I'm Non-negotiable,ON EVERYTHING!
Let me explain, in my line of business there is constant negotiating. I travel 11 months out of the year and operate two to four businesses depending on the season and of course there are investments to manage. Living abroad in different countries can be a fun and exciting adventure however you eventually understand that you have to have a little bit of bend in almost everything that you do. Emerging yourself in a different culture, it's always best to respect their culture instead of being rigid and sticking to your own ideologies. with that being said I sometimes find myself in a place where I refuse to negotiate with anyone else, and everyone is negotiating.
I took a course on negotiating when I was in my 20s by a professional negotiator for the United States White House, and what I learned is that 99% of the time if you're sitting across the table from another human being, you are negotiating. Whether that human being is your mom, your spouse, your sibling, or just the mailman. I constantly find myself in a position where someone is trying to renegotiate terms that have already been agreed upon. Right now, at this very moment I'm at one of those points where I'm completely empty. I have no room, absolutely no room to negotiate. I'll give a couple of simple examples of what I've experienced just over the last few weeks
1. My wife and I hired a private vehicle to drive us from Montenegro to Albania. It's a short 2 1/2-hour drive, and because we are junkies of stuff, we had a lot to move so we had to make sure that it was a van that would accommodate all of our luggage as well as our personal items, ourselves and our dog. Sounds simple enough doesn't it. One van, two people, one dog and lots of stuff on a two-hour drive for $220. The gentleman picked us up and dropped us off on time when it was time to pay, I pulled out an American Express card and he said Oh no cash only. We already talked about this for over a month in preparing for the move that we're going to use a credit card to pay and it's going to be American Express. This is a renegotiation move. so now my wife has to take a visa card, find an ATM, pay exchange rates, ATM fees, and foreign transaction fees, just to get this guy the money in the newly desired form of payment that he has decided is the only form of payment on the spot. And then he wants a tip. I GOTTA TIP FOR YOU!
2. We get to the new condo in Albania and although my wife has advised the owner every 30 minutes where we were located on our two-hour drive, the owner is late and is not at the location. We have equivalent to eight large suitcases with us the owner tells us to find a cafe and sit for 45 minutes until she arrives, I tell my wife that I refused to I'm not renegotiating terms that have already been agreed upon. Finally, the owner gets her father to bring the key and allow entry. I met her father, walked around the place, agreed that it was beautiful and that was it. We had already agreed on a monthly payment for the next 12 months and that payment would include all utilities as well as Internet. The owner advised us that she would bring us a second set of keys, a key fob to operate the elevator (which we were promised but didn't have when we had to walk up the stairs with eight suitcases), fix a 3X 3 foot opening near the ceiling which just simply needed a covering or a door of some sort, she also offered to bring us a table and a couple of chairs for the balcony which had none. We said fine no problem. One week went by and we still had no lease, my wife of course asked her about it twice that week.
Then one day she jumps up and messages my wife she's on her way right now this very minute with the lease and to collect the rent. my wife tells her that we're busy we can't just do things spur of the moment. we need an appointed time, besides we needed to get a copy of the lease for us to look it over in advance. This went on for 2 weeks meanwhile nothing that was promised was done. No extra set of keys, no access to the elevator, no patio furniture, and that large opening near the ceiling in the bedroom was still there. I told my wife that maybe we should go ahead and look for another place since it's been two weeks and they haven't made good on anything that they said that they would do. After all we were planning to stay for a year and after only two weeks of empty promises imagine how we would feel after 52 weeks of empty promises.
My wife agreed but when the weekend came, we kind of got lazy and forgot about the whole idea. Then in extra week went by, and I told my wife that in short, these people are renegotiating with us they are already telling us what they are not willing to do in advance and they haven't even collected any money yet so let's take this opportunity as a divine sign to look for another place to live, you never know we may find something better. we found something better, much better in fact and moved out after paying them for a full month and giving them 10 days notice of the move.
Only for them to be upset and blame us for somehow defrauding them with the idea that we will stay for one year.
The part I haven't mentioned yet is how they agreed to allow us to move in paying for month to month with no deposit but once we arrived ask us for two months of deposit. I knew right away this was a renegotiation tactic because they waited until we got everything moved into the apartment and then four or five days later start asking us for a deposit. We told them that we refuse to give a deposit because it was never agreed upon in the first place. They agreed and we came to new terms, which were actually just the old terms revisited. We scheduled the date to sign the lease as long as they gave us the lease in advance for us to read it over. The day of the scheduling we still did not have the lease in advance and guess what. The owner was suddenly unavailable. The owner’s sister ( A TOTAL STRANGER TO US ) messaged my wife out of the blue that she was coming over with the lease for us to sign it. The owner never messaged us that she even had a sister, and we never even heard from the owner again. This sister was the new key man to deal with concerning the apartment.
And this is what I mean by renegotiating, people in general will consistently make agreements with you and just before the agreement is about to commence in a transaction change the terms altogether. You ever notice how the terms are never in your favor? I mean actually think about it every time someone renegotiates with you it's never a situation where you end up with something extra. They try to pretend like is just a big misunderstanding but if all of these little situations were just misunderstandings, how come those misunderstandings never ever work out in your favor, they always work out to you spending more or giving up more. Because they're not misunderstandings they are renegotiations.
Now, I know that I'm raw right now and completely bankrupt with entertaining these small darts that people throw. But there are points in my life where I feel like everyone is a terrorist, every single human being that comes in contact with you wants something from you, and that's OK as that's a part of being a valuable person. But when every single human being that wants something from you makes an agreement with you, and then changes the terms of that agreement as the transaction is about to take place. it becomes annoying as hell. And it could drive you to a place where you just simply refused to renegotiate with anybody about anything.
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