Donna at Work

Ha, Donna from Suites it is! Twelve years ago I was hired by one man to work for one man in an insurance agency, simple, simple, customer service, claims, certificate of insurance for any corporate accounts, evidences of insurance for those refinancing, auto id cards as needed, cancelling old policies as new ones were written to replace, payment reminders to the chronics who are not fiscally responsible, renewal applications for many corporate accounts, all invoicing and collections, condo associations needed forms, to it was a full time job then, with a possible lighter work load thanksgiving through december, that worked well due to the december holiday mailing consuming more time prepping data bases, labels, and personalized letters. My bosses brother also had an agency in the same suite as ours which he sold about 2 years after I was hired, that agency was moved out by it new owners and they took my bosses brother with them, and 75% of our accounts which had been marketed through them, they shut our passwords and user names off from our carriers when we refused to move with them. As quickly as possible we set up agency agreements with those same insurance carriers, and proceeded to have all of our customers sign broker of record letters so that at their next renewal date we could have them switched back over to us, this was a harsh and lengthy process, but slowly we won the war. We also needed an attorney so we could be paid our back commissions from his brothers old agency. This caused strain between the brothers and families. It lasted 4 more years until his brother got to work one day at his new location and found himself locked out, dismissed, access to none of his accounts, his user name and passwords shut off, some might say karma, some might say Hmm. The brother slowly kept popping in to visit us, to see if he could place a piece of business through us, then planted himself at a desk several hours a day, edged up to coming in most of the day, and slowly with our help we brokered some of his old business back through our agency and paid him his commissions on it, more and through out a two year process making my workload double to insane, fast paced, I adapted, they promised some type of help over and over, some times a college kid would come in and train for a summer or two. Always going back to school in the fall, winter breaks re-surfacing, and back to school, so sparce part time help. Then they stopped after one girl went onto medical school. My boss sold the agency about 17 months ago, "nothing would change, you still take your orders from me, I am your only boss", Ha! And then there were four of them, one of me:) First lesson, and rule of the road: The famous quote was a scam. Donna, meanwhile was born and reared with an Irish sense of humor, and also by a polish american man who was a humble printer, he worked for a man named Lucky Espasito who her father claimed was a mean son of bitch who could smile through anything in verbal communication even as he told some he was firing them, always smiling. in 1997 I felt the need for Lucky to materilze in my personality makeup, and then he got bigger and bigger in my work days at my last company which was a good size corporation, my version of Lucky actually helps the working girl survive in this world of men who frequently run businesses out of a long overplayed tradition of men ruling the world. Sometimes commands are given to a worker, and Lucky has always emerged with the most insane of the commands, he makes Donna smile the biggest smile, the smile is equal to have you gone completely mad? But a smile it is. Donna works for 4 men who was everything done first, some email their commands, some spew their commands, others plop files with notes onto her desk and one them does it in stacks while she is gone to lunch or in the bathroom, and then the fun begins when all of them need something scanned to them right away, or they want their person called back right away. And then they think she has time to write procedures on exactly how and what she does in detail so that if Donna is ever struck by a stray bullet someone can come in and take her place, and somehow be trained off of the procedures. They appeared to be oblivious of the work load imposed, Donna can only keep smiling on the days where she is not cussing. And now we've got a monthly newsletter to be developed, and mass multiple emailings added in, the first of which had to include a time change reminder that needed ro be sent out by last friday to be on time. Pure Bliss, says Donna. In twelve years my say salary doubled, but let me tell you it should have tripled. -A Day in the life of Donna