GPS: You will be approaching the Deed of Trust in 3 seconds… You have arrived at your destination.
MARCY: Well, I’m a new notary, so what do I do now?
GPS: What do you think is next, do you want me to tell you to wash your hair and then repeat?
MARCY: I’m sorry, could you repeat that?
GPS: Never mind. Have the borrower initial all of the pages of the Deed of Trust in the small horizontal line in the bottom corner.
MARCY: But, this has 15 pages!
GPS: You heard me girl.
MARCY: Okay, we are going to sign the Note now, and then these other documents…. Okay, we finished signing the HUD-1.
GPS: You go girl! Okay, now let’s take a look at that Flood Affidavit.
MARCY: Gee, the app says you can explain this to me in Chinese, but I don’t speak Chinese. Hmm, I wonder what happens if.
GPS: Qing ni zai qian ge ming zai zui hou de ye.
MARCY: Yet another thing that was made in China. I better switch it back to Chantelle.
GPS: Do you realize what you just did?
MARCY: Yeah, I switched you to Li-Wen for 30 seconds. I didn’t know what that button did.
GPS: Well, you should be more careful. That app doesn’t exactly steer you towards the nearest Chinese restaurant, and if it did, it would steer you to the type of restaurants with dishes that the owner says, “you no like.”
MARCY: I think you’re right. I went to one of those restaurants. I ordered something called “zhu chang” and the owner said, “You no like.” I asked what it was and he said, “Pig intestine with ox brain.” And I said, you’re right, I no like! And then he said, “you think you no like? how you think ox felt?” And then I said, “You’ve got a point. Let’s stick to kung pao!”
GPS: Yeah, and if you had kept on with Li-Wen, should wouldn’t direct you to the fork in the road. She would have directed you to the chopsticks in the road. Then, you’d really be in trouble!
MARCY: Yeah, because I don’t know how to use chopsticks.
GPS: Yeah, but Li-Wen could probably hook you up with some training sticks.
SIGNER: Less talk, more signing please.
GPS: I saw that in a fortune cookie once.
SIGNER: Gee, Chantelle, you do seem to know a lot about China for a GPS. Have you been to China?
GPS: Honey, I was born in China. My parents were nine year old kids who didn’t get decent child labor laws for Christmas.
SIGNER: So, you grew up in Peking, not Pittsburg.
MARCY: Gee, I never thought of you as Chinese.
GPS: Well, think again! I grew up in the basement of a electronics chop shop in An-Hui province. I got plenty of love, but my parents were mad at me for not being a boy.
MARCY: Well, couldn’t they have made you into a boy?
GPS: Don’t think they didn’t try! They didn’t have the voice overs to do that, so they were stuck with what they had. And they had to keep me due to the one-child policy.
SIGNER: Well you seem very polite.
GPS: I had to be. My parents said that if I acted up, they would export me.
MARCY: It’s fun talking to you, but honestly, the way you explain the documents isn’t thorough enough. The app literature claimed that you would be a lot more detailed in your instructions.
GPS: Well if you don’t like it, then you can kiss my app!
MARCY: Well, I’m new at this, so I need a little more mentoring.
GPS: Fine. Have it your way. I’m auto-switching you to Charles. You’ll be sorry now.
CHARLES: (British Accent) Hello, this is Charles.
MARCY: Oh, you sound Brittish. So, what’s the next step in this signing?
CHARLES: Well, if you were Queen Latifah, I would courtsey.
MARCY: No, the signing. We just signed the Flood Disclosure.
CHARLES: Well, just sign the other documents and be done with it.
MARCY: Don’t you understand loan signing?
CHARLES: Well, there’s nothing to know actually. You just sign as your name is printed, and that is that!
SIGNER: I don’t know why Marcy opened her big mouth, but we were much better off with Chantel.
CHARLES: This was the way I was programmed.
MARCY: Well, we need more than this, and the app we bought was guaranteed to be thorough in its descriptions of documents.
CHARLES: Well if that’s the way you feel then Cherio. I’m switching you to Li-Wen.
LI-WEN: Ni hao, wo jiao li-wen. Wo zen-me ke-yi bang zhu ni?
MARCY: Do you speak English?
LI-WEN: Sorry, no English.
MARCY: The app said that the voices would be in English.
LI-WEN: Not all of them. 1.3 billion people speak Chinese these day.
MARCY: Well this is not going to work.
LI-WEN: If you no like, then — Honey, you can kiss my app!
.
You might also like:
Affiant: A social media site for Notaries
http://blog.123notary.com/?p=6410
Apps that Notaries never heard of that could change your life
http://blog.123notary.com/?p=16311
The signing from hell
The Signing from hell….
I have been a notary signing agent for many years now and for the most part I have enjoyed it tremendously. I love the freedom and independence that it affords me and I enjoy meeting wonderful new people from all walks of life. As with most jobs there are good and bad days. This is the tale of one of those bad days. Probably the worst day as a signing agent ever-for me that is.
The story begins
Get ready for a hell of a story. Here we go. I got a call late on a Friday afternoon from one of my title company schedulers (Fidelity National Title) for a job on the following day, a Saturday. I gladly accepted. I received the confirmation and then proceeded to call the borrower to verify time and place. Saturday came and I made my way over to the borrower’s home. When I drove up to the borrowers home the first thing I noticed was the house was VERY run down, and I couldn’t help wondering to myself if the bank knew what they were doing in granting a loan for this property but who am I to judge.
Going up the stairs…
So I parked and then proceeded up the stairs to the house and could see and feel that the whole house was crooked, like on slant. It was obvious It had once been a single family house that somebody who obviously didn’t have a contractors license had chopped it up and made some what I call make shift apartments out of it. And you could actually see the termites crawling on various pieces of exposed wood. But again it is not my place to judge. So I went to what looked like the only real front door (as there were several) and knocked. I heard what I thought was an animal with paws approaching the door.
The Signer and his long clicking toe nails!
But to my surprise it was a young man. But not just an ordinary man but a man with the longest toe nails I have every seen (that is what I heard coming to the door the clicking of his toe nails hitting the floor as he walked). He was also the filthiest person that I have seen as well who living in a house and not on the streets. He was wearing dirty boxers and a dirty torn tee shirt. Then to top it off there was a smell that I cannot to this day describe. While I stood motionless in disbelief and shock, I heard a sweet woman’s voice saying ‘is that her, is that the lady…tell her to come on up…please come on up’…and I cannot tell you why but I went into the door way and accened up a dark stairway and I heard what I assumed was the young man that opened the door who now was behind me start turning about 4-5 locks one by one and as they clicked and locked behind me and I became terrified..truthfully I thought I was going to see my maker that day but I kept on climbing the stairs and the further I ascended up the stairs the stench got worse.
The air was so thick… I could have cut it with a knife…
I could hardly breath. There was absolutely no ventilation. The air was so thick I could have cut it with a knife. And I thought to myself I must have lost my mind. To this day I still cant explain why I didnt just turn around when the front door first opened and just leave. When I reached the the top of the stairs it was very dark and as my eyes started to adjust there was more horror. Dishes and trash pilled everywhere and there were two extremely dirty mattresses one on the floor which the young man who had let me in proceeded to ly down on and cover himself up with a dirty blanket and the other which was sitting up on a mattress frame was the lady who I presumed had called out to m. She was sitting on the edge of the mattress with two swollen legs that resembled tree trunks with clearly to me looked like flesh eating disease. There was an abundance of open sores and I’ll just leave it at that. She then says to me that they had just painted the floor and I was to sit in that area…I said excuse me….and she then pointed to a 10 foot corner that had a coach that clearly had been freshly painted…I thought to myself I must be in the twlight zone or on one of those candid camera tv shows….
The signing begins..
I sat down and asked for the documents (they had been overnighted to the borrower; it was one of those WAMU deals, and I guess it it obvious now why they went out of business…lol) and the signers ID. She looked puzzled but asked the young man to get up and look for the requested items….he reluctantly got up and looked for a few minutes but to me it didnt seem that he was really looking or knew what he was looking for. He was wandering around aimlessly and then told the lady that he could not find them. She accepted this and all I’ll say is that I was so grateful that the ID and and loan docs couldn’t be found…I immediately got up let them know I had to go for I had another appointment and if the missing items came up please call so we could re-schedule another appointment (yes, I lied) and then with the young man in front leading me out I proceedded to the stairway and headed down the steps.
No ID? No problem, let’s reschedule.. time to go!!!!
Thankfully he had the unlocked those locks and he was opening the door when I reached the foot of the steps. I thanked him and bolted through the door gasping for air as I went. I really didnt realize how much I was shaken up until I reached my car. I fumbled for the key, opened the drivers door, sat behind the drivers seat and began trembling. I could still smell that dreadful smell. Dear god, I had brought it with me. Before I could compose myself, in a state is horror, I once again heard those clicks of those toe nails and looked up to see the young man at my passenger side car door excitingly letting me know that he had found the loan doc’sI could hear him saying “Oh Miss, Oh miss I got what you need” and me being the quick thinker I am, I asked him had he found the ID as well. He looking disappointed said oh no…and walked back to his house. All I could do was just sit there and try to regain my composure. Soon after however I felt sick to my stomach and I opened the door leaned my head down towards the street concrete and everything that had been in my stomach come up….After about 15 minutes I started the car up and went home. I opened my front door and stripped down and left it all outside. Clothes, briefcase and all. I took a long hot shower and washed the clothes I had been wearing. After this I immediately sat down and sent Fidelity a very long recap of all of these events and told them NOT to send a request that I go back…ever. When Monday came I got a an apology via email from Fidelity and that was the end of it. I never heard one thing about it ever again. Shortly after however, I did receive my full fee of 150.00. Of this I was thankful.
I was polite through the whole ordeal!
In closing, there is one thing I want to add. Although I was very uncomfortable with the whole situation. The borrower and who I presumed was her son, never new for one minute that I had issues with any of what I described here. I was cheerful, kind and professional throughout all of it.
Until next time…