So today, in the process of having my time forcibly spent for me by members of the main IT department--I told them "I can't spend today working on this project" and they said "You have to, and even if your boss says you can't, OUR boss says you have to, even though our boss has NO authority over you, your job, or your boss, and has no idea of your workload, your tasks, or their relative importance..."
Anyway, in the process of having them spend my time for me, I had to go pick up a disk from Stan. Stan is the department IT director--no authority over me, but we're supposed to be cultivating a closer working relationship between our IT department and theirs. Whatever. Stan is also the guy with whom I had this meeting. So he's not necessarily my favorite person, though I still thought he was a decent guy.
Til today.
Stan does a lot of woodworking, see, and he's building his own house. It was pretty well-known that he was having problems selling the old house, so I asked him how it was going, and the conversation turned to my house. I told him the story, with an eye towards getting some advice or something, from someone whose judgement in such matters I respected.
So as I'm telling him the story, I'm telling him about the guy who sold the house and how shady he is. And I said "I think maybe what happened was, he saw that it was all females--me, my realtor, the mortgage originator, my mom--and didn't see any men overseeing the process and thought 'aha! easy target'."
He gives me this LOOK and says "Well, Gladys, I don't buy that. I have a very feisty wife, and you know what she would say if she heard that statement? 'The only women who are taken advantage of, are the ones who ALLOW themselves to be taken advantage of.'"
To which I managed not to reply: Spoken like a woman who KNOWS she has a man to defend her.
What I did say was, "What would you have done differently, then? I did all my homework--had an inspector, who missed a lot of stuff--I got an FHA mortgage so it would have some sort of safety net..."
The conversation turned to inspectors, contracts, insurance, etc; it ended shortly after. But the more I thought about it, the more his comment rankled.
I will gladly admit that I have allowed myself to be taken advantage of in certain ways in the past. Relationships come to mind, the current one not necessarily excepted. And yes, faced with people who tell me that they need something from me--flexibility, forgiveness, cash, whatever--I am quite likely to give it to them even when it's not in my best interest. I admit these things; my past, particularly my upbringing, has led me to believe that I have to EARN people's love, respect, affection, whatever--that just being isn't enough. Whatever--that's a psychoanalysis for another day, y'know?
But in the matter of buying this house, I did not ALLOW myself to be taken advantage of. I did my homework. I had a buyer's agent. I shopped around for the best mortgage, the one that was most likely to protect me in case something went wrong. I had a home inspector, who was recommended by MY agent, so there was no chance that he was in the seller's pocket. I asked questions. I made demands through my lawyer, in writing.
Denise, the mortgage originator, has been in on these problems since the beginning, because I've been trying to find financing through her for the repairs I need to make. My agent has also heard all the stories about what's been happening with this house, and each of them has said, in essence, the same thing: "Well, we tried to warn you against that house..."
Um, no.
What you tried to warn me against was that NEIGHBORHOOD. Denise did tell me, as did my agent and my lawyer, that they knew the seller by reputation and by a couple of prior encounters; all they told me was to "be careful" in my dealings with him. And so I was--I got the FHA mortgage and the home inspection because of that.
When the house was appraised before the closing, Denise said something that made me think. She said the appraiser told her that "the rehabbers could have done a better job with some things" and he wanted to know if I was absolutely sure about the house. I SPECIFICALLY ASKED her "What did he mean by that?" Her response was "Well, I mean, the neighborhood--he mentioned that there was some drug activity and stuff..." and I said "Is that it?" She said that he'd said there were some cosmetic issues, and I said "But did he say anything serious about the house, or the structure, or anything?" and she said NO.
Then, when I talked to my agent, she said something about the inspector trying to warn me about this house. Well, see, I have the original inspection report. If that was a warning, it was a weak-sauce warning. The inspection deals with a very few major issues--the water heater, two joists in the basement, the basement steps, and some issues with the garage. All the other issues were things like "doors don't close fully" or "GFS outlet over sink does not reset when it should." The major issues were addressed with my lawyer, and they APPEARED to be repaired the second time through--of course, since my inspector never returned my calls to come back for the second walkthrough, I missed a few things like the "new" water heater was actually several years old.
My mom, of course, was so fixated on the neighborhood that she wouldn't have seen a thirty-foot hole in the roof; besides, she's never bought a house in her life. She moved from her parents' house into my dad's house, which he'd inherited from his mom.
So: all these alleged "warnings" had nothing to do with things that were actually WRONG with the house--or if they were supposed to, they were made so obliquely that I didn't hear them as warnings. If everyone would have shut the fuck up about the neighborhood and focussed on the house, maybe they would have seemed like warnings--I don't know. I DO know that nowhere on paper does it say anything about the leaky roof, the bad joists, the substandard plumbing, or any of the ridiculous shit the seller did with the furnace and the chimney liner. NOWHERE does it say a word about that.
But because the professionals I hired to protect me didn't protect me, and anyone else who might have had any misgivings about the structure of the house kept silent, somehow I "allowed" myself to be taken advantage of.
Fuck THAT. I'm sick of people looking at me like I'm an idiot, when the reality is that I'm NOT. I try to do things the right way, but somehow I get screwed every time I try to trust someone to do what they're supposed to do. Even LJ said as much--and that didn't make me feel any better, either.
This really sucks. I feel like an idiot--and since my intelligence and capaability are the main things I can reliably hinge my self-esteem on, this is not a good thing.
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