The Un-Firable Employee You Accidentally Hired for Six Months

The Digital Purgatory

Next time you feel that vibration in your pocket-the ghost-buzz of a phone that hasn't actually received a notification-remember that you are paying for the privilege of being ignored. It starts with a simple inquiry about a listing or a status update on an offer, sent at 10:03 AM. You wait. You check the signal strength. You wonder if the cellular towers have collectively decided to boycott your neighborhood. By 2:43 PM, you've checked their Instagram. There they are: smiling over a 'team building' mimosa, tagging a local bistro while your $433,003 investment hangs in a digital purgatory. You draft a scathing follow-up, your thumbs hovering over the glass, but then you delete it. You don't want to be 'that' client. You don't want to be difficult.

The Sacrament of Paperwork

Why do we do this to ourselves? If your hair stylist stopped halfway through a trim to go on a 3-week vacation without telling you, you'd find a new chair. If your mechanic kept your car for 43 days and refused to answer whether the brakes were actually fixed, you'd be calling the Better Business Bureau. Yet, in real estate, we treat the 'Exclusive Right to Sell' like a holy sacrament that cannot be broken without an act of Congress. We tolerate a level of professional negligence that would get a dog walker fired in 3 minutes. We've been conditioned to believe that once the ink is dry on that contract, we are no longer the boss; we are merely a passenger on a very slow, very expensive boat.

Thomas J.-P. here-and let me tell you, I see a lot of permanence in my line of work. Headstones are meant to last 103 years or more, etched in granite to defy the elements. But a real estate contract shouldn't feel like a burial plot. You shouldn't be locked into a relationship with someone who treats your home-your biggest financial asset-like a side quest in their social media career. The irony is that the more the stakes rise, the more we tend to shrink. We fear the awkwardness of the 'breakup' conversation more than we fear losing $23,003 in a botched negotiation. We tell ourselves that maybe they're just busy. Maybe they're working 'behind the scenes.' Spoiler: they aren't. If they were, they'd tell you. Silence isn't a strategy; it's a symptom of a lack of systems.

The 183-Day Clock

You see, the industry has built a fortress of paperwork around the average agent. They get you in the 'honeymoon phase' when the listing is fresh and the promises are 43 layers deep. They tell you they have a 'proprietary' method for finding buyers, which usually just means they pay for a basic Zillow zip code. Then the 183-day clock starts ticking. Around day 13, the communication drops off. By day 43, you're wondering if they've changed their name and moved to the Yukon. You feel powerless because the contract says you owe them a commission even if you find the buyer yourself, or even if they do absolutely nothing to earn it. It is the only job on earth where you can be objectively terrible for 3 months and still expect a five-figure paycheck at the end.

The Honesty of Dirt

I've spent the last 3 hours thinking about this while I edged the grass around the older section of the cemetery. There's a certain honesty in the dirt. It doesn't pretend to be something it's not. If I miss a patch of weeds, it's there for everyone to see. There is no 'behind the scenes' in groundskeeping. But in real estate, the lack of transparency is often used as a shield for incompetence. Agents rely on your fear of being rude. They know that most people will endure 6 months of subpar service rather than have one uncomfortable 3-minute phone call to say, 'You're fired.' They count on your politeness to pay their mortgage.

The Contrarian Truth

But here is the contrarian truth: Your realtor isn't your friend. They aren't your cousin (even if they are literally your cousin). They are a service provider. If the service is non-existent, the contract should be irrelevant. The power dynamic is skewed because the paperwork is designed to protect the brokerage, not the homeowner. We've been sold the lie that the contract is a commitment to a person, when it should be a commitment to a result. If the result isn't happening-or worse, if the communication is failing-the commitment has already been broken by the agent. You are just the one left holding the pen.

Demand Excellence, Get an Exit Ramp

You deserve an exit ramp. You deserve the right to demand excellence or find it elsewhere. This is exactly why the 'Don't Get Stuck Guarantee' from Billy Sells Vegas exists. It acknowledges the simple, radical idea that if a professional isn't doing their job, you shouldn't be legally obligated to keep paying them for another 153 days. It shifts the burden of proof back to the agent. They have to earn your business every single day, not just during the initial pitch when they're wearing their best suit and promising you the moon. It eliminates the 'un-firable' status that so many mediocre agents hide behind.

We often talk about 'market conditions' as the reason a house doesn't sell. 'The interest rates are up 3 percent,' they say. 'The inventory is too high,' they claim. But often, the real reason a house sits on the market for 93 days is that the agent has mentally moved on to their next lead. They've put the sign in the yard, uploaded 43 mediocre photos to the MLS, and then went back to their mimosas. They are waiting for the house to sell itself while they collect your equity like a passive income stream. It's a parasitic relationship disguised as a partnership.

Duty Over Contract

I remember a burial we had about 13 weeks ago. The family was distraught, not just because of the loss, but because the funeral director they had initially hired wouldn't return their calls about the headstone. They felt trapped by a deposit they'd paid and a contract they'd signed during their darkest hour. It cost them $1,233 extra, but they said the peace of mind was worth every penny. Why should real estate be any different? Why should you have to 'pay' in stress and lost time just to escape a bad professional?

If a groundskeeper can understand the duty of responsiveness, a realtor managing a million-dollar transaction certainly should too. If they don't, it's not your job to teach them. It's your job to replace them. The question isn't whether you're being rude; the question is why you're tolerating someone who thinks your time is worth less than their mid-day cocktail. Are you ready to stop being a passenger in your own home sale?