April 14, 2008
Psycho Detection Skills Required
As I was taking a box out to the garage today, a man pulled up in front of our house, got out of his car and took a flier from our "for sale" sign. As I walked back from the garage, the man stood in front of my house reading the flier. When I got closer, he asked me if I was the owner of the home. I said that I was. He asked me a couple questions about our garage and parking spaces. He asked me if he was parked in one of our spaces and I told him that he was in our neighbor’s spot.
He then said, "So I should probably move my car up to the visitor parking area before you show me your house." He stared at me waiting for a response.
After painting for 12 hours this weekend (more to come on this tomorrow), I was completely exhausted and probably lacking any form of poker face. All I could think of as I stood there looking at this middle-aged single man who was by himself was, "It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again."
I quickly told him he should call his realtor or call the number on our sign and speak with our realtor so that he can make an appointment.
"Oh," he said, "well, then I’ll just take this" he said as he gestured at his flier. He seemed a bit put-off by my very polite response. I went inside, locked both the locks on my door and considered turning my security system on. My realtor warned me about people like that, but I didn’t ever really think I’d encounter one.
As I sit here many hours later, I find it interesting that we didn’t later get a call from the showing center. If he was in such a hurry to see our property today, then why didn’t he make an appointment to come back? Something tells me that my psycho killer detection skills were spot-on.
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You did wisely. If you are interested in a good book on this sort of thing, I can recommend Gavin de Becker’s *The Gift of Fear.*
http://www.amazon.com/Gift-Fear-Gavin-Becker/dp/0440226198/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208172854&sr=8-2
I insisted that my Darling Daughter read it.
Good for you, Jess! Funny he didn’t want to make an appointment. Guess he moved on to the next house.
Dang, girl. That sounds like a close one. Who knows what kind of demented potential serial killer he was? Good instincts on your part.
Squeek! Oh my ~ that sounds freaky. It’s at times like this that you look back and are thankful for “spidey senses”
Glad you’re all ok.
Had something similiar happen to me years ago. We lived in a BAD – make that VERY BAD neighborhood. Didn’t know our neighbors. At 11pm one night, there was a knock on the door & everyone else was sleeping. I went to door and asked who it was. Said it was the neighbor’s pre-teen son and their hot water heater had went out and they wanted to borrow a match. I started to unlock door and then thought better of it. Called police and got away from door. By time police got there, nobody was around. Checked it out next day w/neighbor – they had not even been home. I probably would have been dead if I had let the guy in! Close one! A good healthy dose of fear never hurt anyone!
BBM – Great post. Way to go. But I’d focus here on “situation analysis”, not “psycho detection skills”. (I’ll post on this later on my blog). Here’s why.
“Reading” people is almost impossible. Con artists and thieving employees and date rape are a problem which cannot be addressed by us having better BS-detectors. Mostly, it’s impossible to detect through people skills.
I don’t want to hear that a lady got in trouble because her “Psycho detection skills” failed her. The fact is that there are situations that you stay out of regardless of how trustworthy a new person appears.
I’d push this as a “situation to avoid”. Of course, there are also pyschos to avoid too.
Very smart move. We have to trust our instincts even if to others we might come off as rude/paranoid/etc. And you handled it very politely!