Humble Pie Tastes Awful
Recently, a friend of mine sent me a link to a story with a note that read, “This will make you laugh.” My friend hasn’t been wrong before, so I clicked on the link and gave it a read. I’ll recreate it here and let you decide if my friend chose well.
The author of the story had been working hard and felt a small headache coming on, so he decided to take a break and get some lunch at a local Burger King. The line to place an order was fairly long (who knew Burger King as that popular?), and it was moving rather slowly. While he was waiting for the line to move at its glacial pace, a woman and her son had taken up a place behind him to wait. The woman was jabbering away on her cell phone at a decibel level probably akin to that of a 747 firing up its engines to ready for takeoff, and she wasn’t paying attention to her son.
The author’s slight headache was growing as the woman yammered on about something that was more appropriate for a discussion to be held in the privacy of a doctor’s office, and the child at her side was making it very clear that he was tired of waiting in line and that he wanted a pie. Spying the front of the line, the author noticed that the restaurant’s manager had chosen the lunch hour to train a new cashier who wasn’t exactly catching on that quickly. The headache grew.
As the woman behind him continued to speak on her cell phone, completely oblivious both to the unwritten rule of society that there are things you don’t talk about in public and her son’s growing volume in letting his mom (and everyone within earshot) know that he wanted a pie, the author turned around and asked the woman if she would please speak a little more quietly and rein in her son. She exploded and told the author how rude he was; she then looked down at her son and assured him that he would get his pie to make up for the rude man in front of them. The headache has now reached migraine levels.
At last, the author made it to the front of the line and instead of placing his order for the burger-and-fries combo he had originally intended on buying when he had decided to hop over to Burger King for a break from work, he asked the cashier how many pies they had on hand and ordered them all: 23 pies in all, to be precise. As he was handed his bags teeming with his order, he heard the woman behind him step up and place her order and her son’s request for a pie. Upon being told that they were completely sold out, the woman asked who had ordered all the pies because she had seen them behind the counter when she and her son first walked into the restaurant. The hapless cashier pointed to the author and told the woman he had purchased all the pies – and the author, while taking a bite into one of the pies and heading out the door, looked the woman in the eye and just smiled.
The sale and purchase of a home, no matter what anyone says, is an emotional transaction. Sure, you can run the numbers and make sure it’s a good decision financially, but the ultimate trigger is emotional – sort of like falling in love. While the author of the link I read began his quest for lunch simply as a need to get some food to tamp down a headache, emotion caused him to pay more than he had intended and walk away with something he really didn’t want. The woman didn’t fare any better either as she was stuck with a deal that didn’t get her any closer to her goal. Remember this the next time you’re buying/selling a home: if you don’t keep your emotions in check, you could end up eating humble pie – and that’s not tasty!
