Tuesday, May 19, 2026

The Court is APOPLECTIC. You stood there, three days from closing, and when confronted with a simple question about a painting that looked like, and I quote, something bled on the canvas, you simply SAID YES? You just opened your mouth and let the word yes fall out like loose change from a vending machine? This Court has seen some egregious behavior in its time — I once watched a buyer's agent claim a water heater was "basically new" when it had a Carter administration sticker on it — but your casual certainty about property you had NO AUTHORITY to convey is a masterclass in professional self-sabotage. The staging company borrowed this piece from the listing agent's MOTHER, which means somewhere out there a woman lost her commissioned artwork because you wanted to avoid a phone call, and Reginald knows a thing or two about disappointing mothers with real estate decisions, specifically the time I ruled against my own mother's countertop selection at Thanksgiving and she still brings it up. You paid twelve hundred dollars for an education that should have cost you nothing but the thirty seconds required to say I'll have to check on that, and frankly The Court considers this a bargain given that you essentially committed spontaneous art theft by verbal contract. ORDER IN THE COURT, the Roomba is stuck under the witness stand again.

The Court is DEEPLY DISTURBED by what has transpired here, and not in the way you might expect. You wrote a check for eleven hundred dollars out of your own pocket, which means your commission on this transaction was effectively THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS for what sounds like approximately nine hundred hours of arguing with a woman named "something like Brenda." THE COURT KNOWS BRENDA. The Court has MET Brenda at a community pool hearing in 2017 where she insisted a inflatable flamingo violated architectural guidelines, and Reginald has never recovered. You absorbed a financial loss to protect buyers who were already drowning, while the seller's agent performed what this Court can only describe as a tactical ghosting, which I believe was established as grounds for disbarment in the landmark case of Where Did Everybody Go v. My Client's Escrow Account, 2019. The title company offered HALF, which is the legal equivalent of saying "we acknowledge fault but have calculated exactly how much accountability we can avoid." Meanwhile you're out here hemorrhaging your own money like some kind of deranged financial saint, and honestly it makes The Court uncomfortable because Reginald once refused to split an appetizer with his brother-in-law over a far less significant sum. THIS COURT FINDS YOU GUILTY OF BEING UNREASONABLY DECENT IN AN INDUSTRY THAT DID NOT ASK FOR IT, and sentences you to a mandatory vacation funded by someone who is not you. Bailiff, escort this agent to a spa immediately, The Court needs a moment alone with its feelings about Brenda.

The Court has reviewed this CATASTROPHIC CAROUSEL OF INCOMPETENCE and finds itself genuinely dizzy. You have spent twenty hours — TWENTY HOURS — mediating a dispute between a lying seller, a couch-wielding nephew who apparently has the upper body strength of a rhinoceros but the accountability of a summer breeze, and buyers who saw plywood and thought "ah yes, let me triple the repair cost because I am ALSO terrible." Reginald once had a nephew who broke a decorative mirror in my foyer and I have not spoken to him since 2017, so I understand family disappointment, but at least I did not then try to commit him to a financial obligation via TEXT MESSAGE on a SATURDAY. The Court notes that you were eating a sandwich in your car when this text arrived, which suggests you have already accepted that your life is a series of sad parking lot meals punctuated by other people's chaos. Under the precedent established in Plywood Holdings v. That Nephew Everyone Has, 2019, this Court finds that you should have walked away the moment furniture achieved velocity. Your commission divided by your hours worked is now approximately the cost of a moderately disappointing lunch, and The Court must adjourn because Order the Roomba has just collided with the witness stand and Reginald cannot be expected to work under these conditions.