Donald Trump, I Presume?

“So he calls me up and asks me what to do. So I tell him to lower the price. Just a little though, but enough to let them know you’re serious.”

This was the conversation I observed the other day during lunch. The man having it wore a badge around his neck. And I say ‘man’ because his friend did little more than grunt a few times for the duration of the meal. It was a lecture, really, which he gave loudly and was endured by both me and his friend. The badge hung from a clear plastic band, which I recognized as a key card typical to one of the many tech companies in the area. He was dressed in faded navy sweat pants that stretched tight through the hip and thigh region and gathered at his ankles revealing dingy white sweat socks with stripes. Up top he wore a thick blue and gold rugby shirt beneath a black leather bomber jacket that matched his heavily worn loafers. I wondered if this was intentional but guessed not.

It seemed he rubbed elbows with a large scale developer who had called desperately seeking advice on unloading what the genius before me referred to as, “A few properties he just couldn’t get a read on.” “He’s like that, you know? He and I have been friends a long time and he’s never been able to see the forest for the trees. You know what I mean?” he asked his lunch mate. “So he calls me up and I set him straight,” he continued as he described a condo here and a home there, all suffering from lackluster features and poor locations. “I mean you can’t fix the location, right? That’s not changing no matter what, so I pointed that out and then we moved on to what he could do. You know, I mean, if he wanted to take my advice and actually move anything.”

Normally I spend my lunches reading and will often move to another table if a particular conversation becomes too distracting. But Baby Trump here was too good to pass up. I was hooked.

“I told this developer friend of mine, listen, with a nice coat of paint in the right color, his properties would practically sell themselves,” he continued. “And don’t use the cheap stuff either, I told him. The ladies can see the difference and they’re the ones you gotta sell. Trust me.”

He continued with his lesson for a bit, describing the difference between a good paint and a poor one, but I began to lose interest. Besides, I had what I needed - a coat of paint in the right color, don’t cheap out, something about location, location, location and keep one eye on the ladies. NBC's The Apprentice here I come.