part.
I hope I last that long.
Manny Perez
Every project needs someone who keeps people laughing. That guy for us is Manny Perez, our
customer service representative.
I’ve never met a person with a better disposition. Manny is the light of our lives here at
Bella Vista. He’s a little bit
roly-poly, and he isn’t always the picture of sartorial splendor with his
Monterey Homes polo shirt untucked and his jeans sagging. But he has the smile of an angel and a
can-do attitude, which he regularly needs to employ with our buyers.
I could take lessons from Manny on how to deal with
Satan. No one handles Satan better
than Manny does. He can gracefully
deflect the worst of Satan’s rage with one of his jokes, leaving Satan flummoxed
and at a loss for words. I just
love that. I think Manny learned
this trait from being the father of eight, four of whom are troubled kids he
and his wife, Juana, adopted as pre-teens. Manny is a saint.
Manny is also a wizard at fixing things. He’s been with the company for
twenty-four years. I know that
because he keeps ticking off the days until he gets his award for twenty-five
years of service at the Christmas party this year. He’s had his chances for promotion to the main office, but
he likes the freedom of being in the field, and he loves getting to know the
families we sell homes to. My
homeowners, he calls them all, even the ones like Eddie Petrocelli, who would
try anyone’s patience.
On the down side, Manny’s kind of old school and hasn’t
taken well to all the new technology the company’s using. Computers are a mystery to him, and he
has struggled with all the electronic reports the company’s requiring. Give him a hammer, wrench or
screwdriver and he’ll run circles around you. But hand him a laptop and he’s lost. I’ve been giving him lessons after
hours to help him get up to speed, but I’m afraid he might be hopeless at
it. It would be a crying shame to
lose a guy like Manny just because he has trouble sending an email. But Manny’s boss, Art Baker, loves the
computer and comes up with a new Excel spreadsheet every week that his guys in
the field have to use. That’s why
I’m worried about Manny. I’m
afraid the ones who can’t keep up will be sent packing, even if they’re the
best customer service rep ever.
Mike, Jimmy and Karl
These are the guys Sarah and I aren’t allowed to talk to,
because they work for Satan. Mike
is the assistant construction manager.
Jimmy and Karl are a rung below Mike on the ladder. In a normal neighborhood we would all
be part of the team and all be able to talk to each other, help each other
out. But Satan has put the kibosh
on that, so I don’t know these guys all that well. I get in trouble if I even wave at them from my golf cart as
I take prospective buyers to look at the homes. They aren’t allowed to come into the sales office to say
hello or get a cookie, unless Satan has invited them to attend the Monday
afternoon team meeting. I think
they’re probably good guys, but I don’t really know.
Brenda Myles
Brenda is our team’s designer. She coordinates all the buyer options at the Design Studio,
makes sure all the selections are made by the cut-off dates and that the proper
materials go in each home. She
works at the Design Studio, but she comes to our Monday afternoon team meetings
to represent the design and options side of things. If we haven’t sold a home as the cut-off date approaches,
Brenda and I have to make option selections we think most buyers would
like. I tend toward neutrals, as
I’ve found that’s what works best.
Brenda, though, always wants to show her designer chops by choosing
unusual colors or unique tiles that would have a limited appeal. They might be lovely selections, but
they’re not for everyone. That
makes me a little crazy, because I’m the one who then has to find a buyer who
likes that orange tile. Oops, I’m
letting my frustration show.
I shouldn’t speak ill of Brenda. She’s new at this game and hasn’t learned yet what works and
what doesn’t. I do like her. She’s an attractive, pleasant gal, who
reminds me of Julia Roberts in her looks, although she dresses for a design
studio and not a construction site.
She’s always worried about her expensive spike heeled sandals when we
have to visit a home site, and I’ve mentioned more than once that flat, closed
toe shoes work better where there are random nails, mud puddles and blobs of
stucco overspray to navigate. Time
will tell if she can fit into the scheme.
The other thing is that her paperwork is sloppy, and that makes me
crazy, too. Okay, I guess my
jury’s still out on Brenda.
So that’s our team, if you can call it that. Since Satan came on board, the team
spirit has been sagging to say the least – not the best condition for
weathering an economic storm of biblical proportions.
Next time: The
Ones Who are the Boss of Me.
