This is part 7 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, Part 3: Ross, Part 4: The Preacher, Part 5: Misfits Guy and Part 6: ICP Guy.

In the sports world, a jamboree is when every team in the league comes together for events designed more for fun than competition. It’s almost like a field day where there are skill-specific games, scrimmages, and exercises designed to cater to camaraderie and team-building as a league. No matter what happens, everybody wins at the end of the day.

Combined Insurance does similar events where agents from all over a particular state would gather in a hotel in some unsuspecting county to wreak havoc on the insuranceless. Those daily morning meetings are much larger, the evening meetings are held every day, and everything is led by the state’s manager. The idea was to make the meetings as much like a pep rally as possible, then send fifty or more agents into the field, hungry for blood instead of three or four sleepy ones with bellies full of Bojangles, like usual.

Our state’s manager was a fierce, stout woman with short hair and an attitude that was equal parts fun-loving and pure Satan. Jo Bennett from The Office comes to mind, only this woman’s mean streak was far less disguised. To her, selling multiple policies during every interaction was expected. I once saw her give the day’s highest seller the dreaded One Clap because she thought he’d half-assed that day despite outselling everyone else.

Regardless, these events were usually fun since you could see how other agents from other parts of the state do the exact same job as you. In fact, you were often encouraged to buddy up with agents from other regions so you could learn from each other.

That’s how I got paired up with Diabetes Guy – yet another person whose name I don’t remember, though I’m not sure I ever actually knew it.

Many of us had met at a buffet for lunch one afternoon. I’d been riding with John in the Buick that morning, but he and Diabetes Guy swapped shadows. Diabetes Guy kinda reminded me of Vincent Margera, Bam’s “Uncle Don Vito,” both in looks and stature.

I watched him polish off at least three, maybe four, plates full of food at the buffet before jamming an insulin needle into his belly right there at the table.

I walked out to his car, which I think was the exact same model of Buick LeSabre as John’s, and immediately began trying to figure out how to sit in his passenger seat without being rude. The floorboard was packed with empty soda bottles, candy wrappers, fast food bags – you name it and it was wadded up and thrown over there. He didn’t offer any help, but encouraged me to figure out a way to make it work.

I don’t remember going on a single sales call with him, let alone making any sales.

What I do remember, though, is him driving erratically. He would drive way too fast down windy country roads, pass people on two-lane streets, blow his horn for seemingly no reason at all and frequently throw trash out the window.

I also remember sitting in the car when we stopped for gas. He’d gone in to prepay and bought a 20-oz bottle of Pepsi. While filling the car, he guzzled every last drop of the soda and tossed the bottle into the nearby trashcan. He then pulled the nozzle out of the gas tank while still pulling the lever, sloshing gasoline across the side of his car and onto the ground before using the nozzle’s end to shut off the pump.

Before strapping on his seatbelt, I watched him reach into his backseat, open an Igloo cooler and pulling out one of what seemed like 100 insulin needles that he carried around with him all day.

He jabbed himself in the gut again, never bothering to fix his messy shirt or tie, and dropped the used needle into the door.

I didn’t want to go back to the hotel with the other agents — I really just wanted to go home — but I was anxious to be anywhere other than in the car with this guy.

Papers, bottles and other various bits of trash slid across the backseat as we drove off, westbound into the setting sun.

More tomorrow.

-jtf

This is post 12 of 30 in my most recent attempt at tackling NaBloPoMo. Funsies and such.