The Rubber Check

In the olden days, as they say, the Broker in the Real Estate office did everything. 

When a piece of property changed hands, the broker did the Closing - wrapping up the deal, so to speak.
On cash transactions, in particular.

Now-a-days, there are professional who specialize in Closing the transactions for a fee, even the bank uses the Closing Agent.
I think the Brokers do not do any Closings at all - a matter of liabilities?

Since my company was a small one, I always did the Closings if there were no loans involved.

We worked on Trust a lot, I believe. 
We accepted checks.

Charlie, my associate sold a piece of property, so I did the closing. I received a check from the buyer and I dispersed the money - paying all the bills, paying Seller and the Realtors. I deposited the check into the House's account.

A couple of days later, I received the returned check in the mail from the bank, marked invalid check - there was no such account. The check the buyer gave me was made out on a non-existing account! 
I immediately called Charlie, telling him to contact the buyer and ask the buyer to come by the office to remedy the situation and to bring Cash to me ASAP.

The buyer came. Instead of apologizing to me, he was irate. He said that I made a mistake. He insisted that his check could not possibly be a bad one, even when I showed the returned check to him. 

"I will not do business with you again," he said, "My check was good."
"Sir, here is the returned check," I said, showing him the returned check.
He was red in the face, but he still insisted that his check was good. He said the Bank made a mistake.
He expected me to apologizing to him.
Did that beat it all?

He did give me the cash. Since it was under ten thousand dollars, it was legal for me to accept the cash.


I wondered, if I were a man, would he have behaved differently? He knew he was in the wrong, yet he would not apologize to me, a woman.

I took his cash and wrote out a receipt for him. Then I bid him farewell, hoping never to see him again.
I was glad that I did not have to do any more business with him.

I ask you, are people really that unreasonable?
My broker, when I first started in the Real Estate business, had told me - rule #1 - Do not trust anyone. 
I forgot?

Live and Learn.