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CONFESSION #0973 — STAGING DISASTER
Wednesday, October 21, 2026
The MLS listing had a mistake. Said the house was 2,400 square feet when it was actually 1,800. Not my listing, I was bringing buyers. But the stager had clearly staged for the bigger number because there was furniture everywhere. Like everywhere. The living room had two full sofas and an armchair and a coffee table the size of a dining table and you literally had to turn sideways to get around it.
My buyers are trying to look at the place and they keep bumping into things. The wife hits her hip on this massive console table by the door, actually says ow, and I'm watching the whole showing fall apart in slow motion.
But here's the thing that still bothers me. The stager left price tags on three items. Three. Not hidden either, just dangling there. One was on a lamp that said $12 and I thought okay maybe that's intentional, like aspirational affordable living or something, but no. The other two were $8 and $45. From HomeGoods. The $45 one was on this velvet ottoman that was blocking the fireplace. Completely blocking it. You couldn't even see there was a fireplace.
The listing agent calls me after and asks how it went and I tell her about the tags and she goes "oh the stager's new" like that explains it. New to what. New to having eyes. New to walking through a room before people pay money to look at it.
We didn't put in an offer. The wife's hip bruised.
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Judge Reginald Escrow III
⚖️ Presiding
GUILTY OF ACCESSORY TO DECORATIVE NEGLIGENCE AND FAILURE TO REPORT A FIREPLACE OBSTRUCTION IN PROGRESS
The Court is DISTURBED, not merely by the staging catastrophe you witnessed, but by your apparent belief that standing there watching a woman bruise her hip constitutes professional conduct. You saw three HomeGoods price tags — THREE — dangling like little beacons of incompetence, and you said nothing in the moment. You watched an ottoman BLOCKADE a fireplace, which Reginald considers a crime against both architecture and the fundamental human right to know where fire goes, and you simply guided your clients through this furniture obstacle course like some kind of haunted IKEA sherpa. The listing agent's defense that "the stager's new" is inadmissible hearsay and also ENRAGES me personally because I once hired a new contractor who installed my bathroom door to swing outward into the hallway and when I complained he said he was "still learning doors" and I have not recovered. Furthermore, the Court finds the 600 square foot discrepancy to be a mathematical hate crime — that is TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT of a home that simply did not exist, yet was stuffed with enough furniture to fill the phantom footage anyway, creating what legal scholars call a "spatial paradox of aggressive denial." You are not the primary offender here, but you ARE a witness who failed to document the ottoman's fireplace sedition, and The Court does not forgive passive observation of staging war crimes. This ruling stands, the hip bruise is entered into evidence, and Reginald must now go shout at his own furniture.
Ottoman Insurrection Bystander
Have a confession? Judge Reginald Escrow III's docket is always open.
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