You need to trust your broker to execute your deals.
He’s not mad.
Ask him and he will tell you the reason.

Try online services, you get to watch the market real time and execute your orders to the nearest 5 cents.

When trading online, the commission is approximately 1.845%.

The market price then was 16.55, and there were probably 200,000 orders, meaning your order for 1,000 shares would be the fulfilled after the first 200,000 are met using the FIFO concept.

Your broker can however short-circuit the 200,000 by putting in an order for 16.60. That is why he was asking for you to give him room to get up to 17 in order to close a sale for you.

And again, probably the offers at the time were at 17, even though the last traded price was 16.55.

The market price is an average. Hence yoi can buy below market price for a dipping stock and can't buy at market price for a fast rising stock.