One Day More
Yes, they’re taking it back, but it’s not like you haven’t been expecting it for as long as you’ve been there. You’re ready. You’re excited about this, remember?
I skimmed over what I do and how I got there on the ‘about’ page, so I guess the eve of New Year’s Eve is as good of a time as ever to go back, to put this down on digital paper so that I can let it go and move on.
It really is simple- I work in the claims service center at Allstate and as of Thursday, that department will no longer exist. They don’t need us anymore. The company has chosen to reorganize for the customer’s sake, so they phased out my department and three others throughout the country and replaced them with a few smaller express centers that can handle a claim from beginning to end, whereas we could only start a claim. Jot down the information and pass it on to someone trained to deal with it. The poor people stuck in the transition process were transferred around quite a bit, but this is actually to reduce the number of times people are transferred to another part of the country. Deal with less people. Reduce customer disatisfaction. Reduce costs. They’ve got a point.
Yes, there were opportunities to stay. I could have arranged to be back for the new year under a different title, but I backed out of scheduling an interview for the department that is filling our space. Other people needed that position and I needed to finish up school so it only made sense to let them have it. I figured that although last semester I was able to take a full-time work and full-time school schedule simultaneously, that the online classes I needed in order to pull that off were really starting to get on my nerves. Too many computer errors, arbitrary time limits, lack of communication. Besides, what’s the point of taking a new position only to quit within the year. It only made sense to let go.
He gives and takes away and His timing is unbeatable, even when we have a hard time seeing it.
My last day of highschool was May 25th, 2007. Exactly a month later, I started at Allstate as a temp for Kelly Services. I was originally looking for a summer job, just something to tide me over for a while. Something to curb my disappointment for not being able to go away to some 28 grand a year school. I wanted to avoid fast food joints, and preferably stay away from retail, but there was little hope of finding anything else with no experience and just a newly earned highschool diploma. Dad asked me to look into Kelly since he was a Kelly girl ‘back in the day’ so although I wasn’t expecting much, I stopped in just to make him happy.
I’m surprised I didn’t chicken out when they when they asked for references and all I had was a neighbor that I helped with feeding a whole bunch of bunnies for 5 years. When they mentioned the typing test, the drug testing, the Sunday hours, the job itself. Telephones? Depending on who you ask, I’m generally quite quiet. And talking to strangers is not quite my thing.
But it was much easier than I expected. Much more enjoyable than I expected. How could I go 18 years without realizing how much I love people, how much I need people. Especially towards the beginning, when it was slow, my mind would try to play tricks freak me out saying ‘any second now you can hear a beep and a nightmare will begin. They’ll hate you, cuss you out.’ It would try to keep me in a safe mode- one where no calls could come, but it did not work. I was not scared.
Over the past year and a half, I’ve spoken with over 13,000 people. I should be back to finish up this post later on- deck it out with a few little pics, but right now, I need to get ready for the last day of work. I gotta get ready to speak with just 50 more. Wish me luck.
