Five A.M. does not agree with me. Not that I had be at work earlier than normal but I wanted to catch up on stuff and make sure I stayed caught up. That meant going into work an hour earlier and leaving about an hour later. All this because the girl I work for was on vacation and, unfortunately, the work doesn’t stop when she leaves. For anyone interested, I do underwriting. I stop short of calling myself an underwriter because I don’t officially have that title yet but I’m working on it. For anyone that doesn’t know what underwriting is, it’s writing insurance. Now calm down. I know it’s exciting. What can I say? I went in to interview for an accounting position and they wanted me for underwriting. I’m not about to pass up a better paying job.
The thing is, the girl I work for has the heaviest work load in the department so I had to do something so I wouldn’t get buried. It’s a situation like this where my organizational skills work against me because I want to stay organized and on top of everything all the time and it’s quite literally impossible in this job, there’s just so much. So reforming my work habits are going to have to come into play at some point.
Anyway, I’m normally up at 6. This week I was up at 5. No more. I can do 5:30 (which is really 5:45, thanks snooze) but barely. I’m normally home around 5:30. Most days it was about quarter after 6 (less traffic later in the evening, less travel time). That equaled me wanting to go to sleep at 8:30, 9 o’clock. My regular writing time is between 8 and 11 Monday through Thursday nights. As you’ve probably figured out, not much writing got done.
I got a little bit, but no where near what I should be doing. “Well why don’t you make it up this weekend?” you’re probably asking. As I said above, I’m a creature of habit therefore I don’t write the real stuff on the weekends. It’s break time for me. Then I work on website stuff, graphics for my little shop, fanfiction, fun stuff. The brain needs a break from it all, it really does. So there I have another very hard habit to break but not one I necessarily want or need to at the moment). I wrote probably 1,000 words this week. That’s terrible since last month I was averaging 1,000 words a day by my schedule. Unless I can crank some more out than what I normally do, July’s numbers are going to suffer.
On top of all of that, the other woman I work for it going on vacation the last week of July. Thankfully her work load is about 1/2 of what I covered this week. Much less stressful. Well, relatively speaking. Her premiums are higher but fewer accounts, is what I guess I would say.
So, I only wrote 3 days this week. I relaxed last night and watched So You Think You Can Dance? To me, the only redeeming reality show. I just love watching them dance and I love to dance so it makes me happy to watch it. Back to regularly scheduled programming next week, thank god, and a chick named Gorvish. Consider her the dorm mom in my WIP.
I watched Last Comic Standing the other night, for the first time, and found it rather enjoyable. I liked it that the contestants were witty entertaining sorts, who made their “honesty booth” type spots worth watching. Instead of just dumb dull people….
Anyhow, I used to work in insurance. I was in charge of ALL things Membership related for a small TPA company. Well maybe “in charge” is the wrong phrase, as I was the only one doing it, period. I think my entire soul rebelled against it and I ended up quitting. But then, it wasn’t the organizational office type stuff I hated, it was being put on the customer phone lines (in addition to all my “regular” duties) against my will so I lasted about two months after that.
In the end I found that I really, really hate insurance. With a passion.
I actually caught a few minutes of that. I like the guy singing about porn but other than that I couldn’t really get into it.
I’m not sure what TPA is but it sounds like it sucked. I work for a brokerage firm so we only deal with agents and carriers. It’s actually against our policy to speak with any insureds which is nice. We get them calling every once in a while or when we have not nice news to relay, the agents will try to get us to relay it even when they know that’s their job but I think that makes it easier.
I don’t think I would have lasted in that environment you were in either, Sarah. It sounds like you have people over you that expected you to do everything and then some and not complain. Ick. I’m lucky in that respect. Just the other day my boss was telling us to not make insurance our life, that it’s not worth it. You come to work, do your job and go home and leave the work at work. I’ve only been at this place for going on three and a half months but it’s probably one of the best work environments I’ve been in. Every place has their faults and this one isn’t exempt but it’s definitely a good place to be. They’re very accommodating.
Was this the last job you just had? I know you said you were currently unemployed . . .
TPA = Third Party Administrator
Meaning they handle the insurance for self funded employers. The employer provides the money to pay the claims, the TPA does all the rest.
The company was in turmoil (probably still is) due to a lot of downsizing and turnover. This was good for me getting into the company, not so good for actually being able to handle the workload.
I just recently got a new job — not in an office, like I wanted, but then I went for two months without a job and was loosing money fast. So now I’m a cashier.