Why You Should Live in a Van Down By the River: You Can Move It.

I read a lot of economics blogs and columns, in part because I am a masochist but I also really like to see what economists are saying or not saying about housing.  At Marginal Revolution today there is a discussion about theories behind the involvement of Fannie and Freddie in the mortgage market.  The post states that the old consensus was that the GSE's were in place to make housing more affordable.  EPIC FAIL ALERT.  The notion that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Reserve have ever made housing more affordable is ludicrous and comical.  If you define affordable as low interest rates then you can definitely argue that they succeeded but you are ignoring the most important factor in whether housing is affordable:  your income.

We used to consider housing affordable if you spent roughly 25 percent of your gross monthly income on housing.  During the peak of the housing boom, Fannie Mae was routinely backing loans at 65 percent of  people's gross monthly incomes.  If you expand your definition of affordable to mean, "at the cusp of bankrupting you" then well done, Fannie.  You made housing more dangerously affordable than ever.

What we have in many parts of this country is a mismatch in the supply of housing with what consumers can actually afford, you know, given their crappy job prospects.  The government inflated housing bubble changed what we view as affordable and made a 3 bedroom house in the suburbs with granite countertops seem like a public good.  It's not.  We have a vast amount of homes that are affordable to a small amount of people.  This cannot be fixed by government intervention, it will require rising incomes and economic growth which will increase demand for what is currently, unaffordable housing.

HUD projections show that in my region, housing demand will be for homes in the $125,000 to $200,000 price range.  This is affordable given our median income levels and these are the homes that are actually selling right now.  What we have is a plethora of homes priced from $250,000 to $350,000 that even if you have 20 percent to put down (a modern miracle), once you factor in taxes and insurance you would need income in excess of $72,000 a year to afford.  This is assuming that you don't have any other debt.  If you have a car payment, student loan, and an average credit card balance this ups your income requirement to $100,000 a year to afford the payment.  Better get on the The Ladders website.

On the other end of affordability we have many families that are working class, what is quickly becoming a class of the working poor.  They may have combined incomes of $45,000 per year and they have consumer debt and spend virtually all of their incomes monthly.  For this family, an affordable house carries a mortgage payment of  $1125 including taxes and insurance.  For this family, a home that costs $150,000 is affordable.  Unfortunately, many of these families are living in $250,000 houses because they qualified for twice what they could actually afford with the help of Fannie, Freddie, and the Federal Reserve.

We have a number of housing problems which are exacerbated by our poor economy.  People underwater on their mortgages are trapped unless they say screw it and walk away and why wouldn't they; what incentive do they have to stay?  Do you really think people struggling to stay afloat are going to put the virtue of their word over a rational economic decision?  Didn't think so.

A bigger problem exists for unemployed homeowners.  Because economies tend to have local and regional agglomeration characteristics in particular industries, you end up with a lot of unemployed people in one area with similar skill sets.  If these unemployed people were mobile, as in able to sell their house and not take a complete financial schlacking, they could move to where their skills might be employable.  Unfortunately, we have a labor force that is very immobile right now which makes unemployment even worse.  Being a renter right now has tremendous advantages, particularly if you can move to take advantage of opportunity.

Perhaps, the Banks should become landlords and turn short sales and foreclosures into rentals.  This would slow down the decline in housing values because the properties wouldn't go to market and then drag down appraisals for the next two years for other homes in the area.  Bankers would make great Slumlords, they wouldn't even require training.

I Hate Banks (But Not All Bankers)

While I wasn't alive during the Great Depression, my grandparents were and my father was born a few months before all hell broke loose in 1929.  My grandparents didn't trust banks much and mostly dealt in cash, rare was the occasion where you would get a check in the mail from them.  The institutional distrust of banking was strong in that generation and they told me things like, "Save your pennies."  My parents, slightly less influenced by the Great Depression, used banks as the times dictated and as their business required.  They didn't necessarily trust banks, they trusted their banker.  My parents would say things like, "Save your quarters."  They had a relationship with the bank through a real person whom they could go to when they needed to borrow money, open a savings account, or get advice on business matters.  A relationship with your banker is a relic like plastic covers on flowered davenports and doilies on all your tables. 

I went to a bank on purpose today, I mean actually INSIDE the bank.  I never do this.  I loathe banks so much that I am a drive through girl all the way and if I don't want to even see the drive through person, I use the ATM for most transactions.  Unfortunately, today I had to open a new account which cannot be done in the drive through.

As I am waiting in the lobby, I am experiencing symptoms of a panic attack.  I feel out of breath and my hands are shaking, meanwhile a wave of nausea passes over me.  So hideous was my time at the Bank of Hell that I cannot even sit in a bank and function like a normal human being.  I imagine that this is what an Ex-Con would feel like if they went back to visit a friend and were on the free side of the glass.  After a small wait, the Branch Manager comes out to help me.   I am going into (deep breath) a banker's office.

She is incredibly pleasant and is only helping me because her business bankers are working with other clients.  She keeps apologizing for the time it is taking her which is making me paranoid that federal agents are lurking outside and she is stalling.  I'm hoping my disdain for banks is not readily apparent and that she won't be alarmed by shiftiness and fidgeting or infer that it means I'm about to try and rob her vault.  When she discovers that I am an economist and former loan officer she wants to chat about all the nuances of the industry.  The worst thing she cites about her time as a loan officer are some adjustable rate mortgages she did and how customers would sometimes call her on the weekend.  I bite my tongue because the stuff I could tell her would shock the shit out of her.  I did tons of ARMS, pay options, liar's loans, and my customers called me virtually 24 hours a day.  While she mentions she didn't like the competitiveness of the mortgage side I refrain from having complete diarrhea of the mouth and unloading stories of the Mortgage Devil on her.

She was so pleasant and nice that I felt it necessary to point out here that I don't hate all bankers, even though I will throw a bank under the boss in virtually every blog.  I now have a neighbor who is a banker who appears normal and a number of friends who work in the banking and mortgage industry that seem like the kind of people to perform a random act of kindness.  What I don't like though are what happens in the collective of a bank and how the industry has evolved to the point where we don't have relationships with our banks and are increasingly dependent on a small number of banks for an ever increasing number of services.  Consolidation of power in that degree scares the crap out of me.

When I worked in the industry my arch rival (outside of my own boss) was Wells Fargo and its loan officers.  I detested Wells Fargo because it was our biggest competition and their refugee loan officers who became my colleagues described unfavorable working conditions.  Ironically, I now live 20 minutes from their headquarters and know a lot of their employees and I still refuse to bank there.

I have never understood Wells Fargo's apparent resiliency to this crisis and therefore, I have never bought it.  In fact, for years now I have been waiting for their controversy and their day in the Horrors of Banking Annals.  My theory is that they are the Enron of the industry now that Countrywide is defunct and by that I mean that I think their accounting practices must be similar to those of Enron.  I read articles where Wells Fargo's lack of exposure in the crisis is because of their conservative nature.  I don't recall this.  In fact, they had 125% equity lines, loan products for people without credit scores, and they underwrote a ton of Alt-A.  They were a major player in a lot of urban markets where predatory lending, fraud, and discrimination were rampant.  They were a major player west of the Mississippi where a ton of homeowners are underwater.  They were one of the biggest players in all of the loan products we have been told destroyed our economy.  How can they come out relatively unscathed?

Last week, a former Wells Fargo loan officer who got me into the business received a letter from the Department of Justice requesting her insight as they investigated the lending practices of Wells Fargo.  The next day, Wells Fargo announced that it was taking the ax to Wells Fargo Financial and cutting 3,800 jobs and closing down those branches.  They cited overlap ensuing from their forced merger with Wachovia.  I'm not buying it.  Wells Fargo Financial did personal loans, 9 months same as cash financing, and subprime loans.  How has his not impacted their larger financial picture before now?

Another "non-risky" lending practice affiliated with Wells Fargo is the lending of money to payday loan firms.  Wells Fargo is one of the largest players in this industry associated with predatory lending, discrimination, and oh yeah, risk. 

I have to wonder if we are going to find out that the Cinderella of the mortgage industry is really the ugly stepsister of Countrywide.  While I hope its not true for friends who work for the company, it is baffling to me that my biggest competitor while I was at two different huge companies has not had its equal share of distress.  TARP money they claimed they didn't need was given to them for a reason...

So, I do hate most Banks, especially the big ones, even though I recognize the purpose they serve and I have to admit, not all bankers are bad.  The runaway growth in bank size and services is dangerous for the economy and for the consumer.  The new regulations do nothing to solve this problem and like any government regulation, will create unintended consequences that make us vulnerable for another crisis.

Perhaps, my Grandparents had it right.  Save your money in a jar and don't buy anything you can't pay cash for.  Only sign up for an account because you really are blown away by the free toaster. 





 

Too Small to Succeed: The Plight of Jello Salad and Small Banks

I spent a good chunk of my weekend contemplating the future extinction of Jello salad. It started at a friend’s birthday party for her daughter when her grandmother made a pineapple Jello salad and the kids couldn’t get enough of it. I don’t make Jello salad, in fact, I don’t even make Jello, unless it is for shooters but I’m even getting too old for that. So this party had me thinking that as grandparents die off so will Jello salad, because it is only loved by the very old and the very young and very few in my generation make the stuff. I find this kind of sad, although the truth is that I don’t even like Jello salad, probably because my mom shoved it in my yapper at every kind of celebration when I was a child. If I fell off my bike I was told, “Here have some Jello salad, you will feel better. It will fix you right up!” You are probably wondering what this has to do with the mortgage and banking industry. Well at first glance, absolutely nothing but, it made me realize that Jello salad is like small banks, neither one will be probably exist in twenty years.

A glance at the FDIC bank failure list shows a number of regional and small community banks shutting their doors. I guess they are too small to succeed, while their larger national counterparts are benefitting from the notion that they are too big to fail. Our government is helping to decide who the winners and losers are and we are footing the bill.

Some of these failures are due to market forces, particularly small community banks in rural places where populations are declining and so are economic prospects. Bad investments by banks can also account for a portion of the closures, particularly those regional banks that put a considerable amount of their resources into financing home builders and commercial developers in places like Nevada, California, and Florida.

What seems odd to me is that smaller banks that didn’t take on the kind of risk that plagued the banking industry during the housing boom are failing at a much higher rate. By all accounts, they were still lending more responsibly than the rest of the industry and since many of them subjected loans to traditional underwriting by committee, they should have been more insulated than the big banks using Fannie Mae products to get nearly anyone a loan. Perhaps, a larger portion of the failures are those banks that in response to the increasing competitiveness of the banking industry and its consolidation, were encouraged to take on more risk than realistic for their asset size and local economic conditions. I still question however, that all these explanations can account for the higher failure rate. I'm sure the rest is explained by the collusion of the large banks to receive bailouts and pass on risk and exposure to the small banks.

This is on my mind because of the proposed financial regulations that will do precious little to insulate us from having another financial meltdown in the future. With the loss of small banks, we are losing tremendous information and relationships that can help foster economic growth and stability in a region. Bankers who know their customers can assess risk better than automated underwriting; tools such as credit reports, which are not always reflective of risk, cannot replace the knowledge found in a more personal banking system. The consolidation of the banking and mortgage industry which has been going on for twenty years is speeding up thanks to the housing crisis, and I’m sure the largest of the banks couldn’t be happier about it. Couple this with the melding of banking and the insurance industry and we are at more risk than ever.

So when small banks go, so does competition in the industry, leading to a cartel of banks…oh yeah, we have that already, it is called the Federal Reserve. The impact on consumers will be profound in terms of fees for everything from overdrafts, wire transfers, stop payments, and on and on. Cartels do not price competitively, they don’t have to. Will customers appreciate the convenience of large banks; of course they will. What I fear customers won’t recognize is that a less competitive banking industry can hamper our future economic growth and lead to greater risk in our financial markets.

If you haven’t read Barbarians at the Gate or Liar’s Poker I recommend you go out and get them right now. What I take from these two books is that particularly in financial markets, the consolidation of power and resources creates greater incentive for rent-seeking and collusion, leaving taxpayers more at risk to anti-competitive and harmful behavior. From junk bonds to mortgage backed securities, a very small group of players are determining behavior in financial markets and where wealth flows. Think of it this way, if you only had to answer to people just like you with the same incentives and goals you would probably behave however you wanted without fear of repercussions, there would be no reinforcement mechanism to check your asshole behavior. Ever go out drinking with a bunch of drunks? Yeah, its like that. Banks, Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, and the government agencies that are there to check them represent this giant club of assholes who have no incentive to check one another’s power.

I don’t have the answer but I know that the proposed regulations won’t work. My gut feeling is that half ass regulations will only make it worse. I want a competitive banking industry, which is impossible with the Federal Reserve and the government involved in the capacity they are working towards. This I know for sure: Clever people will always find a way around regulations and the more time goes on, the more damaging their escapes prove to be for taxpayers.

For the last twenty years, the comparative advantage of the United States has been in making debt, not creating wealth. Clever people will figure out how to make debt look like something it isn’t and it will continue to finance our economic growth much like junk bonds and mortgage backed securities have in the past. This is what we are good at as a country and the expense of it gets more burdensome every year.

Like I said, I don’t have all the solutions. Perhaps, we can save Jello salad with a few cookbooks and some help from our Grandmas, but I think small banks are on the verge of extinction. With the power of the banks and their links to Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, and the U.S. Government, there is no hope for small banks and all the Jello salad in the world won’t make it better.

It's the Banks, stupid!

I love underdog stories, particularly sports ones but really, any underdog tale will do.  I was born with a soft spot for the underdog, the scapegoat, and the misrepresented.  This tendency makes me feel bad for mortgage brokers and sub-prime loans because big banks, the Federal Reserve, and Fannie Mae have really let them get thrown under the proverbial bus.

When I left a brokerage to go to the Bank of Hell I had no idea how uneven the playing field was.  In terms of checks and balances on loan fraud and quality, brokers were way ahead of the game.  The wholesale system has one inherent check on fraud, the underwriting of a loan took place outside of the office where the loan was originated.  This prevents a loan officer from having a personal relationship with their underwriter which goes along way in making sure loans are properly handled.  At the Bank of Hell, The Mortgage Devil's mantra was that we should sell real estate agents on the fact that we had local underwriting because it implied we could get loans done more quickly and also, it made real estate agents  feel good to know that if the loan had problems the loan officer could walk to the next office and shakedown the underwriter.  The truth is that local underwriting creates the opportunity for fraud.  Frankly, loan officers shouldn't be able to touch their loan files once they are done with the application, no good can come from it.

Obviously, there were shady brokerages and independent mortgage companies doing business during the peak and yes, a lot of these were sub-prime, but, there is a bigger story about the preferential treatment of banks over brokerages that isn't getting told.

The fundamental difference between mortgage operations was whether the company had a direct and contractual relationship with a bank or not.  The firm I started with had correspondent and wholesale relationships with investors and banks.  The firm was not owned by a bank nor directly affiliated with one but, because of our relationships I could sell the loan products of these other companies, including banks like Wells Fargo.  In contrast, the Bank of Hell owned its mortgage division while companies like Countrywide, owned a small bank.  There were tremendous advantages to having a direct relationship with a large bank and now I know that the major advantage of this was the bank's relationship with Fannie Mae and the Federal Reserve.

There are numerous examples of how these relationships allowed for more risky lending but I want to start with everyone's favorite loan, the Liar's Loan.  When I worked as a broker, very few of our investors allowed stated income loans to close without something known as a 4506-T, a form that the borrower would sign allowing the company to pull copies of tax transcripts.  The only investors we had that would allow stated income loans without this form were, shockingly, large banks.   Why does this matter?  Well, for starters a 4506-T pulled during the processing of a loan could confirm whether the borrower was lying about the income or whether they even had a job.  Smart loan originators knew better than to grossly overstate income on a loan with a 4506-T because there was the fear of getting caught, not getting paid, and potentially getting fired.  There were probably a number of loan originators who weren't aware of the potential for disaster but the majority that I knew, were very aware and this helped to reduce the risk inherent in a stated income loan.  My first manager in the industry hated the notion of tax transcripts, as he would say, "If underwriters can see your tax return it isn't a stated income loan."  That statement is what F. Ross Johnson referred to as a BGO or a blinding glimpse of the obvious.

So tax transcripts helped to reduce fraud by the loan officer but they served many functions.  A tax transcript pulled after the loan closed, but before it was sold, could have identified whether the loan carried more or less risk than the investor would expect. Sometimes investors wouldn't buy loans after pulling tax transcripts leaving correspondent lenders stuck with a loan they thought they could sell.

Tax transcripts could have prevented a number of issues with loan quality.  Imagine catching liars before the loan closes or before the loan was sold with an understated amount of risk.  In terms of mathematical assessment of loan quality, a random sample of the tax transcripts might have provided a firm with information on the thresholds of risk; ie, what percentage of liar's loans overstated income by 5%, 10%, or 20%.  This type of information could have been used to create thresholds for underwriters.  I'm sure some companies did use this information to reduce risk but the most important players in the industry weren't doing this and that includes Fannie Mae and big banks.   

At the Bank of Hell, we were able to do a number of Fannie Mae backed Liar's Loans.  There seems to be a huge misconception that Fannie didn't do these loans but the truth is that only large banks and large mortgage companies like Countrywide were given the ability to do these loans by Fannie.  I have heard a story that the Bank of Hell got access to these loans after pissing a bitch to Fannie Mae because Countrywide and Wells Fargo had them.  Who knows what kind of sketchiness went on behind the scenes as banks lobbied Fannie for the right for more risky, but prime, Fannie Mae loans.

The beauty of a Fannie Mae stated income loan was that there was no 4506 required, meaning there was no way that anyone would know how extreme the risk was or how bad the lie was.  Perhaps, that is how Fannie Mae wanted it.

At the Bank of Hell we had our own Fannie approved stated income/stated asset loan that A. Hole already blogged about.  Let me be perfectly clear, many of these loans were way riskier than sub-prime loans.  These loans were given to people with fair to excellent credit so while they didn't carry the credit risk, there was tremendous opportunity and incentive for loan officers to commit fraud with this program.  As A.Hole explained, the Mortgage Devil encouraged us to lie about borrower's income to get them into this easy loan program because you could take a loan from application to settlement in seven days. If you have been reading this blog you aware that we were doing Fannie Mae loans at 65% debt to income ratios.  This loan allowed loan officers to do loans with high debt to income ratios by falsely stating the customer's income so that it looked like it was 45% or less.

When these loans were bundled into pools they looked like low risk loans, they were Fannie Mae prime backed loans and had the implied backing of the United States government.  Fannie Mae pimped these pigs in dresses.

The scam gets worse when you add the folks on Wall Street to the mix.  When loans were bundled into securities for trade, these prime loans were mixed with sub-prime loans to reduce the risk.  You offer a lower rate of return on the non-risky piece (the Fannie Mae piece) and a high rate of return on the sub-prime piece which frankly, everyone knew had a very high probability of default.

In my opinion, Fannie Mae fucked it up for everyone.  There so called "prime" loans were riskier than a lot of sub-prime loans.  Perhaps the borrowers weren't credit risks, but they were overextending themselves with the help of Fannie Mae and the biggest players in the mortgage industry.  This means that virtually every loan pool sold understated risk substantially and investors who thought that Fannie Mae was synonymous with low risk, eventually found out that Fannie Mae was a giant phony. 

We have all bought things based on the implied quality of a brand name only to find out that we bought a name and nothing else.  This in a nutshell is one of the major reasons we are in this mess.  Most of our financial innovation and trading during the housing boom was based on Fannie Mae's name and the implied quality of the loans.  There were a lot of lemons in that pool and as I said before, Fannie Mae is a bitch.

For those of you that have seen the movie Tommy Boy, Chris Farley provides the perfect metaphor for what happened to our economy.  Fannie Mae was selling boxes of crap with a stamp that said "Guaranteed" and now we know what the guarantee was: our money and future economic prosperity.

Don't own a Nextel Phone

The next stop on my journey into the Bank of Hell required me to spend a week in Dante’s Inferno “training” at “Experienced Loan Officer Academy”. The Mortgage Devil had put it in writing that I had to attend this “training”….yes, it was in my offer letter. Unlike my co-worker Turdy… I wasn’t clever enough at this point in my tenure to find a way out of attending this week of torture.

Three weeks into my “career” at the Bank of Hell I was sent on my way to training. My Op’s Manager was pleased to tell me that another new loan officer from our office was going to Dante’s Inferno the same week as me. She was wondering if we could carpool together? Yipee!! Sound like fun. Fortunately, I had a quick excuse as to why I had to travel alone. I had met the girl once before at the office and didn’t get a warm and fuzzy feeling from her. I will call her “Curly Sue” for a lack of a better name because she had blondish curly hair.

I was expected to check in to the hotel on a Sunday night…so I was stuck with a five hour drive on a Sunday afternoon during football season. That is cruel and unusual punishment in my world. They wanted me to be ready to board the Shuttle Bus that would take me to Dante’s Inferno at 7:30 a.m. Monday morning. The email I received prior to my arrival from the “trainer” wanted us to be “bright-eyed and bushy tailed Monday morning”. If the Bank of Hell wanted me “bright-eyed and bushy tailed” they should have hired a fucking squirrel. What they got was half-asleep and blood shot eyed me…bright and early.

Our Trainer can best be described as one of the Munchkins from the Wizard of Oz. It was fitting because the Mortgage Devil was sorta’ like the Wizard with his magic whiteboard. She was small and cute (she was about 4 and ½ feet tall)…well she was cute until she opened her mouth. She didn’t sing a happy little song about a dead witch and dance. Instead she made it clear that she hated Loan Officers. I couldn’t blame her. Most of the ones in training class were prima donna's (and I am certain most classes were full of them). We were on a schedule so strict that the Nazi’s would have been pleased. The Munchkin had us on “lock down” and they were going to take full advantage of this opportunity to serve up large doses of the Bank of Hell Kool-aid. They paraded in everyone with a title of Sr. Vice President of Something or Other all day…every day. They were all so “pumped” to meet us that by noon that Monday I was trying to find a way out of there.

Once again there was someone smarter than me that found a way out by Tuesday morning. He got himself kicked out of training and sent home. How did he accomplish this? Let me tell you how this went down. At 5:30 that Monday the shuttle bus came to pick us up from work release and carry us back to the hotel. We were supposed to go to the hotel, eat some dinner, complete our homework, and get to bed early so we would be “bright-eyed and bushy tailed” Tuesday morning. Yeah, I said homework. We had assignments each evening. But what actually happened is this…I talked with some fellow Loan Officers that I didn’t find totally offensive…figured out where we could go get some dinner and drinks….then planned to bar-hop and watch Monday night football.

We got back to the hotel, changed clothes, and summoned the shuttle bus. Once on the shuttle bus, we talked to the driver and offered him cash if he could pick us up later that night somewhere in town after the bars let out. He was so pleased with this arrangement that he gave us his cell phone number. We now had our own personal chauffeur…well…because Cabs are for suckers!

Back to the Loan Officer that got himself sent home from Dante’s Inferno. After a meal and a few drinks; we ended up at a sports bar watching Monday Night Football. Once the game was over we went over to a “College Bar” next door. That is where this guy got so wasted off of tequila shots that he was trying to dance on the bar like the ladies of Coyote Ugly. After the bouncers asked him to step down, he proceeded to grind all over co-eds on the dance floor that weren’t “digging” him. He was a one man train-wreck. His final act of the evening was to puke all over the bar after he tried to buy another round of shots for everyone. At this point he was removed from the bar and wanted to fight the bouncers…bad idea. He ended the night in the care of the local Police. Word spread quickly about his escapades and he was sent home. If you are going to go out…go out in style. He was the lucky one.

On Tuesday I got to sit next to a couple of female loan officers from Tennessee. They both had 80’s "pouffe" blonde hair and wore matching navy blue blazers, white blouses, and navy blue skirts… EVERY day. They looked like Flight Attendants. Being born with the smart-ass gene, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to make Flight Attendant jokes every time I had a few drinks in me. A few of the smart-assed comments I can still recall consisted of “when are you bringing the drink cart by because I am getting thirsty?”. “Can I get a bag of peanuts when you get a chance?”…”Can this seat be used as a floatation device?”

The rest of the week consisted of more torture and hangovers for me. The whole training ended with us taking a test on Friday afternoon. Curly Sue had been performing a vanishing act all week (along with a male Loan Officer from Florida…hmmm) and I hadn’t seen much of her outside the classroom. But she did remind us she was still in the room right before our test. The whole class had assembled and we had our #2 pencils all sharpened ready for the big final test. Right before we got started I heard a *chirp*. Curly Sue and her husband apparently had those annoying red-neck “Nextel” walkie-talkie cell phones. The conversation went like this:

Husband: (CHIRP) Hey…you there woman??!!!

Curly Sue: (CHIRP) Yes.

Husband: (CHIRP) Where you at??!!

Curly Sue: (CHIRP) I’m still in training.

Husband: (CHIRP) Hurry home cuz my dick is lonely!!

Ok….did he just say his dick is lonely??!! Curly Sue turned three shades of red. But seriously, why would you have one of those stupid walkie-talkie phones turned on while you are in a classroom getting ready to take a test? The Munchkin wasn’t amused. I was reasonably certain that she hadn’t been laid in years, so this must have been particularly annoying to her. I took the test and drove out of there like I stole something and never went back. Apparently, I passed the test because I still had a job on the following Monday when I got back to the office. Now I was officially trained to work in Hell.