Author: Geno Petro (page 1 of 4)

by Geno Petro

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

The Glass Ceiling

I remember the moment I decided to stop wearing a suit and tie in public—forever. It was a couple days before Christmas and I dropped by the K-Mart to pick up a punch bowl for the office party.  I was looming  in Housewares when an elderly woman approached me with a fistful of coupons.  Alvin and the Chipmunks were singing that insidious song through the sound system.

“I want to file a complaint.”  She said.

“I don’t work here.”  Me.

“You’re not the manager?”  She asked,  insistent.

“No. I’m not the manager.”  I replied, perhaps a little snippy.

She glared up at me like…well…like I was lying.  More than anything, I hate being implicated in an aspersion when I’m innocent. I’d rather receive three french hens every day for a year from someone I don’t truly love than be deemed a liar (unless of course, I actually am, in which case, I will simply deny until totally boxed in).

“This is an Italian suit,  lady. You need to find someone with a name tag,”  I continued, perhaps a little prideful.

“That lady over there said to ask  you. That you were a manager.” She pressed.

We turned our attention to a  squat woman in a burka, a rare sight in Richmond, Virginia in those days.

“That lady over there doesn’t speak English.”  Me, perhaps a little too loud.

“I speak better English than you,” the lady yelled back across the aisle.  “I speak five languages. How many you speak?”

Oh yeah.  One of  those days.  A blue light siren began twirling above my head and something inaudible was announced over the speakers, interrupting  the chipmunk falsetto drone. I froze as a wave of shoppers began scurrying  in our direction; something about cutlery.

“You don’t have this Foot Soaker in stock.”  The elderly lady shoved a coupon under my nose as the herd surrounded us.

“I know I don’t, ma’am…Because…. I. Don’t. Work.  Here.”  Me.

“She deserves a rain check,”  Burka lady. “It’s false advertising if you don’t. Bait and switch.”

“Yes. Bait and switch,”  Elderly lady.

“Bait and Switch!”  Somebody yelled from the mob. “Bait and Switch….”

About that time an employee approached me and ask Read more

by Geno Petro

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

When presented with an ultimatum my first inclination has always been to go for the ‘or else’  end of the proposition— a defiant tendency that was pointed out  to me by more than a few black-hooded figures in charge of my early catechism. This probably explains  the abnormally high pain threshold I lug around to this very day. (Go ahead,  smack me across the knuckles with a ruler the next time we’re doing math together and see for yourself  how little I seem to care.)  I’m convinced this emotional dereliction has to something do with a mutated gene strand that skipped a few low risk taking generations in my inherent DNA.  Clearly, I was breech born under a bad moon.  I am a Virgo, they say,  but not by much.

In the late 1960s, when the Age of Aquarius was recruiting the deflowered masses of my wayward generation, I found myself stalled,  hesitant to beam up to the mothership.  Manned with my own back alley (hearsay, to be sure)  knowledge of that dirtiest of deeds,  I actually did the arithmetic and concluded that  my parents must have lost the rhythm on, or around,  Thanksgiving Dinner, 1955.  Born in the late afternoon on August 23rd  the following leap year (and exactly three complete trimesters to the dinner bell hour later), I concluded that  had my mother only pushed a little harder during labor,  I could  have been a Leo.  But then again, if everyone hadn’t started drinking Cold Duck in the morning exactly nine months earlier, I probably wouldn’t have been…. at all.

So hence, I mentally celebrate—in my sick,  sick head—two birthdays every year:  The day of my most  probable, mathematically correct Conception (Thanksgiving dinner, badda-bing),  and…. August 23rd, that so-called celestial cusp I barely missed by some late breaking water.  When someone asks me what astrological  ‘sign’ I am,  I simply spew out  my theory as posed above… and they usually go away.  It’s my own ultimatum of  sorts,  I suppose, to anyone who tries to get too close.  After all, I did come out feet first and tend to veer a Read more

by Geno Petro

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

The Notion

In my dream I’m always gasping for air; as if the trillion or so cubic inches of ozone I’ve already blown through in my lifetime somehow counts for nothing.  I awake, step over the dog, and scramble downstairs in my boxers in search of a physical remedy to a metaphysical dilemma. Something is bothering me and I can’t quite place my finger on it. Life is short and, on this crisp autumn eve, I’m clearly too underdressed to even be considering my last breath.  Our fifteen-year old cat follows close behind, his own mousy demons no doubt,  in tow as well.

‘Dear God, please don’t let me die with money in my portion of the Charles Schwab account,’ I think as I root through the herbal medicine cabinet,  next to the dishes, above the microwave.  ‘That’s what the Prudential life insurance policy in the house safe is for,’ I obsess. It’s an odd recurring thought, I realize. Just being forthcoming.

We keep no real drugs in our house.

Ginkgo Biloba, Paranil, Senna, Licorice Root. Green Tea, White Tea, Black Tea…where the fck is the Alka Seltzer?

Over the years I’ve developed an internal ON/OFF switch of sorts; a requirement for any man whose livelihood  simultaneously hinges on rejection yet somehow also depends on the act of a total stranger purchasing something of considerable value; house, condo, etc…. every month. It’s an Acceptance thing, I’ve learned. This emotional circuit breaker has, for a long time,  assisted me in affairs of the heart,  finance,  most of  the Deadly Sins—Fear, Greed, Anger, etc… not to mention social and personal guilt.  And in case you haven’t  been following the box scores at home this season,  I’ve been in the OFF mode for a while now.

thankyouverymuchhaveanicedaybiteme….next

Over time I’ve learned to appreciate  the next ‘Next‘  in life—I just haven’t learned not to  eat Mexican food before retiring for the evening or found a way to avoid the night scares that have startled me ever since that stupid monster began squatting in my childhood closet at 39 Vineyard Road in Levittown.  And as my Life flickers before me this particular night, Read more

by Geno Petro

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

The base anticipation that precedes any journey to a new destination is always more vivid for me than the denouement that accompanies the physical descent to earth.  With rare exception (perhaps Paris and maybe Vegas), the image I conjure up in my two dimensional mind beforehand always seems to fall somewhat short of the real 3-D deal.  On our first trip to Maui, for example,  my notion of grass huts  and Woody Wagons clamped with surfboards was quickly dashed the moment I spotted a Costco and a  Wal-Mart just steps from the arrival terminal. It was raining  ukuleles that day and the lone, Port Authority hula dancer was, how shall I say… Samoan? I was expecting something a bit more, I don’t know….svelte?; like the subject of one of  those Sailor Jerry tattoos I threaten to get stenciled across my chest every 120  lunar cycles or so—-pure 1950’s  South Pacific paradise-of-the-mind stuff. I think we  bought our own leis for 8 bucks each at the gift shop, rented a Taurus from Avis, and called it a day.

And it’s not just Hawaii. The same holds true for Jamaica—or as I like to call it, The Bangladesh of the Caribbean, with its human squalor, smelly ceviche,  and over-abundance of  muddy water. Even the Antiquarium in Boscoreale, Italy, beneath the shadows of a nearby looming housing project,  is sequestered by a string of barbed wire and discarded heroin needles. Not that I don’t enjoy myself abroad, mind you. I’m an enthusiastic traveler, to be sure. The foreign landscapes that ultimately unfold just never fully mesh with the spatial images dancing around in my head before touch down.

Alaska was pretty spot-on but to be honest, I wasn’t expecting  too much from that particular latitude. And while I did not get a tattoo while docked in the port of  Juneau,  I was presented with a  shiny new Rolex Datejust in our cruise ship cabin later that evening.  Since I’m clearly never retiring from anywhere,  my wife decided to give me my ceremonial timepiece a few decades early— for my 50th birthday.  Just so you know, Read more

by Geno Petro

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

To pluck a petal from the bloom of  friend and  recondite commenter, Don Reedy, I’ve been ‘face down in a slope of iceplant’  for 30 days. Yes, iceplant.  (I’ll let the man himself expound a little later but allow me to tempt you with the essence of his yarn—- it involves a houseboat in San Diego, a Belushi Halloween costume (including handcuffed briefcase), and a lost weekend somewhere in the bowels of the 1980s. Un huh.)

You see, I too have been on a pastoral  quest  of sorts this month and  presently find myself scurrying through the  Bloodhound shadows to slip this flimsy piece under the Big Dog’s door before the triple witching hour tonight—June’s last breath.  I take a peek around the literary pound and am relieved to  find that my WordPress password is still active and that my name and mugshot are still posted on the BHB sidebar.  Only a handful of  hours remains between me and blanking an entire month on the hallowed front post page. Hopefully I’ll push Publish before the final strike of Midnight and keep the holy streak alive.  Admittedly, I’ve been remiss in my self-imposed dogmatic duties.

So this is what has gone down since I last posted Mother Nature is not a MILF on May 30th (an essay written mostly on my iPhone that netted a total of 6 unique comments including a few of my own trite responses). I pooled my talents, sunk my literary savings into a mental Ponzie marketing scheme, and found myself  nearly wiped clean from the blogarian grid as I danced 30 days straight ‘with the one who brung me’ to this economic station in life to begin with—real estate sales.  Eleven of them to be exact.  I’ve never done eleven of anything in a single month much less an activity involving commission checks with accompanying deposit slips.  And now, after eleven hard money contracts written and/or Closed in June, I come crawling back to my digital workspace on knees and elbows on this last day of the month, famished and thirsty for Google juice; mind, gut, and Adword Read more

by Geno Petro

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

Now the hard part—fabricating an essay that somehow pertains to real estate and ties in with the above catchy title; one that popped into my head while hydroplaning through a stop sign in a downpour earlier this month.  At the next red light I quickly texted the lofty thought to myself  expecting to come up with an accompanying  point (and several hundred additional words) once I made it safely back to my desk—my writing desk that is. Not my selling desk. I have a separate hard, cluttered surface for each, you see.

More accurately, what I’ve set up are creative stations for each side of my brain;  right brain/writing desk,  left brain/selling desk.  And it’s not hard to tell when I’m performing the wrong  creative duty at the wrong desk, either; I basically suck at whichever task is at hand, I’m always running  behind schedule, and I don’t make any money.  Anyway, that  Mother Nature idea was almost three weeks ago.

So tonight  I was reading  Jeff Brown’s latest post (and most of the 100 or so comments that were bound to ensue) when finally, the ideal segue hit me.  Transparency!  Why not try and give that clear concept a whack myself since, as hard as I tried to think of a comment to insert, I had nothing intelligent to add to Mr Brown’s already lengthy thread.  Perhaps  instead, I could unveil a few secrets of my own that the BawldGuy might feel are nobody’s fiscal business.  Actually, I  agree with him (and his grandparents) on this one but I happen to be sitting at my selling desk  in boxer shorts now so…. down they come.  Ah transparency.

* In 2006 I earned more income selling real estate than the combined government salaries of the Vice President of the United States and a typical  City of Chicago Streets and Sanitation worker on the ‘no show’ payroll.

* Last year, according to the cover of Parade Magazine, I basically matched dollar for dollar with the average preschool teaching assistant in Youngstown, Ohio (Fail perhaps, but not quite Perish).

* So far this selling season, I’m keeping  signing Read more