Saturday Night's All Right for Stealin'

One of the hobbies of the Mortgage Devil was working on Saturday. While most of us might enjoy playing golf, going to the beach, watching a college football game, drinking themselves stupid or a combination of these items on a Saturday… the Mortgage Devil worked….EVERY Saturday. In order to continue to be the Dark Overlord of the Beach Market he needed to work on Saturday…it was kinda’ like his own Holy Day.

His Saturday would start with a stop in the Bank of Hell to check voice mail and write down the name of numbers of the people that he hadn’t called back from that Friday or possibly six Friday’s ago. He always said “if the worst thing that I do is never call people back…then I am doing alright”. Well he did way worse than not calling people back…and I will get into one example of that in a minute.

Now that the voice mails are checked, he grabs a stack of flyer's and his cell phone and start driving like a maniac all over the Beach to stop by all of the Real Estate offices. He picked Saturday’s because he can’t get past the receptionist (gate keeper) during the week. He had free reign on Saturday’s to terrorize the Real Estate Agents with his flyer's…aka propaganda…proclaiming how great he was and how awesome the Bank of Hell was compared to the rest of the world. In between stops he would be on his cell phone calling his customers and patting himself on the back for how dedicated he was to be returning their phone call on a Saturday. He was in his glory. You would think by the time he returned all of their phone calls and passed out all of his propaganda…he would call it a day. Not this asshole. Nope.

He would then head back to the Bank of Hell for the second half of his Saturday hobby. Since none of the Devil’s Minion’s or support staff were in on a Saturday…he would start grabbing and looking at EVERY loan file they had in their filling cabinets that were “in process”. Which basically meant that everyone who had applied for a loan but had not gone to closing was having the Devil look through their mortgage file. But don’t worry, he wasn’t stealing customer’s personal information. He was trying to find an angle to steal the loan application from the other loan officers in the office (such as Turdy and myself). He would look at the name of the Loan Officer on the file then rip into the file like a madman trying to find out the customer’s name, who was the selling real estate agent, who was the listing agent, who was the builder, the title company, the sellers, if the children’s name were on a tax return he might write their names down too. Why did he do this? Because he is fucking crazy? Yes. Greedy? Yes.

He honestly believed that everyone that applied for a mortgage at the Bank of Hell, were there because of him. There was no way any other loan officers could have brought that customer to the Bank of Hell…on their own. Yes, he is that narcissistic and crazy.

Then the Mortgage Devil would put a yellow “sticky” note on the front cover of the file and plop it into the offending loan officer’s chair. There were several Monday mornings I would stumble into the Bank of Hell after a Sunday of tailgating and drinking to find a stack of my files in the seat of my chair. The first time that this occurred it was after a particular rough Monday morning following a long day of tailgating. I see the stack of files, rub my eyes because I thought I was seeing shit at this point, and realize…yeah, files are really in my chair. My first thought was that my processor at the time (who was the Devil’s most loyal Minion) had worked on the file over the weekend and needed me to look at it for a reason. Silly me. She would NEVER work on a Saturday unless large sums of unmarked cash were placed in a non-descript white envelope then pressed into her greedy mitt. I grab the file on top and notice the “sticky” note. It read: “See Me! – Mortgage Devil”. Ok…so I head off in search of the Dark One.

I find him in his usual position…behind a large desk with files stacked up to his eyes, head set on, spouting his scripted bull shit to some unsuspecting customer, while pounding away on a manual calculator. I give him my best “What the Fuck?” look. He gives me his index finger extended…his universal sign of “wait a minute (or an hour as explained previously). I know that he saw me, so I head back to my desk (Gilligan’s Island) to look at the rest of the sticky notes…I then grow disgusted and push them aside for now. Eventually, the Mortgage Devil comes around the corner. His words “Grab those files and meet me in the Break Room”. Though I don’t feel like being obedient, I decide that I am curious to see what he wants from me. I quickly find out what he wants…those files. Literally. The conversation goes something like this:

Mortgage Devil: “I was looking through your files this weekend and noticed that a few of those files should be mine”.

Me: “You did WHAT this weekend to my files?”

Mortgage Devil: “I was looking through your files this weekend”.

Me: “Why do you think it is OK to look through MY files?”

Mortgage Devil: “I noticed that several of your loans are actually my loans. The stack of loans you are holding are my customers.”

Me (trying not to punch him in the face): “I honestly don’t know why you would think they were your customers?!”

Mortgage Devil: “Well take the one on top for example. The builder is a friend of mine. We had lunch before.”

Me: “Oh really? If he is your friend then why did he refer his customer to me?”

Mortgage Devil: “That is what I am trying to figure out. You obviously took that customer from me somehow.”

Me: “I took the customer because he was referred to ME! By your “friend”…which I wonder how close you two are because he has been referring clients to me for the past two years on a regular basis and we had lunch three weeks ago. So, when exactly did you have lunch with your “friend”?

Mortgage Devil: “Look…you need to check with me when you get something from that builder. I am going to let it slide this one time.”

Me: “Why don’t we have a conference call with the Builder and ask him who he was referring the loan to?”

Mortgage Devil: “Look, you just need to run this by me next time.”

Me (walking away): “I don’t see that happening”.

Mortgage Devil: “Hey come back here…we need to talk about the rest of the files!”.

I walked down the back steps with my files out the back door into the parking lot…got into my car and drove straight to the beach to go cool off. Unfortunately, Turdy and I weren’t very close then…or I would have demanded she attend Happy Hour with me immediately…the drinks would have definitely been on me. So, I had to find one of my unemployed drunk friends to vent to…which isn’t very hard to find at the Beach. Sure it was around 11:00 a.m. on a Monday morning but I didn’t see me going back to the office that day.

After I am properly cooled off from many drinks at Happy Hour, I decide I need to start holding onto my files until the last minute. Basically, I would start the file and keep it away from the Processor’s and more importantly the Mortgage Devil’s Saturday Night Stealin’ expeditions until the file was almost ready to close. Sadly, it was necessary to do business that way at the Bank of Hell.

The Mortgage Devil as mentioned before was making $1-2 million a year in commissions and yet was so paranoid and narcissistic he would spend Saturday’s trying to steal files so he can make MORE money and more importantly produce MORE loans so he can remain the #1 Producer for the Bank of Hell. A prize more coveted to him than spending time with his family or even his own sanity.