I am not quite sure why I felt the compulsion to write about this, well in a way I do. I wrote this because I was worried about getting employment after we moved to the Minneapolis. Maybe I will reflect back on this later, but for now I just wanted to write a little about my first full time position.
I had been working as a temp for some temp agency. One of the placements I wound up on was for a company called National Electronic Warranty that I will refer to as NEW. The company was responsible for administering for extended warranties. When you bought an extended warranty and something went wrong, these were the people that you called. Then the computer, watch, electric appliance, etc would be handled by NEW.
When I was temping I bounced around at the company helping with shipping at first, which basically meant pulling items from the shelves and making sure it was marked in the inventory, then I helped in receiving and then with the claims processing area. I did a pretty good job and when the summer rolled to an end it turned out there were going to need a new person who was primarily responsible for the watch contracts. I had done a good job and it would mean a pay raise and a steady income, plus the opportunity to get overtime. It wasn't great, but it was better than just temping.
You see the guy who was currently doing the job, Erwin, had finally found a job. He had been a supervisor at a plant and had some sort of engineering degree. But at this point in time the economy was pretty bad and a lot of people were either unemployed or underemployed. Richard (the boss) loved to find bargains in this market. Erwin was very board with the simple tasks and looked for ways to help out Richard, make things more efficient, looks for ways to cut costs, you name it. It was a really good deal for Richard, and well it helped Erwin pay the bills.
Erwin had a buddy, can't remember his name. They hung out and took smoke breaks together. They were a pair of underemployed individuals. I was only sort of accepted into this group. You see I hadn't had the real job before desperately seeking this position that I was going to be taking. They had. For them this position was a step down, for me it was only something that I felt was below me. The only name that I can remember him by was Norm. He used this name for his official correspondences at work. Norm E White was the name, so his initials would be the same as the company. That way even if he was replaced they knew where to send the mail addressed to Norm. To give you an idea of a typical day, here is the way their conversations would go, I over heard this on one of their many smoke-breaks:
"Hey, they brought in some monkeys to see if they could do my job."
Erwin "So, could they do it?"
"Yep, turns out the monkeys have the technical capabilities, hell it took then about 3 minutes to learn how to do the job."
"So you worried about your job?"
"Nope, the monkeys were doing fine for a while, not a single error in their work. Then after a while they started getting fidgety. They wouldn't do it any more. They would rather take a beating from the trainer than have to endure the boredom of the job. Good thing they didn't teach them about smoke breaks."
His job was more exciting than the one I was going into. It was dreadfully boring. The routine was simple. Remove shipping label from box. Open the box find watch, contract, receipt and form. Place watch in salvage box. Staple the form, receipt, contract and label together in that order. On form write down amount of watch and tax, plus the salvage box. Then enter the data into the computer. That was about six years ago and I remember the basic routine. There was the added stuff that Erwin was doing but aside from that it took a matter of seconds to train someone to do the job. So Erwin left, and there I was. The new under employed person. You see the reason I was being stuck on watches was simple. The load of watches that came in was lower than the other job's workflow. This meant that I would have more free time to do the special stuff. Run queries, chart data, admin the watch repair program, etc. all the special stuff that Erwin had cooked up.
So I did, and I did the job proficiently. Richard also called on me to take care of things that were beyond the average person's talents. I was one of the only people that figured out this tool (AS Query 400) that was used to pull data. Erwin had put together reports using it and I was the one who understood how they operated.
Since I understood this query tool Richard would often ask if there was various data that could be pulled from the system. I usually had one of two responses. It was always that either the data did not exist in the system and therefor could not be queried, or sure I can do that. There was one such time I vividly remember. Richard had asked me to see if I could go in and figure out how many people had started a claim on a contract and then not followed through, the claim cost savings as he called it. This was easy enough. When the customer service rep took the call and initiated the claim then the status of the contract was set to a certain code. That code was changed when the item arrived. So all I had to do was grab the data for the ones not changed, oh that and make sure the data for the items not received had reasonable prices.
So I did the query, gathered the data, and went to talk to Richard.
"Hey Richard, I was surprised by the results. It seems that nearly 25% of the claims that are initiated are not followed through on."
"Wow a 25% cost savings."
When he said that I chuckled. I chuckled in a very condescending way. I chuckled as if to say, "Oh you stupid fellow allow me to enlighten you". This was typical of Richard and I. We would get into these kind of discussions, him wanting to show the wisdom he had gained over the years, to educate this college boy. Well, this time I had set him up, it is like the moment in a sporting event when the opponent realizes he is about to get burned and there is nothing he can do about it. The cornerback who got faked, or tennis player who is sitting way to the wrong side of the court.
"No, it is not a 25% claim savings. After adjusting the claims to make sure they have reasonable values I found that for a cost saving it was approximately 23%." I then smiled as if to say, allow me to enlighten you and continued, "You see the higher the claim amount the greater the chance of someone following through on a claim, it makes sense if you think about it. I know you asked for the percentage of claims not followed though on, but I thought that I would also throw in the actual claim savings since that is what you wanted to report"
Richard took the report. I had thrown in the explanation and the "if you think about it comment" because I knew that would hit him exactly where he thought he was superior. Richards years of experience did not give him the insights into the way things worked the way they did to me after a few years at college. I wanted to make things clear that I understood things in a way that he only hoped to.
Something else I remember. Richard wanted me to set my mind to figuring out how to make things run more efficiently. He asked for everyone's input, but I felt it was a challenge he aimed in particular at me. Let's see if you can make things more efficient. Well, truth of the matter was that things were running fairly efficiently at that point. There were things that would be done faster, like having scanners to read data that was printed on the labels we shipped, being able to enter all data on a single screen, that sort of thing. The one thing that I thought of was to have the computer automatically calculate the tax on the item. This would be easy enough, each contract was tied to a store so it would be easy enough to get the sales tax that each store is charging and calculate the tax based on that. This would mean that while we wrote down info we would not need the calculators, and we could eliminate this step. Then Richard came by to talk to me:
"Hey John, do you think you could put together a list of states and all their tax rates."
"No, you can't do that. Local areas also tack on sales tax. For example depending on which of our California stores you visit you can pay anywhere from 7.25% to 8.5% sales tax"
"Oh, well just write down the ones you can."
"Is this going to be used to automatically calculate the sales tax on items like I suggested?"
"Yes."
"Where is the machine gonna pull the state info from?"
"The customer address"
"You can't do that. What if I was a Virginia resident and I bought a watch in DC on my lunch break? The Virginia sales tax is only 4.5% and I think DC's is about 9.25%, you have to base the calculation on the store and the sales tax charged by the store."
"Yea, the guys in the computer room said this would be easier"
"The point of the program is to make things easier on us. If they can't do the calculation based on the store then they can't get the correct sales tax. If they can't do that then that defeats the purpose of doing the calculation. Either you rely on the calculation as is, and it will often be wrong, or you do the calculation by hand to verify the amount and you don't save any time."
"They think it will be correct often enough that it is OK."
"So you don't mind if we just accept the amounts calculated when this thing is running?"
"No, I want you to verify them."
So the time saver turned into a time waster. Basically the only thing accomplished was making some programmer have to go through the hassle of generating a number that would be ignored. The timesaving would be non-existent. Every single item that came down the pipe would have to be verified which meant calculating the sales tax, oh well.
I didn't really care because as I remember I was getting ready to leave myself. I had just had a few interviews and I was sure I was going to get at least one offer. Richard did not share my opinion, I was talking big to the co-workers and telling them they had better learn some of the things I was responsible for cause I would not be around to do them much longer. When they asked Richard about setting aside time he said "Don't worry I don't think he will get the job." I got 2 offers, and took one of them.
Richard was undaunted and he found his latest underemployment victim. However, I think this time he was making a big mistake. The person who was taking my place was a surveyor. One of the guys who stand there taking measurements on the side of the row and stick little flags in the ground. It is pretty good paying work, and he could have had a job if he wanted one. So why was he there? He waned to try and lower his Alimony and child support payments. He was on the phone with his Lawyer, he talked about it in hushed tones, everyone knew. In fact the impression that I got from him talking to his lawyer was that the judge knew too. "What do you mean it isn't changing? I can't afford that... What, but I don't make that anymore... How can he do that?" We didn't even have cubicles we all just sat at desks in a big warehouse it was real easy to hear anything you wanted to and heck sometimes he would just sit there and talk while I was training him. He didn't care if I knew and I felt he cared less about the job. Honestly I didn't care that he didn't care. I felt that this was Richard's just reward for preying on the under employed.
I remember being really mad, thinking about ways that I could get revenge. I would win the lottery and buy all the stock and expose him as an idiot and have him fired. I would drop ex-lax in his coffee when no one was looking. I would do something. My best plot was to steal money from the company. It would have been real easy. One of two things was required for a claim: either the original contract or the original receipt. Most people sent both. So I just had to swipe a few receipts and staple a photocopy to the original contract. Then just give a buddy the original receipt and have them initiate a claim. Then when the package arrived I would simply treat it as if there were in fact a watch inside. My friend gets the check and that would be it. The plan isn't fool proof, what it someone else was helping and they opened the empty box? Damaged in the mail was my response to that. Or buy a $5 watch and send a $200 receipt. Anyway, I never followed through on any of my vengeance plans, except for one. I left, and that was vengeance enough for me. Knowing that the latest underemployment wasn't going to work out.
One of my happiest moments at that job was, of course, quitting. I don't remember exactly how I did it. I think that I just walked in first thing in the morning and delivered a formal resignation letter. It was clear I had gotten the job, and he should have listened when I said I needed to train someone. The one thing I do remember was that at one point he did sit me down for an exit interview, but part of it was to pitch the company. One thing he threw in was the maximum hourly wage that someone doing my job could earn. I laughed and shook my head. That same laugh I used frequently that just said that as much as he professed to know he just didn't understand. I looked at him and said, "My starting salary is more than that." At that moment any hope of pulling some stunt faded away. Part of me could tell by the look, the surprise in his eyes, that if I was starting at that amount, my salary may soon exceed his and most likely it has.
John Cooley 2000
