Do I hate my job?
Do I hate my job, lately a very difficult question to answer. I struggle between the balance of "thank God I have a job.", and "oh my God please let me be the next to be laid off!". The actual work is not trying or difficult. On the other hand it is quite interesting, I am never bored. The customers or clients are usually easy to deal with, and since I am a person who enjoys a good argument getting into it with a client does not faze me, in fact it gets me going. The people I work for are nice people. In spite of all these plusses working there has become unbearable. Starting with the people I work for, the economic situation in this recession and specifically the company, and last the fact that this is not my career choice all contribute to my constant misery.
I am a car insurance adjuster. The job requires me to investigate car accidents, look at the evidence to decide who is at fault and pay for damage or injuries. This job in itself is interesting, involves a lot of mind work, resourcefulness, and creativity to keep both insured and claimant fairly paid. The most difficult part of the job is that people who don't work in insurance have no idea what insurance laws require us to do or to pay (or not pay). People don't understand the intricacies of the insurance policy. Until I worked in insurance I never bothered to ever read an insurance policy. Had I decided to do so it would have made a small difference since the policy is extremely difficult to understand. Asking an agent is sometimes as equally useless because agents work to sell insurance not explain claims and payments. This is the most difficult part of the job because, people come into a claim having suffered a loss, and have all the wrong preconceptions about the claims process. "My attorney told me this", "my agent said that", "my friend had the same kind of claim and got paid this", are statements that are all too common in the insurance world. Working in claims is a constant teacher pupil scenario, only the pupil thinks the teacher is trying to rip him off. And that aspect of the job is fine, I have no problem that people think insurance companies are scammers, that will probably never cease. My problem began from the inside of the company. People complaining from the outside is completely expected, but chaos on the inside of the company was not.
I went from being a customer service rep taking first notices of claims, under a boss that is exceedingly good at her job and auditing her employees and excellent at finding and correcting mistakes to becoming an adjuster and investigating claims under e new supervisor who is a very flexible and compassionate man. During this process we all worked under the same supervisor, a man who was excellent at his job and managing people. He understood the balance between excellent investigation and workload amount. The company respected and trusted his decisions. Unfortunately he decided to leave the company for a better job right after the company suffered its first layoffs in its history. When he left things went downhill. He was replaced with two senior adjusters who were managing the rest of us adjusters. These two men seriously lack the pull and authority that our old supervisor had. We are now governed by a supervisor that is completely in another state, a person who does not know the dynamics of how are branch works. His goal is to streamline the entire claims department throughout the company not taking into account that the system we have worked with has worked well for us. If the change were for the better then there would be no argument, but for some reason we are being asked to change to be like the branch that we out perform in almost every area. That to me makes no sense. If we Are doing the better job then why does that state not change to be like us instead of vice versa? The entire time I have worked for the company I have heard how inadequate this other branch is and yet now we are expected to be like this branch. It has been very frustrating for us to have to adjust to this new supervisor.
On top of that the new supervisor puts pressure on our two direct supervisors that do work in our same state and they put pressure on us. There is now a heavier workload, less people to work it and more useless investigation. These are all products of the economic situation the country and specifically the company is in. There have been layoffs in the company that have severely hurt the morale of the employees that are left. Not to mention the layoffs that are sure in coming. I understand the necessity for the company to stay afloat, but I don't understand the lack of loyalty toward the employees, and then the company wants to dress it up as "business decisions". I have become disgusted with the way some of these decisions are made. We are always being told how the company is trying to cut down expenses, save money etcbut I cannot help wondering if our CEO has stopped spending time on her yacht for the good of the company. Has she taken a pay cut to cut down expenses? I have not heard of such a thing in the many useless and unconvincing economic reports. The economy of the company is not well regardless of what the leaders say. If it were, more layoffs would not be necessary, and we all know there will be at least one more wave of layoffs to come. This affects everything from who we insure to how we pay that insured. This is the other terrible part of the job. I feel like Mr. Incredible when he was working for the insurance company, he had to find reasons to not pay clients. Our investigations are sometimes so minute in the most insignificant areas to find reasons to not pay a client. This really does make us the terrible business that everyone believes us to be. Just a couple of years ago the atmosphere was nothing like this. You were expected to pay people what was fair. Now it is more important to cut pay wherever possible whether it is legal or not. It's one thing to pay a low settlement if that settlement was up to industry standard and was fair, but quite another to dig into a file, delaying the payment until you find a reason to deny or diminish payment. This makes the client's loss twice as great, and we look twice as bad. I hate, no question there, working in that condition. I have paid many claims without the authority of my supervisor trying to get it paid and closed before he looks at it and finds a reason to not pay it. He is still the same compassionate man but he now works for someone more interested in doing the company a service instead of adequately servicing our clients.
This entire dilemma of the managers scrambling to save money and in consequence their jobs and pressuring us the adjusters is very uncomfortable, in fact unbearable. Worse all the adjusters are feeling the same way and we all do nothing but complain amongst ourselves and try to make the best of it after all we all need our job. This situation highlights more clearly that I was never suited to work in a little cubicle in front of a computer to begin with. This of course is my fault for not finishing my education and realizing my full potential, but it was not such a big deal before because I liked the company, and how our department was run. The change makes me remember this was not supposed to be a career. I am majoring in psychology. I have a love of literature, history, art. These are my true loves and strengths. I constantly feel that my creativity is shriveling and drying up inside of me. I feel with every fiber of my being that I am supposed to be doing something different. This makes the job all that more suffocating. How can I give up so much of my time doing something that I know I was not meant to do? This is my biggest dilemma, because the economy will get better and if the company survives hopefully the situation will get better, but the fact the job is not for me will remain.
I took the job because, like many other people, I needed the money. I was lucky to find that it was a good job, with good pay, and good management. The job is still good, although there will be no raises this year and the benefits are not competitive, they are still better than others. The management though makes a huge difference coupled with my desire to do something else. I am grateful that I have this job, it pays the bills and pays for school, but I wills always lament my limitations because I have to stay here until something better comes up. It will never be the job I love and currently I hate the situation we employees are in, I can only hope it is temporary.