My friend's '94 Buick Century got hit by a dumptruck yesterday at work... Not as bad as it sounds... a ladder that was on the side of the truck scraped his rear bumper. Our boss said not to worry; that he'd take care of it. I'm telling my friend to freakin' repaint the whole damn thing. It really needs it... the previous owner tried to paint it, and it's all pealing now. We'll see how this all turns out.

 

How do you like your job as a claims adjuster? Do you work a lot of over time? Do you feel swamped with unattainable goals? Is the pay worth it for the amount of hours you work? I'm currently in a masters program do you think they would work with my school schedule (they didn't really coment on this)

 

Smaglik - I've never dealt with them before, could be a good thing, or a bad thing
ckebottle - I like it pretty well. I don't work overtime cause I am paid salary. I am currently working as an "in-house" adjuster. The claims manager is 67 and looking to retire sometime in the near future. They hired me to take his place. I'm still a little young for that position though (I'm only 24), so they may have to hire someone else if he retires before they feel like I am ready. The only time I would "have" to work more than 40 or so hours a week is if there were another natural disaster. Can you say "Hurricane Katrina" - I'm in Mississippi. Katrina happened after I had been on the job for less than 2 months. I had no choice but to be a quick learner.
As far as the pay goes - I can't complain. I just got a $10,080/year raise last Tuesday[sm=happy046.gif]. I thought there must have been a mistake on payroll. Then the CEO came to my office and goes "that was a pretty good raise you got." I was like "Yeah, why so much?" Hebasically said "Because you've been coming early and staying late everyday for a while now. You have separated yourself from the herd. Leaders walk in fron of the herd, not with it." By the "herd" he is partlyreferring to the majority of the women that work in this office. They get here exactly on time and are lined up to leave exactly at 4:45 every day. Also most of them are rather large women, hence the cow analogy.
Many Insurance companies are all about education, so I would just look around at companies and go interviewing. Tell them about your masters program and see what they say.

 

most of them are rather large women...

so, you work with a bunch of FUPAs?

 

This is long but it's worth it: So there I was.... 1981 Chevy Citation V6 4spd. I drove down this little back road that was paved and took a nice banked corner at a fairly slow speed. It was a fairly tight full 90 degree corner with great banking, so in my mind it was the "Perfect" corner to fly threw with my car. So I stop turn the car around and go back to get setup for it. My Friend who happened to be my passenger at the time was reading one of our local classifieds papers. And as I stop and get situated for it he says to me (without looking up from the paper) "Whatcha doing?" so I respond is the same calm demenor with a hint of develishness "I bet I can take that corner at 45" the response comes "oh, okay" (once again still reading never looking up) So I drop it, and start flying threw gears up into 3rd to attain the "proper" entry speed, he keeps reading, I hit the corner, dive in perfectly, come back up/out at just the right exit angle, we hit gravel, I start fishtailing like I'd just blown two tires to the point that I'm going from one edge of the road back to the other (narrow road) until finally I loose it, we launch off the side of the road into a muddy field, I crank the wheel, let off the gas, spin a broadie and try to keep on it a bit so we don't get stuck, the engine is roaring, mud is flying EVERYWHERE and my passenger is still trying to figure out what happened. The car stops. We're stuck. So I try rocking it to get it out, no luck, I tell my buddy to get out and push, he pushes, the car starts going and in a typicall comic book fashion he faceplants into the ground as I take off. I realize that if I try to take the fairly steep embankment onto the road at a slow pace I won't make it, so I grab second and let out slowly to keep traction, I hit the embankment, grind a bit of the undercarriage and launch back onto the road to come to a screeching hault. We inspect the car, no damage, just mud a weeds etc stuck to it. So we run to the carwash and clean it up and no one ever knows....

 

This site freaked me out

http://www.jobvent.com/companyBrowse.php?CompanyID=232


People seem to really hate that place....all complain pretty much about the same thing. Progressive sounds like a lot of each worker though. The way I understand it, there is a 2 hour turn around time from the point of an insurees (sp?) accident to when they are cut a check. So the adjuster would set up a time to look estimate the damage and cut a check within 2 hours. Sorry if that doesn't make much sense, because I don't understand it all too well yet. I've just took a test, once I schedule the interview I'll ask more hehe.

 

FUPA. lol. I didn't know anyone else used that...

 

That sounds about right for the horrible adjusting I see them doing every day. Good luck! If it gets bad, you can always quit. Our average time for paying a claim is probably about a week. Every one of our auto claims is estimated by 1 independent appraiser. We only do business in the state of MS though, and our book of business is at about 30 million now (compared to Progressive'snationwide coverage and billions of $) He used to build race cars growing up and he ran a body shop for 20+ years so he knows what he is doing. he also does estimates for heavy equipment. Once we receive a claim, we normally try to have a check out within a week. Sometimes it takes longer though. It actually takes time to do quality work. if you want fast, the work is going to be utter Sh**, which is apparently what Progressive does.
Also it appears that Progressive doesn't really take care of their employees from reading some of the posts in that link. I have only been here for 2 years and so far I've gotten $16,080 in raises: 1st 6 months I got a 3k/year raise, 1 yr anniversary I got another 3k raise, 2 yr anniversary I got a $10,080/year raise.
I guess I got lucky.

 

No, they are pretty much just fat all over, not just FUPA. Remember, Mississippi is the #2 most obese state in America, 2nd only to the #1 Alabama (I think those may be last year's numbers, Mississippi could have surpassed Alabama by now.)

 

Holy crap this post is hilarious. It came from the above website found by ckebottle. Enjoy: