Evelyn's Club

I asked Evelyn if I could go for the Property and Casualty Insurance broker's license and she said yes. She said, "I'm always happy when someone wants to try to move themselves along. Look at Solmari."

I was looking at people like Solmari. I was hired as a wordprocessor in the Personal Lines department at a time when the the only person they had typing documents was 62-year-old Betty. Betty had been a typist and recently learned how to use a computer to get wordprocessing done. She wasn't interested in learning much more than that and she knew she would be retired shortly after the transition. I came on board with more experience in electronic document processing and at 26 years younger than Betty, I was only thinking about advancing from the position to something with more prestige. Betty was a nice woman. She would say to me, "You know kiddo, with your abilities, you're gonna go places."

Now five and a half years into the job, with Betty long retired, I was still pushing paper around and typing letters. True, I had formulated macros and found other ways to make the job move faster but in response the company felt free to take on more and more clients and to increase the volume of business they handled for the existing clients without taking on more staff to handle the associated chores and grunt work.

Solmari and a couple of others were hired early on, around the time Betty was forced into her retirement. Her chemotherapy and doctor visits required too much off-time. Solmari came on as an Account Assistant, but was pleasant to look at, never argued with anyone and took the broker's course. Within a year she was given 100 accounts of her own to handle. Admittedly, they were not the big money clients, but it was a short trip up the ladder to a titled position. For her, that is, she fit into the club. The others came and went.

Now me, it's just possible I was too good at my job. I don't think there was ever any chance for me to step onto that ladder. I wasn't exactly argumentative, but I did question Evelyn a few times about the workload. When I asked about taking the course, and she answered in the affirmative, I thought at last, we were putting our differences behind us.

I discovered sometimes when people say yes, what they really mean is, "I'll agree to anything within reason to keep you from rocking the boat. It doesn't mean I'll even consider letting you get near the steering compartment." A year after I had my license, and let me tell you, that stuff was difficult to learn, I was still a glorified typist.

It was only when some of the staff, disgruntled and feeling underpaid, left, and Evelyn needed to come up with a solution in a hurry that she begrudgingly allowed me to assist one of the overworked Account Executives with her clients. She still wanted me to act as head word processor while I tried to handle a second duty which actually required more than the eight hours in a working day to complete.

I tried to juggle the two positions for a year and then gave notice. It was too much. The thing was, I had a fair amount of prestige as the wordprocessor. Quite a few people depended on me. When I left and checked back after a couple months, I learned five different people had drifted in and out of the two jobs I was trying to handle at the end.

This was one of those times when someone saying yes proved not to be a positive thing. I was reaching beyond my capabilities and if Evelyn had been a good manager she would have let me know right off the bat, in a subtle way, of course, that I would never be allowed to join her club when my prior affiliations were so set in place. She could have pointed out my lack of enthusiasm. She could have told me I was good at some things, but probably would not be able to handle the volume of another position. Or she could have just said, "No." I'd probably still be working there today. Grumbling, complaining about the unfairness of it all and producing all those beautiful documents.