Once upon a time, I was an insurance salesman. I have no idea how this came to be. Nor do I understand how I came to be fairly successful in this line of work. I suspect that secretaries had a lot to do with it.
I had been "Downsized" out of a job. I had four hungry daughters and a cat to feed. Oh yeah..........and a wife too, and a huge mortgage. I took the first job I was offered and became a seller of insurance.
The first year was kinda fun. I wrote insurance on all my buddies. Then they sent over more buddies of theirs and I wrote insurance on them. I had a small office and we all hung out there to get away from wives during the day.
I had a filing cabinet where I kept files and sandwiches and beer. I had lotsa chairs and two desks. One desk was for formal affairs like sitting across from people who wandered in off the street looking for insurance. It didn't get used very much. The other desk was for playing "Acey duecy" with my buddies. We used that one most of the time. Buddies came and went, but the game went on.
Anyways, like I said............that first year was a good one. We got busted a few times by wives who would sneak up on us. Harold's wife was the worst. She would call and pretend to be looking for insurance. As soon as she heard Harold in the background, she would hang up and make a bee line for my office. I finally had to stop answering the phone. Things got better after that.
Two important events occurred shortly after the end of that first year. The first being that Harold's wife flatly refused to let him come to my office anymore. That pretty much ended the "Acey duecy" game. Harold had been good for ten to twenty bucks every time he played. Boy.....that guy was dumb. Worst card player I ever saw in my life.
The second thing was my District Mgr. coming by and announcing that I now had two hundred and seventeen policy holders. Seventeen more that he figured a guy with no secretary should have. (Hint, hint). I took the hint and started composing an ad that same afternoon. I was still working on it when my friend, Frank Cash walked in.
"How do you spell bosom? Is there an s on the end? Bosoms or just bosom?" Frank said he didn't know. He thought it was one of those words that meant the same either way. He volenteered to help with the ad. An hour later we had it all ready for calling into the local newspaper.
"Secretary wanted. Eighteen to twenty years of age. Must have nice smile, long blonde hair, good legs and big bosoms. Being able to type is a plus. Salary negotiable." We were pretty proud of our combined efforts. I called the paper and asked for somebody to take my ad. Frank got on the extension. Some grumpy old lady came on the line. She asked me to read the ad to her. Never having placed an ad before, I was feeling pretty excited about the whole thing. I read her the ad.
"ARE YOU CRAZY?" Frank and I both held the telephones away from our ears and gaped at one another. "You can't place an ad like that." she shouted. Frank shrugged and I tried again. "Uh...........Why not? You don't take ads for secretaries?" What kind of newspaper WAS this? I saw ads there all the time.
"You can't discriminate like that. Your ad is in violation of the law. It's sexist, age discriminatory and besides, we dont allow words like bosom in our ads." She hung up on me. Feeling humbled by this experience, Frank and I went back to work on a new ad. Now, at least, I knew bosom didn't have an s on the end.
The same day my watered down ad appeared in the paper, the wife of my daughter's gym coach walked into my office to announce that she was there in response to my ad. Having never interviewed anyone before, I just kinda watched while she straightened up the office, put files away and wrinkled up her nose at the beer cans in the file cabinet. She told me what her conditions were, what the mininum salary she would accept was and the hours she was willing to work. I tried to interrupt a couple of times. Every time I did that, she would give me one of those looks my wife gave me when I tried to suggest that the furniture looked good just the way it was. I guess I musta passed because she went to work that same afternoon.
I swear that woman was ugly enough to make a charging elephant stop on a dime and take off going the other way, but she sure could organize an office. I would get to work at nine or so every morning. She would have a stack of appointments sitting on my desk. It took some getting used to. I don't remember ever having had an appointment before she got there. If somebody walked in and told me they had to have car insurance or go to jail, I would open my rate book and tell them how much it would cost to stay out of jail. I always felt embarassed at how much it cost and was relieved when they would go away to look elsewhere.
She worked for me for just over a year. Every day, I did exactly what she told me to do. I made gobs of money and ended my second year with almost six hundred policy holders. I nearly cried the day she quit. Her husband had taken a new job in another city. I composed another ad.
"Secretary needed. Must be able to motivate, clean up after, badger, cajole, make appointments for and put up with eccentricities of a nice man. Me! Being able to type one hundred and twenty five words a minute is a plus." A week went by and not a single response. Then two women showed up on the same day. No two women could have been more different.
Darlene reminded me a little of my last secretary (The coach's wife). She was about forty, average in looks, but smart as a whip. She actually apoligized that she could only type eighty words a minute. She had worked several years prior for another insurance agent. Her kids had just started school and she wanted to get back to full time work. I resisted the urge to hire her on the spot and told her I would get back to her the next day.
Janet was twenty one years old. She looked like a Playboy centerfold. She worked as a cocktail waitress at night. She wanted a daytime job to make herself "Better rounded". Ha! If she was any better rounded, she would stop traffic every time she stepped outside. Typing? She admitted that fifteen words/minute was her best so far. I assured her that was more than enough. She apologized that she didn't have any "Office clothes". Just "Silly, summer things like this". Here she paused to run her hands over the tennis outfit she was wearing. I slid down in my chair and clutched at the arm rests. My mouth was dry but, I was working on getting out the words "You are hired" when my wife walked in.
Wives are a strange breed. They can size up a situation faster than a man can say "Duh.......". Three minutes later, Janet was out the door and looking for some other place to become "Better rounded". My wife sat there while I called Darlene to offer her the job.
Not only was Darlene efficient, she could work the phones like a used car salesman on acid. A wrong number would call asking for Bernie's deli and she would have them in my office begging me to sell them life insurance an hour later. One weekend, I asked her to call numbers at random from the local phone book and told her I would give her five dollars for every policy she enabled me to sell that way. When I got to work on Monday, there was a line of people waiting for me. I finally locked up at eight that night. I wrote twenty some odd policies that day.
I guess I should have seen it coming, but I was so busy drooling over my paychecks that I was caught totally by surprise when Darlene quit. She took a job as an insurance agent for another company. Last I heard, she was making ten times what I was. It was time to look for another secretary.
Denise lasted three weeks. She could type. She was good with the phones. She was also looking for "Mr. Right". She musta found him one weekend 'cause she walked in on a Monday to "Resign her position". She was really sorry to do this to me.......but, love was more important than a job. Yada, yada! This time, I decided to be more scientific in my approach to hiring a secretary. I bought several books on the subject. It took me nearly a week to read them. What with answering phones, typing letters at the rate of six words a minute and asking people to wait while I cleaned mayonaise and ketsup off chairs so they could sit down, I didn't have much time to read.
My wife's antennae must have been asleep when I hired Trish. Trish made Janet look like Ma Barker. My brain still turns to mush when I think of that woman. I KNEW she was gonna be trouble even before I hired her, but I was getting desperate with stuff that was piling up on the desks. Trish was actually a good secretary. She did everything I asked of her and more. It wasn't her fault I sat there all day with my chin in my hands.
It wasn't that Trish was flirty. She wasn't. She was just so perfect. A sweet disposition. A great sense of humor. Extremely intelligent. Confident, yet demure. Eyelashes that musta been ten inches long. Soft spoken and always smiling. I swear.....I felt like tip toeing around the office when she was there. Mostly, I just wore this sappy grin and sighed a lot. Concentrating on insurance with her in the office would have been like trying to hustle up a crap game with Mother Theresa sitting in the same room.
It wasn't just me. Men would come into the office to report their car stolen. Shortly thereafter, they would be trying to remember why they were there. Women would walk in with hackles rising like a junk yard dog watching some guy crawling over the fence. Within minutes, they would be asking her advice about quilts or making homemade strawberry jam or some such. Even my wife liked her. Three months went by and I don't remember selling any insurance at all.
Don't you ladies out there try to tell me you can't identify with my problem! Just imagine, if you can.......... a man with every quality you ever wanted in a male. Patience, intelligence, able to remember important events like the day/hour//minute when you first held hands, courteous, thoughtful, always remembering to lift up the toilet seat, quick to notice and compliment a new hairdo or a new recipe you just knew was gonna make him frown, empathetic and caring............You get the picture? Now, put him in the body of whatever movie star who happens to ring your bell. Just maybe, you are getting an inkling of my plight with Trish as a secretary.
It finally got to the point where she could say "Six people called today to cancel their car insurance and the restroom toilet overflowed and your daughter was expelled from school for writing obscenities on the principal's car with lipstick...............and all I could do was grin my sappy grin and think of how lovely her frown was.
As all things must, her time with me ended. She met and married a jerk. Some four months after she first transformed my squalid little office into a chathedral, she walked down the aisle with someone whose identity many of you might know. For that reason, I will end the story of "The perfect woman" without further ado.
Julia was my next secretary. Her typing was terrible. She didn't know organized from Monday Night Football. She often came to work hung over. Respectful and demure weren't even in her vocabulary. She was just what my office needed. She flirted with my clients. She told jokes that would make a Maffia hit man blush. She turned my cathedral back into an insurance office. A year after she started work there, I made her my office manager and had another full time secretary and a high school girl who came in four hours a day to answer phones and do filing. I was making gobs of money again.
I had other secretaries over the years. Each was, in her own way, memorable. Each contributed to whatever success I had as a seller of insurance.
Secretaries....................God bless them!
Be advised........This is a rare instance of my telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in one of my stories.
