He had that laugh, you know? The kind that bubbles up from deep down, completely unforced, and for a fleeting moment, I saw my nephew. Not a literal resemblance, not exactly, but the same easygoing charm, the same way he leaned back, comfortable in his own skin. Across from him, she was quieter, observant, with a sleeve of intricate, dark tattoos climbing her left arm, disappearing under her blouse. My brain, that sly, subconscious operator, had already made a decision. It was a good feeling, an old, familiar comfort.
That ‘good feeling,’ that warm, fuzzy conviction that I was an excellent judge of character, cost me exactly $3,333 just two months later when they stopped paying rent. A familiar song, one I can’t quite shake these days, keeps playing in my head, a melancholic tune of misplaced trust. I truly believed I had a knack for people; that my years of experience had honed an almost supernatural ability to spot a good tenant from a bad one in under thirty-three minutes. Turns out, my gut wasn’t a finely tuned instrument, but a broken record, constantly playing the same biased track.
The Perils of Bias
We all do it, don’t we? We meet someone, and within seconds, our internal algorithms are racing, comparing them to everyone we’ve ever known. Is this person like my reliable
