This is part 2 in a series about my time working for the Combined Insurance Company. If you want to catch up, please check out Part 1: PMA Day.

I sat near the edge of a round, very dark brown table in an otherwise plain conference room. I was wearing the dressiest clothes I owned: a pair of khaki pants my mom bought me before I moved out, and an ill-fitting button-down with a long, fat tie. I was nervously tapping my feet in my uncomfortable shoes.

John Bishop was the regional sales manager who did my interview. He was an older guy but was obscenely friendly – like, so nice that it made me a little angry. His hair was slicked back, he wore a blue sportcoat and motioned with hands clad with bulky, gaudy rings. If he wasn’t a part-time used car salesman on the side, he was clearly missing his calling. When he walked into the room, he greeted me with a warm smile. He introduced himself by exaggerating the -oh in his name – Jooohhhhhn Bishop! I’d later learn this is just how he said his name.

During the interview, I would reveal my work history and what had brought me to the area. I also confirmed that I thought I could handle insurance training. The bulk of the meeting, however, was taken up by John explaining all the perks of being a salesman for Combined. He revealed the aforementioned residuals perk and the possibility of being gifted a cruise for a bonus.

He also mentioned that it would require considerable time spent away from home. This could have just been an inconvenient truth about the job, but he made it extra strange by letting me know that was one of his favorite parts because he detested his wife so much. I wasn’t sure if he was just trying to get a “bro” laugh out of me or what. Either way, I gave an awkward laugh and asked more about how I would be trained.

Training with Combined

Training required me to spend three weeks in Raleigh where I’d sleep at a shabby hotel and meet a variety of characters that I intend to talk about during this series. The first two weeks of training was basic insurance school, we’d get a brief break to take our state certification exam, then we’d return for a final week of Combined-specific sales school.

It was during this final week where I’d learn all the hard-sales tactics and memorize the scripts for the sales pitches. I’d build my sales book visual aid and do countless role-playing exercises with fellow classmates who were attending from virtually every corner of the state.

I “graduated” from this school the week after Thanksgiving in the days leading up to my birthday. During this time, I visited my folks in Kingsport who, to congratulate me on getting a new job, bought me a new suit from Men’s Wearhouse. I was grateful since I didn’t have a proper suit at the time.

On The Job

When I got back after the holidays, it was time to cut my teeth on some hard-selling insurance business. Folks who recently graduated from training school were given a bit of grace in that we weren’t expected to go out on our own. For the first month on the job, I would be getting $500 per week from the company, would be riding with John and be given the commission on any sale he made in my presence.

He drove an old, red Buick LeSabre, which wasn’t very stylish but at least it was comfortable. GPS devices were beginning to get more and more affordable, but he hated using them. Instead, he had a paper map and a copy of the local phone book for every county in the state of North Carolina stored in his trunk.

And while he was a map-using fiend, he did have a GPS that he was hesitant to use. Even though it was relatively new technology, his device was somehow still old and about the size of a polaroid camera. He would plug in an address and we’d begin driving just before it would give him a command that he didn’t like. Those interactions usually went thusly:

GPS: Turn left.

John: No, it’s right, I know it is, I’ve been here before. [turns right]

GPS: Recalculating. In 300 feet, make a U-turn.

John: This thing is crazy, it’s not back that way. This is the way. I know it.

GPS: Recalculating. In a quarter mile, turn left.

John: There is no left turn in a quarter mile. This thing hates me!

He would then power it off while whispering “Go to sleep.,” before reiterating, “This thing hates me,” and following with, “Hey! The feeling is mutual!”

Inevitably, we’d have to turn around and go the way the GPS originally said, though we never discussed this reality.

As a salesman, John was a classic “could sell a ketchup popsicle to a woman wearing white gloves” kind of guy. I’ve never seen anything like it. He could sell to anyone and he did. I remember standing in a living room that was so filthy that I didn’t want to sit anywhere while talking to a friendly couple. She was unemployed and he was a fry cook at KFC (though he said he was “in the restaurant business”). They had very little and what they did have had fallen into disrepair long ago. One of their vehicles wouldn’t start, they admitted to having trouble keeping up with their bills … Yet John persisted until he sold them each a policy and even the Accidental Death and Dismemberment rider on top.

Dude was a magician. A vile, evil magician.

In addition to his success rate, the man had a knack for staying positive in the face of rejection. If you attempted ten sales, you’d get a hit 0.5 times, even a superstar salesman like John. He would always brush it off, shrug, and mutter, “I’m just trying to help people.”

Or he would employ the training school mantra thanks just the same! Each time he would use this phrase, he would tell me, “You can say thanks just the same, and it might mean ‘thanks just the same,’ or it could mean … ‘screw ya’!” I would have admired this attitude under normal circumstances.

Yet to all but force such a vile product on the least of these, then turn around and justify it by the lie of just trying to help people, seemed despicable. I couldn’t quite reconcile standing in these broken-down homes and pushing them to buy something they didn’t need; I couldn’t justify hearing people who were living paycheck-to-paycheck say no to our offer only to reply with a thinly veiled “screw ya!”

John’s vernacular was rounded out with a term that he coined: Nimothal. If I were a betting person, I would say he was thinking either nimrod or neanderthal and came out with something that was simultaneously both yet neither. 

“You’d have to be a nimothal to do that!”

“There’s all kinds of money in those businesses – only a nimothal couldn’t see that!”

He’d call himself a nimothal, call other agents nimothals, call company brass nimothals. No one was safe from the nonsensical term, and it was usually hilarious.

The last time I rode in the Buick, John’s power steering went out. He put his whole body into turning his steering wheel to get us off the road – fortunately right in front of a garage. As the car turned off the road, I could hear all the phone books and maps scatter about in his trunk. It took every ounce of my being to not burst out laughing. You’d have to be a nimothal to have so many maps and phone books in your trunk in the first place.

I’d learn from another sales agent that John didn’t care about the job. It seemed he did, indeed, hate his wife and was waiting for her to die. He also had made so much money over the years that he was living strictly off his residuals. The other agents I worked with felt like as a result, he had little motivation to teach us anything meaningful about the business.

Of course, this was mostly all in the humble opinion of my new friend and fellow Combined Insurance sales agent, Ross …

To be continued, of course.

-jtf

This is post 5 of 30 in my most recent attempt at tackling NaBloPoMo. Funsies and such.