Communication

I have no respect for a company that makes promises and offers potential, but has no clue how to communicate with its employees. Not to mention having a communication system that is so flawed that it hampers the ability for its employees to make a living. Let's break this down.

In this joke of an insurance job, I get a pack of leads to call and set up appointments. These are from people who have filled out a little yellow union card, indicating that they want someone to call them and speak to them about receiving their benefits. There are about 40 pages in each pack, 3 leads on each page. So it's about 115 leads total, when you factor in duplicates and what not.

Here's the issue. A lot of people call someone, do the appointments, and never turn the pack back in. So when I request a certain zip code, I'm getting some of the same leads that some other agent just worked over. When I call someone, and they actually pick up, I frequently hear that someone was out to see them just last month. I wish I had five bucks for each time I heard that. I would have made enough money to pay for my laptop computer that I had to buy to do this joke of a job.

Then, there is the factor of internal communication. Twice, I have gone to do appointments and a manager promised they'd be there...and then they weren't. That left me on my own. If that's not enough, I had a Thursday afternoon presentation at 12 pm. I had a different manager who promised to meet me there. So it's 11:58 AM. I'm waiting in front of the house in Bartlett, waiting for Oscar to show up so we could go in together. Two minutes before the appointment is set to begin, my phone buzzes. It's Oscar. He tells me that his daughter just got sick at school and he had to head home. He said he was one minute away from the house when he got the call. I hate to call out the integrity of someone I don't know. But the timing was just too perfect. Two minutes before, and he gets the phone call?! After some serious reflection, I think it was a setup. I understand the need for me to grow and the need to get comfortable doing insurance presentations on my own. But I don't appreciate the swerves.

Then, it's today. We just had a pretty big snowstorm that lasted about 36 hours. We always have a weekly meeting on Monday at 11 as a large group and then we have an agency meeting at 3 and then call night begins around 4 or 4:30. I drove 40 minutes to Lombard over a ton of ice. The lot was maybe 20 percent full. That raised my suspicion as the whole agency is there on Monday morning. By 10:50, parking is usually at a premium. So checked GroupMe, which is the app we use to communicate with each other and motivate one another and all that crap. I checked it and it said I had been removed from the group 28 days ago. I know that's not true, because I was on it two days prior. So, there's no meeting and I received no communication about it. If they decided not to renew my contract, which I'm guessing is the case, they could have had the balls to tell me. They didn't have the decency to give me the courtesy of an e-mail, which would have been low class to begin with. And I was pretty much ready to quit anyway. I'm better than they are and it's no wonder their turnover rate is higher than the Oakland Raiders head coaching position.

The bottom line is this. I didn't make a dime for AIL. But their crap communication system hampered my ability to make me money and help their business. So on that note, I would like to extend a farewell to this company. Thanks for costing me $700 and for letting me work for you for the last six weeks without a single cent going into my pocket. You are pathetic.