Ah life – life is so funny sometimes (most of the time truth
be told).
So I was posting a comment on a favorite blog and decided to
add my blog site address to the comments and as a result decided to visit my
blog and read the last entry. I really have not been writing much as my last
post was almost 2 years ago! That last post
was chronicling thoughts I had on yet another bike ride. I realized how much has changed in the past 2
years!
In my last post I was talking about my job and the lamenting
of the loss of my old job at Sprint and how life had thrown me some detours. I
had reflected that detours don’t have to be negative. In fact I would say those
detours held great value for me!
About 1 year ago I was in the midst of somewhat of a
breakdown. I literally walked away from
my Claims Adjuster position at Progressive.
I didn’t know what was going to happen to me, but I knew that the stress
of that job was killing me. I even
remember commenting to management that I felt like I was going to die at my
desk, and I felt like someone was holding my head underwater and just letting
me up for quick gasps of breathe before shoving me back underwater.
Claims Adjusting is a very difficult job – tons of stress dealing
with extremely unhappy people and having to deliver lots of bad news. I
remember the last 1 on 1 with my boss (who was amazing and I’d still say was
one of the best managers I’ve had the privilege to work for). I remember him
coming into the office and saying, “man – you really hate this job”. Honestly
up to that point I didn’t think I hated the job. I knew there were aspects I
didn’t like, but I didn’t think I actually hated the job. It really got me
thinking that I must have really been showing outwardly something I had not yet
realized – I hated the job. I think some time – maybe a few weeks or a month
followed and that phrase, “man – you really hate this job” just kept bothering
me.
On the last full day I worked day (a Friday) I remember
getting off a particularly rough phone call with an irate customer. I looked across to a co-worker and said
something like, “I don’t think I’m coming back here”. I remember calling my wife on the way home and
we talked about me not going back. Coincidentally I had started using a dash
camera due to all the accidents I had worked so my side of the phone call has
been preserved forever.
Well basically my wife was quite adamant that I was not
going to go back. We tried to buy me some time with short term disability for
mental job related stress. That was not to happen.
Out of the blue another detour was presented to me – a contracting
firm was looking for people to work as Claims Processors at Allstate. Had my
life been going perfectly at Progressive I would have never considered leaving
a full-time job for a contract job. As it was the contract job seemed heaven
sent and so I applied. My insurance experience was a dead lock for the contract
– I was hired on the spot. I gave formal notice to Progressive and started
working for Allstate. The job was pretty easy and not stressful at all. It was
like a paid vacation in a lot of ways. I
was working on the Sprint Campus so my commute got much easier and I met a lot
of great people.
It was scary at times because I did not have a contract end
date and there was no guarantee for a while that I’d be able to stay on
permanently, but my wife had a permanent job and she kept encouraging me to not
worry.
One of the many benefits I found was I could listen to music
on the job and I ended up bringing a record player, tape deck, cd player and
8-track player to work and would bring in a wide array of media to listen to
every day. This was very cathartic and led to other “coincidences” that changed
my life for the better.
At some point Allstate was hiring so I applied for the job I
was doing currently to stay on permanently. In the meantime out of the blue, a
Sprint recruiter called me having seen my latest profile update on LinkedIn and
next thing I knew I was interviewing for a Sprint position as well.
Well I ended up getting job offers from both Allstate and
Sprint. I opted to go back to Sprint as they offered more pay but more importantly
I am learning new marketable skills. But I knew this time I was not going back
to the Sprint I’d spent 20+ years at. I have mostly come to terms with losing
the job I loved so much at Sprint. Instead I saw the opportunity to learn new
skills as a huge bonus and chose to move forward with Sprint in a brand new way
and I’m loving it!
I think what I’m trying to say is detours are not bad if you
look at them and use them to grow. I thought I was doomed to stay in a job that
was killing me. My wife gave me the push
and approval to leave and having her blessing made all the difference. I might
have never seen the contractor opportunity at Allstate had I stayed deep in the
weeds at Progressive. And while at Allstate I used the time to heal and
recover. I also built relationships and worked to better myself both in person
and online. Again – at Progressive there was no time for me to work on
improving my self-esteem and therefore display that improvement to the world on
LinkedIn. I was just so exhausted every single day that when I got home I was a
wreck and had no energy for anything other than work.
When you see a potential detour in front of you, don’t be
afraid to take it should it feel right.
And if you are ever in a car accident – treat your claims
adjuster well – they are probably having a bad day too. In fact they are
probably having 5-6 bad days to your one as they tend to work that many claims
a day!
