Landing In Insurance

The words "I work at an insurance brokerage" have leapt out of my mouth enough times now that I am actually beginning to believe them. I suppose that's probably a good idea, since they're paying me, and I spend rather exorbitant amounts of time there.

It's definitely a nice change. To go from dealing with customers to working with customers is truly, genuinely awesome. To answer the phone and know, somewhat blissfully, that it's not going to be someone asking me about shipping rates to Portugal for a Saturday Express package--which I, somewhat proudly, was never really able to answer except to tell them to call 1800GOFEDEX or connect them with my Shipping Specialist--or how much it's going to cost them to print an 18"x24" color graph and mount it on foam-core for some presentation they needed to have it ready for...yesterday. It's a qualitatively different interaction when they're calling to find out if their $2million insurance policy was approved by the carrier, or how much their premium is going to blow up if they decide they're not going to quit smoking (or skydiving or bungee jumping or scuba diving, for that matter...). For one, they're infinitely more concerned about their life insurance than they are about their color copies. Two, they don't look down on me. Three, if they do, they don't usually show it. At least not yet.

Regardless, I have yet to encounter, hear about or discuss anything near the condescension with which customers treat employees at office-printing-and-packing shops. You really would think they'd be nicer: after all, if they're due to present in court tomorrow and their entire case is riding on the mock-up they're counting on you to produce, you'd think a little bit of consideration is in order. After all, it wouldn't take much for a disgruntled, walked-all-over, spent-the-whole-day-trying-to-bite-their-tongue-and-grin-and-bear-it employee at FXK to just delete a project. Or the files associated with said project. "Ooops."

This doesn't happen, of course, at least not in my experience there. Which, I'm grateful to say, is over and done with now. Yay!