Adam and I play a little game with everyone. A classic good cop — bad cop routine.

Whenever we interact with anyone, contractors, reatlors, tenants, anyone really — we have a routine. One of us is nice, pleasantly persistent. The other plays the heavy.

I’m the one who calls people, daily. I cajole, complain, and generally persist. Adam comes in occasionally, smiles, shakes hands, and leaves.

This, however, is generally where people make an error. All I ever require is people live up to their obligations, act in a timely manner, and we generally leave them alone.

Occasionally, these folks misstep. They don’t do things on time, don’t return my phone calls, or generally blow me off. Whether it’s youth, gender, or race, I don’t know.

How do they transgress? The buyer of our last house didn’t take my word as the last and threatened, “I’m going to call your husband.”

I said, “go ahead.”

Yes, they want to call the smiling friendly guy. He’ll smooth things over. He’ll be better to deal with than this woman who doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.

Then they call him — and they learn who is the bad cop.

It’s not me. Despite my thousands of phone calls and e-mails, really I’m the nice one.

Once they call Adam — they never call him again. People realize that really, I’m not so bad.

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