This is part 4 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, Part 2: Johnny B and Part 3: Ross.

Once a month, in addition to the daily morning meetings, we would gather at the office in Hickory for an evening team meeting. I wasn’t with the company long, so I didn’t have to sit through many — but the last one I attended was my favorite.

At the first of the week, we’d be given a stack of policies to renew in the county where we’d be working. These sheets of paper included client names, addresses, phone numbers, etc., but they also included directions to their house with helpful landmarks for the John Bishops of the world who weren’t using GPS.

The directions were usually written in some kind of shorthand that looked like a ransom note – half words and missing punctuation. One week, I got a client whose account was managed by his brother Jack, who lived just off Highway 195. The previous agent’s directions read: 

Care of Jack Off 195.

If you read my previous post about my friend Ross, you would know that I had no choice but to share this bit of information with him at our monthly meeting. I slid the paper over to him and pointed to it and we both laughed like Beavis and Butt-Head.

The problem was, we had a new guy who had joined our team. He was a short, stout, middle-aged man whose body type and complexion could easily lead one to describe him as an angry soup can. When I’d met him earlier, he was doing the polite thing all new guys do – laughing at everything John said. 

Whatever – I did it, too.

Unfortunately for him, he and John came into the room as Ross and I were cackling. John demanded to know what was so funny and we didn’t respond, prompting him to snatch the sheet of paper from Ross.

John then read the directions out loud, obviously trying very hard to not get it:

“What’s the big deal? Care of Jack… Off 194? What? I don’t see why that’s so funny?”

Hearing John say it out loud made it almost impossible not to explode again.

Ross’s entire face was completely red at this point, so he quietly confessed to John that he and I were both just simple minded.

Shortly after the meeting ended and the new guy left, John cornered Ross and I and encouraged us to be more careful because, “the new guy today? He’s a preacher.”

Ross and I shuffled out in quiet humiliation. As we walked down the stairs together, I stated that I found it hard to believe anyone wouldn’t think that was funny – even if he was a preacher. Even they have a sense of humor, right?

I quit the next week, so I never found out. Maybe it was for the best – I had already learned that this business wasn’t cut out for comedy geniuses such as Ross and myself.

More to come, friends.

-jtf

This is post 8 of 30 in my most recent attempt at tackling NaBloPoMo. Funsies and such.