Our real estate agent is a great guy. Helpful, competent, hard-working. But he spent his life in the deep Midwest and it shows.
In our initial meeting, he creeped out N. by trying to enter into a male bonding process with him. His attempts at male camaraderie through a series of winks and “Well you know how ladies are, we guys can never understand them” comments did not produce the desired effect. N. gets alarmed and starts looking longingly at the door when these things happen.
Yesterday, the agent tried pulling this Midwestern macho trick again. As I was talking about things I needed to appear in the offer, he interrupted me and addressed N. with, “Well, you are the boss here, N. You get to decide.”
“No, I’m the boss,” I said. “And as I was saying. . .”
After a while, the agent understood that he was doing something wrong and started looking at me when I spoke. He also had to stop trying to recruit N over to his side.
“Oh,” he said to me. “When I prepared the offer, I put his name first and your second. I will redo it immediately. I also have to ask, are you two legally married?”
Clarissa's Blog 
Nice fella, this one. If the lady will stop talking, so the men can get down to business…
Good thing you set him straight.
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“Are you two legally married?”
WHAT? On top of everything else, how exactly is this his business?
When we were buying our house, our real estate agent learned immediately that I was the person to talk to. My husband was left out almost entirely. He was completely fine with it, though. He has no head for business. I don’t think this is a gender thing as much as it is an interest thing. He’s just never been interested in numbers, and somebody has to do the math!
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“Are you two legally married?”
What you should have said: “On what planet? Oh… Earth! Yes, we’re…. marroo…. married! Yes we are what you refer to as ‘married’.”
I thought you were on the border of the south, but that behavior is weird and IME would never fly further south (unless he suspected that letting the wife stomp on him verbally [but oh so sweetly] would help make the sale).
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“I thought you were on the border of the south, but that behavior is weird and IME would never fly further south (unless he suspected that letting the wife stomp on him verbally [but oh so sweetly] would help make the sale).”
– The thing is, I can be VERY charming if I need. Plus I have this angelic look that makes it impossible even for the manliest macho on the planet not to melt. It’s all in the way you deliver the lines.
The manliest machos also all secretly wish to relinquish control for at least a moment. But only to an angelic creature, of course.
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