OK fine. I admit it.

I'm a bit obsessive about this issue. I'm not even exactly sure when it started, if you want the God's honest truth. But here it is anyway.

Quite some time ago, I started noticing certain patterns. Working at a law firm, you meet a variety of people from all classes and age groups. The human mind invariably starts noticing patterns through observation. It's just how we're wired.

What I noticed was this, particularly in real estate transactions: younger people, my own age and at the time usually much younger (the group known as "Gen Y" or "The Millennials") than myself, were all too happy to do whatever was necessary to make their real estate transactions go smoothly. They didn't care if I asked for their first-born. They were just gobsmacked to be getting their own place. They were a real treat to deal with. I mean that sincerely. Anything, or in this case, anyone who made my job easier was always a treat.

A similar pattern was noticeable with my own generation, Generation X (and, incidentally, if you ask me, we have the coolest moniker). Granted they had some more obligations to consider in terms of payouts, but just the same, they were eager to work with me in making sure that they did their part to facilitate a clean completion of their transaction.

But oh no, NOT the Baby Boomers. They took it upon themselves to do just the opposite. All the money in the world was in their pockets, yet our feeble little fee which was less than 1% of the total of their transaction was still TOO MUCH and they did their best to whittle down the numbers. I'm convinced that I could have done the work completely pro bono and it still wouldn't be good enough for them. Not to mention their talent for omitting certain relevant points of information from not only me but their realtors, which resulted in more time and energy expended on their behalf. For those not in the biz, all a law firm really has to sell is time. If additional time is expended, we have to charge for it. Try explaining that to a Boomer, though. Perhaps I should have offered free Viagra samples as incentive to work WITH me, their representative and agent, instead of against me. Betcha it would have worked.