Houston/NYC

Oct 5 -9: Houston, TX
Oct 10-12: NYC

E-Mail Control

I decided to try some new things at work to improve my productivity.  One of those was to check my e-mail less often so I can focus more on my work instead of getting interrupted every 2 minutes.  I called my tech guy to see how I could keep my Lotus Notes from checking for new e-mail every 2 minutes.  His response...uhh...why would you want to do that?  If you change the settings, I suggest you have it check for new messages at a max of every 15 minutes.

Sorry dude, but that kind of defeats the purpose.  I played around with the settings and it looks like my work has blocked me access from changing it.  My e-mail still refreshes every 2 mins.

Chicago

For those who don't know, I live in Chicago now.

*SYSTEM ERROR* *SYSTEM ERROR*

The most frustrating things about work these days are our aging systems and our bureaucracy (I guess you could say that our bureaucracy is an aging system as well). I understand that I work in a more traditional industry that doesn't necessarily have a need or desire to be at the forefront of technological advances, but the day-to-day system failures I have to deal with are getting ridiculous. First off, Lotus Notes...is there a more annoying program? Ignoring the fact that I hate the program itself, whenever I load it, I always get an error which then causes Lotus Notes to shutdown and create an error report to "help my technical team assess the problem." Although it is only an inconvenience and not a critical failure, it causes my workday to start on a sour note. My tech people do not consider fixing this a priority.

The other main system that I use on a daily basis is a proprietary system that would have been considered cutting edge 10 years ago. Besides the fact that every move you make within the program tree (think moving from folder to sub-folder) just superimposes the new window on top of the old, creating a cluttered screen, it also likes to freeze up and kick me out of the system whenever it feels like. On a good day, I'll get booted out of the system a minimum of 5 times. Tech support says this will be fixed in the next version. We've been waiting for the next version since I started working here so I'm not holding my breath.

We are also upgrading our systems to get in synch with our parent company's systems. For simplicity, let's say that we are on System A and they are on System B. Our parent company is in the process of converting to System C. It would seem logical for us to also convert to System C, but what fun would that be? Instead, we are going to convert to System B and then 6 months after that, we'll try to convert to System C. My estimation is that by the time we get to System C, the parent will be on System E.

I don't really need to say much about the bureaucracy since everyone faces the same challenges at a large company; it comes with the territory. It slows down my work flow, creates useless extra work for me and in the end, pisses off my clients. I've just tried to deal with it. I've actually been lucky and been able to work through the bureaucracy to get some difficult deals done which has made me look good, but that may change soon. My biggest client has made a request that I think is a no-brainer. We do it and I'm guaranteed to keep the business for another year. My initial read, though, is that the higher ups won't buy into it and will make it very difficult for me to keep this client. Sometimes I forget if we are trying to actually make any money...

Work: Update

Right after Thanksgiving, I was asked to go up to our Farmington office for a week to help them out since they were swamped with work for the year-end and we were pretty quiet in the NYC office. My week up there was really envigorating. I was extremely productive, something I hadn't felt in a long time. Some of it was probably due to having just come off of Thanksgiving vacation refreshed, but I think the change in scenery and work mentality contributed greatly to that.

After that initial week, I returned to NYC and still continued to do some work remotely for the Farmington office. Overall, it was a great experience and I seemed to impress my boss in Farmington as she gave me a very complimentary review.

On Monday, I found out that Greg, one of colleagues, had been presented with an interesting opportunity. Like me, he had also spent a week up in Farmington helping them out. I guess they continued to be overworked in Farmington; adding to that, they lost an underwriter at Christmas time so were severely understaffed. Greg was asked to start working for our Farmington office on a full-time basis. He would still be based in NYC (I don't think he would have accepted the offer if they asked him to move), but would now report to the Regional Vice President in Farmington.

My initial reaction was, why was Greg offered the position and not me? I was not even given the opportunity to contemplate the offer. It seemed like an interesting option: a chance to work in a new office, an office with a bigger book of business and territory, and the opportunity to do some traveling. If I had been offered it, I would have given it some serious thought, but I was not offered the opportunity.

Another thing that bothered me is that Greg and I have the exact same position in the company and in our office. We both started on the same day, were in the same training class, and for the majority of career, have been lumped together. I hate that I do this, but I always look at him from a competitors perspective. So when he got offered the new position, I quickly tried to determine if this was a promotion and had I just fallen behind in our "little race."

I'm a humble person, but if you asked me to be completely honest, I think I'm the better underwriter. We both come very different backgrounds and have different sets of values of work ethics, but I think I've put in the work in the last year to really develop myself from a career perspective so all of this was a little troubling, especially since we are about to have a yearly reviews where bonuses will be determined; I'm also getting ready to ask my boss for a sizable raise.

I'm not sure if my boss, John, sensed my uneasiness, but yesterday, he asked me into his office to talk. He said that he wanted to explain why Greg was offered the position and not me and just wanted to lay everything out on the table. Now he could just be gassing me, but he said that he was given the choice on who he should recommend to help out the Farmington office and when he thought about it, he saw me as being a more essential person in the future for the New York office and really didn't want to give me up. Wow...that really made me feel good. Again, he could just be BSing me (and if so, nice move John), but either way, it helped minimize some of my anxiety.

I'm now in an interesting position. We are now down to two underwriters in our NY office. I'm pretty sure, assuming that everything works out in his application process, that our senior underwriter, James, will be going to business school in the fall. He's already taken is GMATs and I think he's been interviewing at schools. That would leave just me as the sole underwriter. Also, John has expressed how much he wants me in the NYC office. So what's my next move? My review will happen in the next few weeks and I should be getting my bonus (hopefully) soon. I'm also pretty set on the pay raise that I want. If they say no, do I walk? I actually may have a pending job offer at another company in NYC. The next few weeks should be interesting.

Budgetary Constraints

I consider myself financially responsible. I actually have a budget and try to stick to it. I have various investments, that as of late have been doing well, and I contribute to my 401(k) and maximize my company's match. I rarely ever have any kind of debt and pay off my credit card every month. However, the last few months seem to have been a different story.

Last night, I looked back on my spending for the last 6 months and came to a startling conclusion. I am spending way over my budget...almost $500 over budget! How did this happen? To figure that out, I had to do a line by line comparison of my spending.

I'm a pretty religious user of Quicken, so tracking my spending by categories and comparing to to my budget isn't too hard. I think some of that simplicity has actually made me a little complacent in terms of being more watchful of my spending. Also, up until the last few months, I had been spending below my budget and had been building a comfortable buffer. Adding to that, I've had some expenses over the last 6 months that aren't normal expenses for me (i.e. traveling for interviews, a major computer repair, tuition and books for NYU) which made me expenses look skewed.

My breakdown of my spending revealed some very interesting things. To preface, I break out my expenses into two main categories: mandatory and discretionary. Mandatory expenses include rent, utilities, my monthly subway pass, groceries, gym membership, and household items; everything else falls in the discretionary bucket. Also, to get a better idea of my spending, I excluded a bunch of atypical expenses, like the ones I mentioned above, as well as monies spent on concerts. The latter may seem strange since I go to a lot of concerts and thus should really be including them in my analysis, but for the most part, I subsidize my concert expenses with other revenues so that, if all goes well, the expenses zero out at the end of the day.

Looking at my expenses, I was happy to see that my mandatory expenses were in line with my budget. However, this shouldn't come as too much of a shock to me as most of those do not vary much month to month. The only thing that varies really is my groceries, but for the most part, those were in line with the budget. My discretionary expenses are where I'm getting killed.

My discretionary expenses are comprised mostly of expenses for: dining out, bar/alcohol money, entertainment (movies, books, music, etc.), clothing, and Netflix. The first four are the real killers. For clothing, I've been pretty good lately on not spending too much. I really don't need more clothes, but sadly a lot my clothes are too big for me now which has required me to update the closet. The bigger problems is shoes. I got a bunch of pairs of really crazy shoes in the last 6 months and that's what has made the biggest dent in my budget.

For bar/alcohol money, I was kind of surprised. I'm actually not spending too much on that anymore and am almost in line with my budget. The thing that surprised me the most, actually, was my dining out expenses; I've just been going crazy there spending, on average, almost 300% more than I had budgeted. One of the reasons for the high number is that I haven't been as diligent lately in terms of bringing my lunch to work with me. The other thing is that I've really been trying to take advantage of the great restaurants in the city, but obviously this is getting out of hand.

The other item in my discretionary expenses that surprised me is something I had never considered in my budget and that is gifts. Being in the city, I have the opportunity to be around so many of my friends which usually leads to me giving the gifts, like taking them out to dinner or drinks, either for their birthday or to celebrate something else. I have no problem with giving gifts and like being able to provide whenever possible, but I now realize that it's something that I need to budget for and also reign in a little.

So where does this all leave me? I don't know. I have to revisit my budget in the next week to tweak it and see where I can really save some money. I think I also need to look for more income sources as my current employment really isn't meeting my current needs.

Down Another Man

Yesterday, one of our marketers resigned. It was a little unexpected and was probably the weirdest resignation I've ever seen.

Up until yesterday, this marketer had been on medical leave for about two weeks. I had been working on an account of his in his absence so I was happy to see him back so I could bring him up to speed and we could move forward on the account. However, when I met with him yesterday morning, he was very aloof and seemed strangely uninterested. I asked him to join me in my referral meeting with our boss (it's standard practice for the marketer to be present at a referral meeting), but he declined. Then, he didn't show up for our weekly staff meeting. Something was weird definitely going on.

Then the marketer stopped by my desk to talk some more about the account and my referral meeting. I filled him in and then he said, "Well, good luck with that account." What?! I was taken aback. He was treating it like it was no longer his account. To be frank, I was only working on the account because it got assigned to me, but I sure as hell wasn't going to take over the account...it really wasn't that good of account. Then he told me, "Not sure if you heard, but I resigned this morning."

Wow...how was I supposed to respond? Congratulations? Thanks for dumping this and all your other crap accounts on me? What made it even weirder was that he went over to the underwriter sitting next me, informed him of his resignation, and then left the office...for good. He didn't even tell the rest of the people in the office...he just upped and left. One of our assistants was in shock and somewhat angry that he didn't even say goodbye. Our boss didn't even formally tell us about the resignation so there was this weird air around the office. It was really a strange event.

Because of the "mystery" behind it all, we all started to construct our own theories. Maybe he was fired and he just told us that he resigned. Maybe he just got so fed up with failure (he'd been here a year and hadn't written one piece of new business for us). My theory, as bad as it may be, was that he took the job just to take advantage of the health benefits. I'm not proud of the theory, but it totally makes sense. Either way, I'm not really sad to see him leave. He was a strange guy and never made the effort to get to know the people in the office or become a part of the "team."

However, as strange as his resignation was, I shouldn't be surprised at this point with people leaving the company.

The Office Olympics

I think we've hit the wall at work today. The boss is out of town for the next week and there is basically a skeleton staff here today. I was watching "The Office" last night and saw the episode with the Office Olympics. In that tradition, I started racing around the office in my chair which suddenly turned into our assistants actually doing a head-to-head race in chairs down the hallway...just as someone walks into the our office!

My Liver Needs A Vacation

I'm hungover right now, in a bad way. I'm hungover from drinking two days ago. I felt pretty shitty yesterday, but I made it through work and overall, I had experienced worse hangovers in college. But this morning, I woke up and my stomach was still in knots. My head is still throbbing, all from a "work dinner" on Wednesday.

As part of our marketing efforts, my office takes out teams from various insurance brokers that we work with. I've attended a couple of these events in the past, and for the most part, they are pretty tame. Obviously the level of drinking depends on the group. However, about a year ago, there was an infamous "work dinner" (I did not attend). The result was numerous rounds of tequila shots, the senior guys in my office getting yelled at by their wives, and lots of hungover people the next day. Since then, I think some of the people in my office have been trying to recreate the event. As a result, Wednesday night's dinner was at a tequila bar/restaurant.

Things started out at a slow pace. Everyone ordered a round. One of my senior marketers, whose notorious for only drinking tequila, got me to start of by just drinking tequila, neat, with a splash of lime. This continued for a few rounds. Then he suggested shots. That was fine. Everyone did the first round. Then a second round of shots and another round of drinks was ordered. Now before going forward, I need to also let you know the drinking preferences of my boss, who I happened to be sitting right next to. He's a wine drinker and rarely drinks anything else. Tonight, because we were out with clients at a tequila bar, he acquiesced and had a round of shots and tequila drinks. However, every time people ordered another round, they ordered him a tequila drink, which he "kindly gave" to me and had me drink for him. So basically, for every one drink everyone else had, I had two. I was also drinking primarily shots or tequila, neat, with a splash of lime.

After a couple hours, everyone was pretty lit up and some people, including my boss, had to catch trains back to CT. As has always been the case, there is the expectation that the young guys in the office will take the other young guys out to continue drinking. To not do that would be kind of rude, especially when you are with clients. So we gathered our things and headed to a great rooftop bar nearby. Just as we were leaving the tequila bar, I ran into Molly Shannon from SNL and kindly, but drunkenly, introduced myself to her and complimented her on her work on SNL. Moron!

We started the night off early, like around 5:30. At this point, it was only a little after 8. To my best estimate, I had already had about 10 tequila drinks/shots, but I was doing alright. However, when we got to the next bar, one of the clients wanted to do Jag bombs. He had not drank a lot at the previous place and not being much of a tequila drinker himself, had drank mostly beer. Unfortunately, no one was quick to take him up on his offer for Jag bombs. Again, to leave him hanging like that would be kind of rude, as he is the client, so I said okay. I think that's where the night started to go downhill for me.

The rest of the night is very vague. I remember many more rounds of mostly Red Bull vodkas. I remember calling Evan up and having him meet us at the bar to drink on the company tab. I remember calling Dani once, though she says I called her like 15 times. I remember briefly talking to my dad on the phone. I remember some guy at the bar getting in my face, putting his hands on me and us almost getting into a fight (though Evan was able to separate us). I remember one of my co-workers standing at the bar and then 10 seconds later, seeing him fall in slow motion to the ground. Said co-worker decided it was time for him to leave, but "graciously" left me his corporate AmEx so I could continue to run up the alcohol bill. Probably not the best decision he's ever made. I remember going to Le' Express, a nice drunk hungry place where I usually end up at when I drink with Evan. And then I remember eventually getting home to bed.

Two days later and I'm still hurting.

One thing, however, kind of makes me laugh. Said co-worker who fell at the bar and gave me his AmEx...I saw him the next morning and he looked like shit. He basically blacked out and barely remembered the previous night. However, he does remember getting into a black cab to go home and not having cash on him to pay. He also, at some point, thought he was in Tribeca (we were nowhere near Tribeca all night). Turns out, what he thought was Tribeca was actually The Met. Somehow he ended up there and was wandering around drunkenly at night. How he actually got back to his apartment is still a mystery.

We have 3 more of these things planned for the next month. Until the next one, I think the liver needs some room to breath.

Where Is Our Win?

Spider-Man 3 took in $151 million in domestic gross box office receipts in its first weekend of release. Add to that the $231 million it had already earned in foreign markets and its worldwide take was already $382 million, which tops the movie's "official budget" of $258 million (though there are "unofficial reports" that the budget topped $300 million). Even adding in the estimated $140 million in marketing costs, and this film is already a given success. Hell, I had to buy my tickets a week in advanceso I could see it in IMAX! As of this week, Spider-Man 2 had taken in $320 million domestically and $526 million internationally for a total of $846 million worldwide!

It's the same story for Shrek 3 and Pirates Of The Caribbean 3. Shrek 3 took in $122 million domestically on its opening weekend and as of this week has earned $289 million worldwide. Shrek 3 was reportedly budgeted at around $160 million so it's already surpassed that and it really hasn't hit its stride yet in the international market. Pirates 3 took in $136 million domestically on its opening weekend and as of this week has earned $624 million worldwide. Its budget was reportedly around $150 million.

But I don't really care that much about any of these movies; I don't have a personal stake in it. But as I was looking at the numbers yesterday, I imagined what the atmosphere must be like in the offices of these studios, in the offices of the production company and everyone else involved. There must have been some intense celebration, champagne bottles popped, caviar being wheeled in, and for good measure, piles of money being rolled in (probably not the last thing), but there would definitely be some celebration. Why not? They won! And then I thought to myself, what do we consider a win in my office? When would we have cause for celebration? Sadly, nothing really came to mind.

At work, we don't have anything that I define as a "big win." Sure, we theoretically "win" accounts, but lately the market has been so shitty that we're more concerned with keeping our current book of business rather than getting new accounts. Even when we do manage to keep an account (which I did a few months back...it was a pretty big account), it still feels anti-climatic. Yes we went out to lunch to "celebrate," but it was a pretty weak lunch and then it was back to the same grind. We were basically "celebrating" the fact that we had kept things at status quo.

I need some wins at work. I need something to celebrate.

No More Pencils, No More Books (Again)

I said it last February, but now I'll say it again: I'm done! No more studying for me, at least in regards to insurance. I completed my last ARM (Associate in Risk Management) test today and passed! So now I guess I should be an expert in insurance since I'm a CPCU (Certified Property-Casualty Underwriter) and an ARM. In reality, it really doesn't mean much except that I guess I could argue for a greater pay raise because I'm just that much more "educated" now.

A lot of happenings at the office lately, most shocking was the "defection" of about half of our executive team last week. That makes it about 3/4 of the executive team that has left the company since I started. The "defection" last week was somewhat unexpected, but where they went was not. Our former CEO who left the company just prior to me starting has just started a new insurance company. His non-compete clause ended in November.

I don't blame any of the people who left because I completely understand their motivation. Our company has become far more bureaucratic over the last year as we have become more integrated with our parent company. Also, the opportunity to work with our old CEO, who was quite a character, and at a start-up would be exciting for anyone. In total, we lost the following people in the last 2 years: CFO, COO, head actuary, chief tech. officer, head of HR, head of claims department, head of credit department, head of captive group (2 people actually!), my old boss, and a number of other non-management people.

Every Time I Leave They Keep Pulling Me Back…

I think Kee Won said it best the other day: “they keep dangling that carrot in front of you.” Yes, that’s what my job keeps doing to me. Let me explain what happened:

On Thursday, I skipped out of work to go to the Vera Wang fashion show. The fashion show is only about 15 minutes long. So i figured I would just take a long lunch and skip out to the show and be back before anyone noticed. I should have known better. The last time I went, the show started an hour late. The same thing happened this time. Also, after the show, I went backstage to see my friend and ended up staying there for 30-45 mins. Then my friend all decided to go to the bar to celebrate the end of the show and invited me along. At this point, I had already been missing from the office for about 3-3.5 hours. I almost went with them (who doesn't want to hang out in the bar with models?!), but better judgment intervened. I quickly said my goodbyes and ran back to the office.

When I got back to the office, my co-workers didn't say anything, but they gave me the "where the hell have you been?!" look. But I figured all was well. Then, literally one minute after I sat down, my boss swung by my desk and told me he needed to see me in his office. Crap. He must have noticed that I had been gone all afternoon. Also, I had been late the last few mornings weeks...ummm...I'm late every day.

I go into he offices and he looks at me for a couple of seconds. "Should I say something?" I think. "Should I just come clean?" But before I can say anything, he smiles and says, "It's bonus time!" My heart stopped for a second and I think my delayed reaction confused him. After we go through the obligatory bonus talk, he then tells me that an opportunity will be opening up in our office in San Francisco in the next few months. The opening has not been announced yet, but my boss wanted to give me a heads up because he knows I have family out in Cali. He then tells me that if I want the transfer, he will help me get it. Wow. Then he went on to tell me that he hopes I don't take the transfer because he really likes me and thinks I'm doing a great job.

Add to that, our head marketer has been giving me a lot of positive reinforcement lately and told me that he likes working with me so much that he's trying to get me on more of his deals.

Good thing I didn't skip-out of work to go to the bar. Hard to hate the job now, right?

I Think My Co-Worker's Husband Is Retarded

My co-worker's husband is probably not retarded. I'm sure he is very intelligent and able, but every day, I endure her talking to him on the phone and it always ends up escalating into a small fight, with her usually being the instigator and scolder. I'm actually pretty astounded that she does this almost every day. We have a small office where sound travels easily. Why do people want their personal business out there? Especially in a professional setting where you are to maintain some semblance of respectability, bitching out your husband on the phone every day isn't a step in the right direction. Reminds me of my other co-worker back in CT...

The Office Keeps Changing

Nothing really stays the same at work. I started officially in NYC in July. One month in we got a new marketer and then a month later, our administrative assistant resigned. Then in November, we moved and consolidated offices with our parent company. Then last week, one of our senior underwriters resigned. Now there are only 3 of us (underwriters) left.

Her resignation was a little unexpected. I think it was the right move for her so I'm not mad at her, but it will be strange not having her around. She was a Williams alum and we have common friends. Plus, I worked a lot with her and she was a good resource for me to learn from. But with her leaving, there could be more opportunities at work. Since starting in our New York office, I've always felt that we are overstaffed given the amount of workflow we currently have. Now with only 3 underwriters, the workload should be more balanced. My boss confirmed my thoughts, stating that he had no intent to hire a new underwriter. With that, I thought that our account assignments would change (for the better) and that I'd be a lot busier. Of course, that is not the case.

Since starting in the New York office, our basic work structure has been thus: all existing accounts are assigned to 2 underwriters, one senior writer and one junior underwriter (like me). For all new accounts, Greg (other junior underwriter) or I were supposed to get first crack at them and possible get the chance to be the account executive. The senior underwriters were to help us, as need be, but were mostly supposed to focus on managing the existing accounts since they already had the relationships with the clients. For the most part, we were able to stick to this plan, but given the slow amount of workflow coming into our office, we ended up approaching the new accounts on more of a team basis. While this was good for learning purposes, it really didn't give Greg or me a chance to gain ownership of any accounts. Ownership of an account is really key, at least from my perspective, to really having a sense of pride in your work.

So now that we have lost an underwriter, this work structure was bound to change. I assummed that we would split all the existing accounts evenly between the remaining underwriters and that Greg and I would actually get a chance to get the new accounts. Unfortunately, my boss had other things in mind. We redistributed our existing accounts, but Greg got 3 accounts (all pretty small) and I got 2 accounts (larger, but overall, relatively "easy" accounts) and the other underwriter, James, got 5 accounts. I'm less concerned with the number of accounts as to the timing of the accounts.

For the most part, both Greg and my accounts won't have anything to do on them until June at the earliest; James accounts are spread out evenly throughout the year. Our boss said that now being the account executives on these accounts would be a good opportunity for us to step up and have more responsibility, but since these accounts are basically inactive for the time being, I don't see how that makes any sense. Also, with new accounts, we're basically just sharing them between the 3 of us, which, if the past few months have been any indication, James will get the good ones and Greg and I will get stuck with the crappy ones.

I guess I'll to wait and see what happens in the next few weeks. If things don't pick up soon, I'm gonna have to have a talk with my boss.

On The Grind

There is something really depressing about querying your work database to see all the accounts you are assigned to as an account exec and to have all responses read either "Declined" or "Lost."

I wish...

I liked my job.

And another one bites the dust...

Last week I wrote about how my office manager resigned. Found out this week that our company's CFO has also resigned. Not really sure what this all means...

Another one bites the dust

Not that it's of any real interest to anybody, but our office manager resigned this morning. That marks the 3rd departure from our office this year. On the flip side, my office has also hired 3 new people (me being one of them), so I guess it sort of evens out, but it was a little disappointing to hear this morning. I think the next couple of months at the office, especially with our pending move in November, will be very interesting.

Bored Bored Bored

This week has been a complete wash. Work has been mind-numbingly slow which was even more painful since last week was actually busy. I got bored with the internet for the bazillionith time this year (sad, i know) and I've had trouble sleeping so trying to stay awake at work with nothing to do and going off of 4 hours of sleep has been the greatest challenge I've faced all week. Will next week be any better? Probably not.