Look at You : You Have a Child… at a Loan Closing
That’s my update to Reese Witherspoon’s great line in Sweet Home Alabama when she sees one of the townsfolk take a baby in a bar. I never thought that line would apply to my job.
I work as a loan closer. I get to meet people, go over their financials, and hopefully improve their situation by helping them make home improvements or consolidate their debts. It’s simple, straightforward, and not overly exciting, but it feels great to be helping people while making tuition money.
The last week of August 2007, however, proved to be exciting in a negative manner. It was the week everyone with screaming children felt the need to bring said children to their loan closing(s). There are places for screaming children and there are places not for screaming children; loan closings fit nicely into the latter.
One of the first things parents of screaming children ask you after their children start in is whether I have children or not. I consider this immaterial because it isn’t my hypothetical child screaming; it is your child that is . However, I politely respond I have a dog and three cats (not adding that we didn’t bring them to the title company for our closing last December). I’m sure all of us without kids know the look parents give you when you inform them you haven’t committed coolness suicide by procreating. That’s the look I get all the time. The look can most accurately be described as a cross between the look you’d give an escaped mental patient and the look the teacher gives you when you inform her three plus three is seven.
Is this a good time to mention to them that even if I had children I wouldn’t let them act in such a boorish and undignified manner? Saying things like that must be how I make friends so quickly.
These parents are people I will have to deal with in the future, so I treat them with the utmost respect. This respect, however, is a one way street. When your loan closer is speaking with an indoor voice and your kid is three feet behind said closer screaming his ever-loving head off, you need to silence the kid. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Please inform Junior that he isn’t going to get to go to Mickey D’s if he cannot behave for 25 minutes.
It’s something of a sociological experiment watching parents deal, or not deal, with their children. An overwhelming number of them work directly against each other. Dad tells Junior to be quiet, mom tells dad that Junior is just a kid and to leave him alone. Ten minutes later, mom tells Junior to be quiet, dad tells mom Junior is just a kid and to leave him alone. Needless to say, Junior keeps screaming. I understand parents want their children to have experiences, but I don’t see ‘first loan closing’ making it into too many baby books. Come equipped with a pacifier and at least make a unified effort to silence the child.
The one that takes the cake is the boy, probably two years old or so, that urinated in one of my chairs during that infamous last week of August 2007. This child was with his grandparents and the grandparents didn’t move a muscle to help clean up the mess. They whisked the child away to the bathroom with a diaper bag, leaving a combination of me, my receptionist, and one of the janitors to clean and sanitize the chair. Accidents happen, and you are the customer, but can you at least help clean up?
Maybe Starbucks and Marlboro send subliminal messages to parents to bring the kiddies to closing because they know I’ll need a fix afterward. The big issue for me is simply that there is a place for kids and a place not for kids. More importantly there are places for kids that can sit down and be quiet for 25 minutes and places those kids who cannot do so shouldn’t go. Loan closings are definitely the latter.
What else is amazing is these parents are invariably the ones who call 90 days after closing complaining they don’t remember or understand anything about their loans and blaming me for the fact they don’t. They are also the ones who complain during the meeting about the closing taking too long and there being too much paperwork.
My receptionist has adapted so that now when a child is brought in, she will say ‘The Hennings Family’ is here instead of ‘Mr. and Mrs. Hennings.’ This allows me to take the appropriate amount of sedatives and insert multiple pairs of earplugs prior to meeting the Hennings family and their little bundles of hell. Not really part of this paragraph.
Look at you: you have a child at a loan closing. Now shut him up or remove him and let’s get to talking about how forbearance is not a waiver. I’d rather see the baby in a bar.
Copyright . Published 1 October 2007 in Editorials.
Reader comments
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I’d go insane if that happened to me. Granted, I work with kids all day, so it’s expected, but if parents brought a kid to a loan closing, well, I think I would refuse to do business til they removed the child if it made so much as a noise.
And I love that scene in Sweet Home Alabama.
permalink — 2 October 2007, 03:11