If you go to a signing at 11am and the signer signs everything except the flood disclosure, what do you do? You call the contact person or people in title or lending. If they do not call you back, you cannot stay at the borrower’s house all day long. Let’s say you leave the signing at noon with everything signed except the flood disclosure. How fast do you drop the package?

Most Notaries will hold on to the package for dear life until the messiah comes. However, the Lender needs those documents. The borrower can take care of the flood disclosure on his own as it is not notarized. Here are some realistic scenarios about this situation:

(a) You drop the package too early, and you have to immediately go back to sign the disclosure. The Lender loses $50 on Fedex. A small loss that is completely his fault for not calling you back.

(b) You hold on to the package for several hours thinking you will drop it half an hour before pick up. Then, you get busy with last minute notary assignments and forget to drop it or have a scheduling conflict at a minimum.

(c) You are at home cooking or reading the paper and forget all about your package.

(d) Better yet, you get in a bad accident and are in the hospital and cannot drop it. If you forget to drop it, don’t have time, or can’t, you could get sued when the borrower loses their lock. Don’t let them lose their lock, rather, drop it like it’s hot!

(e) You have a family emergency because your mom had a stroke, or your daughter hit her head and you drop everything (except the package) and tend to your emergency.

(f) You wait 60 to 90 minutes after the first message is sent before you drop the package depending on what other assignments you have that day. You give the contact person a reasonable amount of time to call you back, but you don’t hold on the package so long that you create any significant risk of it not getting dropped that day due to issues elaborated in points b, c, d, and e. In my opinion, scenario (f) is the most reasonable way to proceed.

HERE IS THE QUESTION RESTATED AS A FOLLOWING DIRECTIONS QUESTION:

You are assigned a signing by Chad the Loan Officer. Chad’s instructions as he words it are, “If there is a problem, call me and only me, if you can’t reach me, then send me a text.” You get to the signing at 11am. The signer’s name is Jesse. Jesse signs half of the documents, but gets to the flood disclosure and says he won’t sign it until he can talk to someone. So, you call Chad, Chad does not answer, what do you do now?

Most Notaries immediately want to call Title. Then they argue with me when I tell them that the instructions say to call Chad only. Then I am told that in real life Loan Officers never hire Notaries directly. I tell the Notary that the purpose of this question is not to master real life but to master following directions so you don’t get fired.

Other Notaries say they will leave a message and sign the other documents in the meantime while they are waiting for a call back. That may be very prudent, but isn’t following directions.

The correct answer is to send Chad a text. What you do after the text is up to your judgment as there are no other instructions. The purpose of this question is to see if you can remember instructions and obey them. Otherwise woe to anyone who hires you.

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