I'm not a writer.

So, I'm not a writer.  I don't get paid to write, and in all likelihood, I never will.  So says the statistic that there are about five million aspiring writers to every published writer (that's a real statistic, I swear.  I totally didn't just make that up).  And, as my father so frequently tells me, it's pointless to write unless I manage to get my word in print...and, more to the point, get paid for doing so.  So.  I'm not a writer.  Probably never will be.  But that doesn't stop me from trying.

I've not be a writer for as long as I can remember.  I mean, I'm no Stephen King (in talent, prolificness, or insanity).  I was not bed-ridden for the majority of my childhood left with nothing to do but copy comic books until my mother chastised me for stealing somebody else's work.  Or so at least, that's how Stephen King claims he got his start in writing.  But I have been spinning tall tales since my earliest memories, experimenting with just how far I could push the limits of what my parents would believe in the stories I told them about how I spent my days chasing after my older siblings.  Sad to say, they believed most things...probably because they were all based in one underlying truth:  My siblings detested having me around and did just about anything to prevent me from playing along with them (climbed trees that were too big for me to scale, smashed out my first tooth with our homemade teeter-totter, ran away screaming I was a pirate when my dad put my corrective eyepatch on, you name it...).  

I've not been a writer long enough and consistently enough that my father has, on multiple occasions, used it as a means for punishment.  Sometime during the summer between freshman and sophomore year in high school, my dad got it in his head that I should read Huckleberry Finn.  It was, as he claimed, a classic every kid should read, and as my school had apparently dropped the ball and not assigned it up to that point and declared it would make up my summer reading (Incidentally, I would go on to read this book during my Junior year).  The summer dragged on, and I did read parts of Huckleberry Finn, but I'm a girl and, accordingly, found it incredible dull.  So, one day in August after he asked me what I thought of the book and I stared back at him blankly, my mouth working like a carp's while I tried coming up with some intellectual answer, he demanded I finish the book before the weekend (this was on Thursday) and write a report detailing the events and my analysis of the book.  Oh, joy.  So, I spent the entire next day reading, reading, reading, and reading while the beautiful sun peeped its head above the horizon, trailed across the hot, August sky, and sunk below the trees in the west.  It was awful.  Not the reading, necessarily, but feeling like I was chained to the couch and then later forced to vomit out yet another pointless book report.  

And then again sometime later when he caught me in a lie...one of those moments where the truth is blindingly obvious but I stuck to my guns and claimed my unyielding innocence until he stalked off, red-faced from frustration and set about coming up with the perfect punishment.  He came back smug in the knowledge that he'd created the perfect sentence for my crime.  I was ordered to write a short story that would detail how lying negatively affects peoples' lives.  So, in the fashion of an angry teenager who was endowed with just as much stubborn melodrama as her father, I wrote the most horrific story about a girl who'd lied to her parents and ended up dead because of it.  I pulled from every horror story I'd ever read, any cheesy scary movie I'd ever seen and made my heroine spill her guts, quite literally, when an axe murderer came after her and her friends at a drive-in movie, an activity which was strictly forbidden, both for my heroine and for me.  I dutifully handed the story over.  And my father never said a word about it.  Ever.  It was quite possibly the only time in my life that I'd been able to render my father speechless.  I considered it a success.  

And so, I continued plodding on, wrote whenever genius struck, got an undergrad degree in English, and then a Masters, all the while dreaming of the day when I could make a living transforming the scrambled thoughts running wild in my mind to elegant words on a page.  

Unhappily Insured: An Open Letter to State Farm

Dear Ed Rust, Jr., Chairman and CEO of State Farm Mutual, and Jennifer Hiteshue, Medina State Farm insurance agent:

Within any industry, the one element key to ensuring a long and happy run for your business is recognizing your clients' expectations and successfully meeting them, nay anticipating them so that you're able to provide an appropriately priced service or product at the very moment it becomes needed.  Especially in this economy.  Accordingly, not meeting your clients' expectations, repeatedly, is one way to ensure the eventual demise of your company, even one that has been in business for 89 years.  In an effort to help you recognize just how poorly you responded to this formerly loyal customer's expectations and needs, please read on.  And for anybody considering buying insurance (in any form) from Jennifer Hiteshue's Medina State Farm office, do so only if you're willing to keep an exceptionally close eye on how she (or rather her staff) handles your insurance needs.

Expectation #1:  Keeping Your Word
Integrity, honesty, dependability.  All are commendable qualities in a business which become poignantly necessary when dealing with something as ignoble yet critically necessary as insurance.  As an insured customer, this expectation is quite simple.  In short, do what you say you're going to do.  Be it adding on supplemental coverage to a homeowner's policy in a timely manner (as in when you say you will and not three months later when your lapse makes itself known in the annual renewal notice to your customer) or canceling a customer's policies on the date you say you will and not a month afterward when said customer receives notice in the mail of a canceled policy due to nonpayment of premium.  When you fail to keep your word, all pomp and circumstance surrounding your company's good name falls away and leaves your customers with the lasting impression of incompetence.  Not a good attribute for any company looking to stay in business, but especially one which is in place to protect its clients' most beloved things against unforeseeable circumstances.

Expectation #2:  Charging a Fair Rate (And Keeping it that Way)
Insurance companies long since have had a reputation for fleecing their customers.  Look at any insurance company's commercials, and you'll easily recognize their attempt to overcome this expectation.  Again and again, we consumers hear about the superior service, exceptional claims department, fair value, and friendliness of X, Y, or Z insurance company.  Why?  Because they know we know we're essentially pouring funds into their companies and making an investment that will, God willing, likely never give us a return.  Customer purchases are no doubt motivated by the quality of coverage, but overall, customers want the best coverage they can get for the least amount of money possible.

So when you reign in a customer by offering them exceptional rates and then slowly jack up their rates by 60% over the course of five years, it's advisable to have a better explanation for doing so than simply saying "it's nothing to do with what you're doing.  It's just the economy and rising market prices."  Moreover, if this pitiful excuse for raising your clients' premiums, even when they have never made a claim in the fifteen years they've been insured with your company, have the gall to stand behind it.  Because when your clients suddenly receive a renewal notice with rates that are $200 cheaper than they expected that is not accompanied by an explanation for the sudden drastic drop in their rates, it magnifies just how sleazy your company is.  In effect, it says to said client that you were hoping they wouldn't notice the incredible increase in premiums but now that they have, you'll go back to giving them a fair rate.  It tells the client they have to keep a pretty close eye on what their insurance agent is doing in order to ensure they continue to get a fair rate for their coverage.  And what your clients need less of is the hassle of watching over a company which is part of an already highly mistrusted industry.  And nothing will send your customers packing quicker than ensuring them they can't trust you.

Expectation #3:  Treating Clients with the Respect and Courtesy They Deserve
Nobody likes to feel like they're not important, especially when they're dealing with an inconvenient or unpleasant situation.  Most especially when the person treating them so poorly is actually the one who caused the problem in the first place.  Accordingly, when dealing with an upset client, it's in your best interest to take a moment and, you know, actually call them back instead of handing them and their problems off to your lackeys.  Certainly, staff and assistants are hired to ease your work load, but when a client calls repeatedly, specifically asks to speak with you and is clearly becoming increasingly agitated by the incompetence of your staff, it might be a good idea to take matters into your own hands.  To do some damage control, as it were.  Continuously brushing off upset customers tells them (1) they're time is less important than yours and (2) you don't care whether their situation is resolved or what problems they may be facing in dealing with your staff members.  Staff members, I might add, who don't bother hiding their irritation with upset clients.

Maybe this expectation seems silly.  Certainly, an out-going customer must know they won't hold the same priority for the high-ranking insurance agent whose name graces the front of the building.  Maybe it seems outlandish for them to expect that agent to give them a minute of their time so problems can be resolved without the constant back and forth that typically goes on with underlings.  But when a client has been a loyal customer of your company for fifteen years, six of those spent under your care, and has effectively poured $7,500 in your company and never asked for anything in return, maybe a little courtesy is called for.  If not from you, then certainly from your staff members.  Especially when the mistake that has put this client out originated from the oversight of one of your staff members.

Which leads us to our last expectation...

Expectation #4:  Admitting Fault and Apologizing
I know your little cards tell your clients never to admit fault when involved in an accident, even when it's blatantly obvious who was at fault, and maybe you've decided to assume the same philosophy when it comes to handling your clients' insurance.  Let me assure you, this approach does little to earn your customers' confidence, and when you've made mistake after mistake without ever owning up or apologizing, it's much easier for clients to walk away.  After all, State Farm is not the only insurance agency in the sea.  For that matter, Jennifer Hiteshue isn't the only State Farm agent in the small town of Medina.

So when you or somebody on your staff has executed a major foul-up -- one that delays their refund, one that causes their escrow account to be double-charged thus raising their monthly escrow payments and requiring them to enter into a month-long process to set things right with their bank, one that takes nearly a week and four nasty calls to resolve -- it might be time to put on a brave smile and simply say, "Sorry for the inconvenience of our mistake."  Or maybe just a meekly mumbled, "sorry."  Something that indicates you not only acknowledge that you've made a mistake, but that you regret causing your clients such an inconvenience.  That you regret shattering whatever confidence and trust your client had in you.

Of course, that is, unless you aren't sorry at all.  Which, based on how you've conducted your affairs these past few months, seems a much more likely possibility.