My "Career" ~ A 13-Part Series

 

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Most of the names in this story have been changed, except for the evildoers, the jerks, and the liars. Those people deserve to be outed. 

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I suppose all the upper-middle class gals in my graduating class took it for granted that they would be going to college. That wasn't the world I lived in.

I fleetingly considered enrolling in community college as a journalism major, but I was semi-serious at best. The people I hung around with didn't go to college. We got married and worked as office clerks.

In high school during the dark ages in which I lived, there were three course majors one could choose: general, something a step above "general", a term I don't remember, and college prep. I initially enrolled in the college prep program, and stuck that out for a couple of years, suffering through algebra and geometry, and (gasp) science. But things were only going to go from bad to worse in my junior year, at which time I would have to take chemistry and physics, and I decided, no. 

I excelled at the subjects I liked: English, history, languages. I sucked at math, and still do (thank God for calculators....and my ten fingers). I hated science and detested dissecting things. I didn't really care about the chemical makeup of a leaf, although leaves are pretty, and I like to take pictures of them. And therein lies the rub.  I had my head in the clouds, not buried in the pages of a chemistry book.

So, I didn't go to college. I got a job. As an office clerk. And then I got married.

When I had the opportunity to work in the health insurance field (for a 25 cent per hour raise!), I was just trying to get out of a bad job situation, and I figured, well, it's another office job. I've certainly done those!

Turned out, there were things one actually had to learn to be a claims examiner. Technical terms and procedures. My only leg up on the other 36 people who started with me was that I knew medical terminology from working on the medical floor of a hospital for eight years, and really, that's what got me the job. I found out later that somebody else's references hadn't checked out, so they hired me. I was the last hire, and I was a replacement.  Ahh, the ego boost!

We started work on the vacant third floor of a bank building, because the company had made a commitment to open a branch in our little town, but didn't actually have a building yet. So, we all worked side by side, row by row, in that stuffy room for three months, being trained by impatient, less-than-tactful trainers from Philadelphia, who took every opportunity to denigrate the recreational choices in town. 

At some point during the training, the three supervisors, who had been hired before the rest of us, announced that they would be promoting two more people to supervisor, and three people to assistant supervisor. I applied, of course, like the 35 other trainees, for one of the assistant supervisor positions. I wasn’t foolish enough to think I had a chance in hell of being promoted to supervisor.

I didn't get it.

All five people chosen had insurance experience.  Because, you know, that's the only qualification needed to supervise. But those in a position to hire can be stupid, and not to generalize, but they usually are. There's a saying (that I may have made up, but it's a good one) to describe supervisors who lack people skills: "She manages procedures, not employees."

Eventually, the spanking new building was ready for occupancy, so we all drove our cars down the winding parking garage exit for the last time, to our permanent location.  I settled into my own little cubicle, put my head down and did my work.

At some point one of the original supervisors, Connie, got a promotion to assistant manager (assistant to the regional manager), so that created an opening for a replacement supervisor, and thus a new assistant supervisor. My quality and production were such that now when I again applied for the assistant supervisor position, I got it. 

My duties were to process claims (still) and to go around every day from person to person and sit with them to answer their questions. Oh, and to do some kind of needless paperwork whenever the supervisor had the day off.

And the business kept expanding. More processing units were added, creating more available supervisor positions. At last, having gotten my foot in the door, I got to be one (not a foot; a supervisor).

I had, I guess you would say, a novel approach to supervising. I tended to motivate people, to train people, to believe in people; to give them the opportunity to live up to the expectations I had for them and to their potential. And I tended to want to have fun while doing all that.

Perfection?  Ahhh, yes, that was me. Especially the wintry day when my mentor, Carolyn and I stepped outside to have a smoke. It was frigidly cold that November day, so I said, "C'mon! Let's sit in my car! It'll be much more comfortable!" 

"You know," I said to Carolyn as we were sitting there in the front seat, surrounded by a blanket of white, "Maybe I should brush off the windows, so we can see out.

"My snow brush, of course, is in the trunk, but let me just go grab it and do a quick dust-off."

So, I switched off the ignition, grabbed the key, and ventured out to retrieve my trusty snow brush. Since it was early November, I hadn't yet transferred my brush to the back seat, where it would have been within easy reach for any snow-related emergency. It was still in the trunk. In fact, it was so far forward in the trunk, I, at five foot two inches, couldn't quite reach it. I had to climb into the trunk to be able to grasp it.

And that's when the jolly Dakota wind decided to make its appearance.

Slam! 

Darkness overtook me. 

I lay there for a moment, prostate and stunned. And then I started laughing.  "It's kind of cozy in here," I remarked to no one.

Feeling my way, I eventually pushed up on the inside of the trunk lid, and, thankfully discovered that it wasn't actually latched, just closed. I climbed out, sauntered back to the driver's side door (to hell with cleaning off the windshield), climbed in, and casually mentioned to Carolyn, "I was trapped inside the trunk!" 

Her response? "I wondered why you were gone so long."

We made a pact that we would never mention this incident to anyone. That pact lasted, oh, two minutes at the most. Once back inside, Carolyn whispered it to her assistant, who then initiated the whole call train, passing it along to an examiner in her unit, who passed it along to the next examiner, and the next, and inevitably it made its way to the people in my unit.

I was gratified, at least, to be able to provide my "number one of all-time" assistant and good friend, Penny, with something to mercilessly tease me about for the next eight to nine years of our lives. 

Flash forward to the third week of December. The unit got together and bought Christmas gifts for me and for Penny. When my turn came, I stood in front of the unit and opened each gift as everyone gathered in a bunch before me. I opened two gifts, and they were both lovely. I felt humbled and embarrassed that they had spent money on me. 

The third gift was oddly-shaped, so I was eying it warily all the while. My group imperceptibly inched forward as I reached for the package. I tore open the wrapping and pulled out.......a long, flat object that looked to be a paint stirrer. Up one side of the stick, someone had lovingly etched in red, "TRUNK PROP". 

My folks, one by one, began to keel over in fits of mirth. I looked at Penny, and she looked at me knowingly. She had been the main instigator, of course.  I cried so many tears of laughter that I could no longer focus. 

The laughter of 16 people spilled over the walls of our unit, sprinkling the corridors of Acme, drawing curious onlookers.

See? My people liked me. They thanked me. They respected me.  They made hilarious fun of me.

They gave me a trunk prop.

And all that, combined, got me into a whole shitload of trouble.

 

Next up.........."Evil Bosses"