When Did People Stop Caring?

An essay about trust, consumer experience, and the institutions we depend on.

By Summer Goralik

It’s 9:42 p.m. on a Tuesday night, and I just opened Microsoft Word. Now what?

(10 minutes pass, and I critically injure my toe on my desk chair, nearly ending this writing attempt before it even begins.)

It’s odd. There’s been so much going on in the industry, yet I haven’t felt the need to write about it. Like a passenger in a car, I am driving by, watching everything unfold, but with no real desire to grab the wheel or even comment.

As I settle in here, I think it’s best that I start with the low-hanging fruit.

One of the best pieces of advice I have ever been given didn’t come from a teacher, mentor, or professor. It came from a movie my mom introduced me to when I was very young. Harold and Maude, a 1971 cult classic, is an extraordinarily unique love story. Admittedly, it’s not for everyone. But if you are familiar with this older cinematic gem—draped in Cat Stevens’ songs from cover to cover—then this should cue a genuine smile.

In the film, Maude is played brilliantly by Ruth Gordon and Harold by Bud Cort. Their characters, and the actors themselves, are separated by more than fifty years, making their partnership one of the most unconventional love stories ever put on screen.

After Harold tells Maude he wishes he were dead, she responds with tremendous confidence and vigor:

“A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they are not dead, really. They’re just backing away from life. Reach out. Take a chance. Get hurt even. But play as well as you can. Go team, go! Give me an L. Give me an I. Give me a V. Give me an E. L-I-V-E. LIVE! Otherwise, you got nothing to talk about in the locker room.”

“If you’re in the market...”—my favorite saying these days—these words can be all yours. They can become your undercurrent, quietly shaping the way you communicate, think, and move through life. Over the years, I’ve found them much easier and more fun to embrace.

When I worked at the California Department of Real Estate, I adopted Maude’s philosophy wholeheartedly. Any time I had an idea or felt passionate about something, I just said it. No hesitation, really. Maude would have been proud. Proposing enforcement strategies or plans to the higher-ups became second nature to me, even though I was “just an investigator.”

Sometimes my proposals went somewhere. Thankfully, many were received positively and ultimately carried out with the help of executives who shared my vision. Other times... splat.

Looking back, I appreciate my own bravado, even if it occasionally got me into trouble (yes, that happened too) or landed absolutely nowhere. Whether my ideas went somewhere or nowhere, the hope was always the same: to make a difference, as naïve or cliché as that might sound.

At least I took the chance. L-I-V-E, right?

It’s in that spirit that I peck away at my keyboard tonight, hoping to say something that’s not entirely easy or comfortable to say. After all, discomfort has a funny way of exposing truth and triggering reactions. Often, it creates conflict, sure, but if you’re lucky, it sparks dialogue, maybe change.

Listen, I’ve been carrying a story around for months now, a personal one, tucked tightly under my arm like a grenade. At first glance, it doesn’t really have anything to do with real estate. And if this is the moment you’ve decided that’s no longer interesting, save yourself the next 2,500 words and keep scrolling. Although, spoiler alert, I always find my way back to my hometown. Real estate, that is.

Nonetheless, I am going to share something real, otherwise I don’t think I will sleep tonight. This is hardly a glass of milk that will lull me or you to sleep, though. It’s more like a hot chili pepper, a spicy rant of sorts.

If you’ve made it this far, I suppose it’s only fair that I first explain the title. It’s a little provocative, although it’s hardly meant to be. It comes from a very real place. On second thought, maybe provocative isn’t even the right word.

Perhaps it’s just rude. Or, truthfully, a little depressing. Either way, I want you to feel something.

When did people stop caring?

Have you ever held that thought? Even for a minute? It’s not a particularly pleasant one. Maybe you’ve quietly muttered it to yourself or, if you’re feeling especially bold or unfiltered, you’ve actually said it for others to hear.

It’s sparked by feelings of anger or disbelief, or perhaps someone disappoints you. Maybe it’s not your life at all. You hear a story on the news or witness a situation that just hits you wrong.

You find yourself thinking, like I did recently, in my best 1960s Woodstock-era impression, “The system is bad, man.”

Yes, a cynical thought, indeed. But tonight, I’m not really trying to be fair, and I am not in the mood to apologize. In fact, I’ve found that brutal honesty produces the best writing these days, if not for the pleasure of the audience, then purely for yourself.

More accurately, the question that provoked this essay has been following me around since last June. I wish I could tell you it was about compliance. It isn’t. In fact, it began with something that felt like the complete absence of it. Arguably there was a process, yes, I will give them that. But no regard. No care.

It began with my father.

“Vegas, baby, Vegas!” (but not so Vegas)

Last year my father, who lives in Arizona, drove himself to a hospital about an hour away from his home after experiencing significant pain. The doctors there determined he needed to be airlifted to Las Vegas—not for surgery, but because they believed he needed to be urgently evaluated by a specialist, one who wasn’t available at their facility.

When he arrived in Las Vegas (by helicopter!), however, he wasn’t treated by the specialist everyone believed he urgently needed. Instead, after evaluating him, they essentially told him he looked fine and should simply follow up with his regular doctor back home.

Then, without any consideration, they discharged him. Not back home. Not to family. They simply released a seventy-eight-year-old man, suddenly alone in another state, to figure out his own way home.

It was after 6 p.m. My dad had no car, no place to stay, no friends and no family.

I remember sitting in my car after stepping away from a party to take the phone call, learning all of this for the first time. I honestly don’t even remember who I was yelling at. I only remember that I completely lost my composure, which isn’t really my style. It was the kind of yelling where you feel your face turn hot and your voice reaches an octave you didn’t even know you had.

Long story short, I became a quarterback, from hundreds of miles away, coordinating drivers, hotels, restaurants, transportation, and even iPhone chargers, to make sure my father had somewhere safe to sleep, was fed, and could return safely to Arizona the next morning.

I wasn’t a hero, obviously. Far from it. I felt completely helpless, but my anger over what happened and my concern for my dad powered every effort. Sitting in my car, with my breath and fury fogging up the windows, it was precisely at that point that I said:

“When did people stop caring?”

For those who know me, personally or professionally, you know that I believe in rules. I have always been a rule follower, long before I worked in compliance. That night, when the hospital released my elderly father into a foreign place without regard, without care, it felt like there were absolutely no rules. No compliance.

For a little teaspoon of comic relief, which might be warranted now, I think of another great film quote from The Big Lebowski, when Walter, played by John Goodman, tells Smokey, a fellow bowler, that his toe was over the line after he bowled an eight, and to mark his score zero. This leads to a memorable altercation where Walter, a Vietnam veteran, says:

“Smokey, this is not ‘Nam. This is bowling. There are rules.”

That night, when they let my elderly father loose in another state, after dark, I thought the same thing. Except this wasn’t bowling. Sadly, I wish it were.

It wasn’t simply that the rules felt absent. It was that the purpose behind them seemed to disappear. Whatever system was operating that evening, it certainly wasn’t designed around the experience of a frightened seventy-eight-year-old man, with no family, trying to find his way back home.

(1,456 words in, I’ve already quoted two movies, and I haven’t even reached my point yet. All proof that I apparently went far too long without writing.)

The rabbit hole

Now, moving a few steps away from this story—but don’t worry, still in the same direction. My mind steers toward Proposition 65 notices posted outside parking lots, shopping centers, and restaurants.

The first time I saw one of those signs, I remember being equal parts curious and alarmed. Eventually... appalled.

In California, businesses are required to post warnings informing us that we may be exposed to chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects, or reproductive harm. Cute, isn’t it?

You’re simply walking from point A to point B. Picking up groceries. Meeting a friend for dinner. Running an errand. Ordinary life. And yet, somewhere in the background, we’re reminded that even these ordinary moments come with warnings we’ve somehow learned to accept.

This same feeling of, well, disgust, returns when I think about receipt paper. Yes, that’s right. The receipts we’re handed into our bare hands every day from those same restaurants and stores. A souvenir of our consumerism. If you haven’t gone down this rabbit hole yet, I encourage you to, just not before bed.

Thermal receipt paper isn’t coated with ink at all. It’s coated with chemicals called Bisphenols, compounds associated with a variety of health concerns, including cancer.

It’s the McDonald’s pink goo incident from 2011 (which I wrote about here). It’s chemicals in our food. It’s chemicals in our super-soft synthetic clothing.

We are not just surrounded by risk, we are entrenched in it. Still, we’ve quietly learned to accept it. But those risks didn’t simply appear. They were created by people, by business decisions, by company policies, and by strategy.

It’s not long after this rabbit hole of thinking that I quickly land on unpaid, but completely legitimate, insurance claims.(The whole insurance business gets me fired up.) You spend your entire life paying into insurance, only to have a claim denied when you really need it.

Honestly, though, when the outrage or frustration starts to die down, and you regain a more productive clarity, you begin to wonder if individuals are not the problem—institutions are.

When I think of institutions, I think of organizations, systems, and entities bigger than ourselves, created to solve a human problem. Hospitals exist because people get sick. Insurance exists because people need protection. The real estate profession exists because people need homes.

Following this line of thinking, regulators exist because consumers deserve safeguards and legal compliance. Trade associations exist because professions need standards and accountability.

Clearly, institutions are necessary. There is no doubt about that. But the real question is whether they still remember the human problem they were created to solve. The person on the other side of the table. The reason they exist. The standard by which they should measure success.

To protect, to provide. To improve the human experience.

(I am getting closer to reaching my late-night thesis.)

Sometimes I wonder whether institutions have become so focused on protecting themselves, improving efficiency, reducing cost, or executing business strategy that they slowly lose sight of the human experience they were originally built to improve.

There, Maude. I said it.

Two industries, one backbeat

“As we make our aerial descent...” back to real estate, folks, this is where I would like to turn your attention.

While healthcare and real estate could not appear more different, they are both built upon remarkably similar foundations, with critical common denominators like public trust and the highest standard of care.

Like doctors owe duties to patients, brokers and agents are also fiduciaries to their buying and selling clients. Trust is invested by the patient or client in the specialist, and hopefully trusted and dutiful service is provided in return.

Both fields rely upon information asymmetry. Physicians know more than patients. Real estate professionals know more than buyers and sellers. That imbalance isn’t the problem. It is exactly why professionals exist in the first place. We seek out expertise because we recognize our own limitations.

These relationships work because consumers trust that professionals will use not only their informational advantage, but knowledge and experience for the consumer’s benefit rather than their own. Whether that trust is honored or not ultimately shapes the consumer experience.

Just recently, I was sitting in a hospital room because my dad was facing another surgery. (Believe it or not, this is a different—but equally maddening—story.) I was handed a stack of medical disclosures with no one to explain them or help me reach what we call “informed consent.”

That’s when it hit me.

Maybe we can take real estate licensees off the hot seat for a moment, because it seems other industries aren’t doing particularly well in the informed consent department either.

Informed consent is one of healthcare’s most important principles. Patients deserve to understand the risks, benefits, alternatives, and likely outcomes before making profoundly important medical decisions.

And yet, sitting there in that ice-cold hospital room, I realized something I had somehow never stopped to consider. I don’t think I’ve ever signed a pre-medical disclosure that actually informed me what my care was likely to cost.

Let me put this differently: In all of my years of being alive, I’ve rarely had a clear idea of what I was getting into financially before receiving medical care. I remember the stress of having a C-section with my son, wondering how much it would set us back during our first year as new parents. We simply didn't know.

Before I could sit with that thought for very long, my mind did another loop-de-loop:

What if we’ve quietly confused informed consent with documented consent?

As I signed the stack of medical paperwork, I couldn’t help but nod in agreement with my own question.

Informed consent produces understanding. Documented consent produces signatures.

Those are not the same thing.

Hey real estate… you’re up!

It’s for these reasons that private listing networks still trouble me.

Private listings were never intended to become an industrial process—a mass-produced approach to marketing homes regardless of the individual consumer sitting across the table. They were designed to solve specific problems or satisfy specific needs for specific people. That’s very different from designing or promoting a strategy that asks consumers at large to opt into privacy and less exposure.

There are consumers right now choosing private listings without the full picture, without clearly understanding the data or the tradeoffs. Consumers are being asked to reconcile less information with better decision-making. It would be difficult to convince me otherwise because I simply can’t dismiss what years of real estate investigations have taught me.

As a fiduciary, I simply don’t know how you recommend a private listing option as a one-size-fits-all solution when the data doesn’t consistently support it. Meaningful advice should be individualized. That’s what fiduciary duty demands.

Business strategy and fiduciary duty are not the same thing. They can absolutely coexist, but when they stop aligning in the consumer’s best interest, I think we ought to stop and ask ourselves a very uncomfortable question:

Who exactly is the strategy serving?

Consumers are not products moving down a conveyor belt. Neither are their homes or their lives.

I understand why a private listing might be the right answer for one seller. I simply have a much harder time accepting it as the recommended starting point for thousands.

Meaningful choice has never simply been about having options. It has always depended upon meaningful information. And without meaningful information, informed consent slowly begins to resemble documented consent. Suddenly, I’m right back in that ice-cold hospital room, signing a stack of medical paperwork without anyone helping me understand what I was actually agreeing to.

The longer I sat with all of these thoughts, the more I realized I’d been asking the wrong question. Thankfully, the title of this piece doesn’t hold water. The question isn’t whether people have stopped caring. It can’t be. I’ve met too many extraordinary doctors, nurses, brokers, regulators, and professionals to believe that.

The reality is, at different points in our lives, every one of us eventually places extraordinary trust in another person or institution.

Every one of us eventually becomes the patient. The homebuyer. The seller. The insured. The diner. The traveler. The parent. We spend our entire lives moving through experiences designed by institutions or businesses we rarely stop to think about until something goes wrong. Then, almost instinctively, we find ourselves asking the same question:

How did we get here?

And while I genuinely believe most people are inherently good, does that necessarily mean that institutions or businesses are always out to protect us? Maybe that’s the question I was searching for all along.

And would you look at that... this article shape shifts yet again into something else entirely. If you are still following, the new question, and pseudo title of this essay, is:

What do institutions owe the people who place their trust in them?

That’s way more eloquent, less offensive, and perhaps the wiser query.

The end, but hopefully just the beginning

Like it or not, real estate has everything to do with the American Dream. That means the consumer experience isn’t simply another business metric or marketing objective. It is the very product the profession exists to deliver. Every business strategy and policy decision, every innovation and disruption, should ultimately be measured against one simple thing:

Does it make the consumer’s experience better?

The American Dream doesn’t belong to brokerages, organized real estate, or portals. It belongs to consumers. And the proliferation of private listing networks, along with the growing use of this business strategy, impacts the experience consumers have while pursuing one of the most meaningful dreams of their lives.

For those reasons, I’m left asking:

What kind of experience are we creating for the people who trusted us in the first place?

Maybe that’s why I can’t stop thinking about my father. Or why my mind drifts to Proposition 65 signs that remind me what we’re asked to accept every single day. That’s precisely why receipt paper, informed consent, and private listing networks somehow found their way into the same essay.

They’re all provoking the same feelings and reflections.

Consumer experience is where institutional or business purpose becomes visible. And the consumer experience has everything to do with the human experience.

So, before I let you go, releasing you into the wild, and if you walk away with anything here, please remember this:

Every interaction with an institution or business eventually becomes someone’s story. A story that affects their life in some way, shape, or form.

I told you mine today.

What’s yours?

About Summer

Summer Goralik is a Real Estate Compliance Consultant and licensed Real Estate Broker (#02022805). Summer offers real estate brokers a variety of consulting services including assistance with California Department of Real Estate investigations and audit preparation, mock audits, brokerage compliance guidance, advertising review, and training. She helps licensees evaluate their regulatory compliance and correct any non-compliant activities. Summer has an extensive background in real estate which includes private sector, regulatory and law enforcement experience. Prior to opening her consulting business in 2016, she worked for the Orange County District Attorney's Office as a Civilian Economic Crimes Investigator in their Real Estate Fraud Unit. Before that, Summer was employed as a Special Investigator for the DRE for six years. Among many achievements, she wrote several articles for the DRE, which still live on the Department's website today. Prior to her career in government and law enforcement, Summer also worked in the escrow industry for nearly five years. For more information about Summer's background and services, please visit her website.