I suppose it was never more than some kind of experiment. When I posted my resume on Monster.com, I seriously doubted I’d get any useful response. Out of some 20 contacts, one was genuine, but misguided. The rest were simply unethical, ignoring my pointed warning that I would not do sales work.
You could probably guess it’s always the same kind of vulture outfits: insurance companies. If there was ever a lobby that has gotten itself a license to steal, it’s insurance companies. The government requires insurance for all sorts of things. The various insurance outfits promised me the moon with high compensation. And it’s not as if they couldn’t deliver on it; all the folks I know in that business are very well off. What that should tell you is that they charge an awful lot compared to what they pay out when all the personnel are more comfortable than almost their entire customer base.
It takes a certain deafness to one’s conscience to operate that way. That’s why it serves no purpose to upbraid them. I typically answer in a friendly manner. Four times I’ve even gotten phone calls from the same outfit here in the OKC area. They keep forgetting to take my name off their list, I suppose. Twice it was the same gal; I’m guessing she spends a lot of time calling folks she doesn’t know trying to rope them into that sort of work. I noticed they carefully select women with pleasant voices. I simply tell them I’ve spoken to one of their reps and I won’t do sales.
Whoever scanned the stack of resumes on Monster paid no real attention to what they say, just searching for certain keywords and so forth. I figured they would ignore my warning on the first line of my resume that I would not consider sales. The emails were just the same, swearing up and down they had read it carefully. Liars. But that’s the nature of sales and advertising these days. The dirty secret is that there is a high turnover in insurance sales. You can make the money if you’ll take the training and do the work. You might have to shed a few bad habits, or at least hide them well, but it really isn’t that hard. That is, unless you have something inside you that just can’t keep up with the lies. I’ve met plenty of folks who, whether conscious or not, found the profitable path was somehow unacceptable and either sabotaged their own career or just got sick of it and quit. The business world is full of folks who previously sold insurance and got out of that. Lots of folks now doing manual labor were also previous insurance agents.
I suppose there are some satisfied customers out there who felt they were nicely protected from catastrophic expenses. I don’t recall too many times when I thought I got any percentage back on what I’ve paid. But I’m not going to stir up hatred for insurance folks, only notice that most of us have way more than we really ever need, and wouldn’t have it were someone not holding a gun to our heads. That kind of indirect extortion is simply the way it is in this world, so if it’s not insurance, it’s some other special interest. The Genesis narrative of Abraham makes note of similar scoundrels in his life, so it’s been around for a long time.
Abraham’s answer was to keep working and backing away until he got out of their reach. Sometimes he made some serious mistakes, trying to get insurance for things that weren’t a threat. When he trusted God, he prospered nicely.
