HOLD BUSH AND CHENEY ACCOUNTABLE
STORY OF AN INSPECTION COMPANY
Some names have been changed in this account.
"Abandon hope all you who enter here." Dante
1. SOME BACKGROUND
Anonymous Inspections is an insurance property inspections company located in Fresno, California. Anonymous is right across the street from a church. A major shopping mall is up the street. The area is the frequent target of graffiti vandals and homeless people sleep outside the buildings at night.
I spent almost seven years making my way into the Anonymous parking lot and parking under the big trees at the back of the parking lot. I especially liked the trees in the summer because I took my breaks and lunch in my car. The trees made it a little cooler. It was a brief haven from the office.
The building itself is a rather dingy affair with stained carpets and leaky ceilings. The manager's office is surrounded by glass and reminds me of an aquarium without the water. There is another office located behind the manager's office that contains the computer server in a small room and a larger room where the IT staff sits.
The break room at the front of the building contains cheap plastic chairs, a refrigerator (with frequent complaints about the dirty refrigerator), tables, a microwave oven, and a time clock. There is a sign over the sink ordering people to wash their dishes (which gets ignored much of the time). On the other side is the "training room" and in front of the training room is another office where the payroll clerk works.
The biggest room holds the reviewing staff . The area is divided into cubicles where reviewers sit hunched over their keyboards peering at computer monitors displaying photos of lifting roofs, peeling paint, cracked sidewalks, and other conditions that insurance companies consider problems.
I spent most of my time in Anonymous in a cubicle trying to desperately keep up my "numbers" and avoid any major mistakes on inspection reports.
2. THE OWNER
On its website Anonymous proudly calls itself a family owned business. You have this image of a Mom and Pop place that is something like Garrison Keillor's Lake Woebegone. The reality is closer to the Corleone family in The Godfather.
Anonymous's principal owner is the Matriarch (a. k. a. The Mother). I saw The Matriarch just a handful of times in my seven years. She would come around at Christmas and, to my surprise, even gave us small Christmas bonuses a few times. She would bring her dogs into the office, pushing them in baby strollers.
She drove a Jaguar and we got to see pictures of her big houses at Bass Lake and on the coast.
Her own grandson once allegedly told her of the misery felt by her employees. He said Anonymous's employees were trapped and underpaid. She reportedly responded that Anonymous's employees were overpaid at $9.00 or $10.00 an hour.
For the most part, The Matriarch was content to collect big checks and leave the actual management of the company to family members.
3. HOLY MANAGEMENT CHANGE, BATMAN!
The Matriarch's two sons managed the company until just after Thanksgiving, 2007. They abruptly resigned and we heard innuendos of unethical conduct.
The Matriarch brought in the management team of The Christian and The Optimist, who had moved down from northern California. The Christian is The Matriarch's daughter. We were told that The Optimist had a background in banking and that The Christian had previously run an inspection company.
The first few weeks we got a public relations campaign. Even The Matriarch made appearances in the office. The Christian would come around and greet us in the morning. We were offered gift cards as incentives for more productivity. I even won a few.
As the year wore on, though, things changed. There were no more visits to ask us how we were. There were no more gift cards. We were mandated a stricter dress code, even though we rarely had public contact. Even when the air conditioning made it as icy as the tundra, we couldn't wear jackets that weren't part of the dress code.
We were instructed to send a daily email that detailed our day. We were supposed to find something positive to talk about.
We got word from the IT guy that he monitored the websites we visited. He took great offense that some people had visited sites like My Space or Face Book. We also learned that management read our emails.
The Christian and The Optimist team decided they wanted to move into commercial inspections and I was a candidate to "review" those reports. I had some slight interest at first. But when they started talking about out-of-town trips I wasn't as enthused. I have a hard time physically riding in a car for several hours. The Optimist, in particular, seemed perturbed that I couldn't make long road trips.
A friend was interested in learning commercial reports because she thought the knowledge would give her a leg up on becoming an insurance underwriter. But she suddenly had reports dumped on her without any real training. The Christian reportedly didn't like my friend's criticisms of the often shabby work by field inspectors.
4. MICROMANAGEMENT
The more I was exposed to reviewing the more I became convinced that the greatest qualification is the self discipline not to take an automatic weapon to work.
A perfect report has the photos the insurance company wants arranged in the correct order (front, rear, left side, right side, all around the town), a diagram that looks like the home, square footage that coincides with the tax report information, and notes from the inspector about any problems or questions the insurance company might have. Perfect reports happen about as often as blizzards in Fresno in July.
Inspectors have an uncanny ability to ignore written instructions. For example, suppose there is a written instruction that photos of all outbuildings are required. You can bet that the inspector will say there are outbuildings, but not send any photos. Sometimes getting what you need from an inspector is a little like greyhounds at a dog track chasing a mechanical rabbit round and round and round.
Under the The Christian-Optimist regime there were rules. And more rules. We were told we had to contact the inspectors by email and by phone and by cell phone. They apparently didn't think about smoke signals, jungle drums, or homing pigeons. We had to document our contacts in the "Activity Log." We had to document our contacts on a separate list that we sent them every day. After a while, it felt like I was documenting my documenting.
We were given big binders that contained the guidelines for every account. We were told that we had to keep the binders open at all times. I don't know; maybe we were supposed to learn the guidelines by osmosis.
The word "diagram" has taken on a negative connotation for me now. It's the single biggest headache in the reviewing process.
The Christian-Optimist regime decided it would be a nifty idea to include camera icons on the diagram. The idea is show the angle from where a photo is taken. I should explain that diagrams are already an enormous headache. Inspectors leave off porches, decks, second levels, outbuildings, balconies, bay windows, etc. on diagrams. The objective, from the reviewing standpoint, is to have the diagram look like the house in the photos and to match the desired square footage. Camera icons were just one more monkey wrench in the process.
Camera icons took on a surrealistic aspect when were told we had to include camera icons for condition photos. Say, for example, an inspector takes a photo of peeling paint on the siding. Unless you're psychic, you don't have clue where that damage is unless the inspector tells you. What do you think the odds are that the inspector will tell you?
5. NUMBERS
In this context we're not talking about Arabic numerals or Roman numerals or a television show on CBS on Friday night. Management was very big on "numbers," which equates to the number of reports you complete every day. You track every second of your day so that you can arrive at an hourly average. When you got really bad reports (which is frequent), or you had really complicated reports, your "numbers" would go in the tank.
This was important because "numbers" were the basis for your raise, such as it was. So it was the classic case of a double bind. You had to have error free reports and you had to produce "numbers." Trying to do both was a little like doing jumping jacks on a high wire. I sometimes thought that we should get a handicap like golfers get. If you got reports from some inspectors, you would automatically qualify for a handicap.
Photos, or lack of photos, were a big obstacle in achieving "numbers." If you got reports without photos, or if you got photos that were almost unusable because they were too dark or too light or taken at a weird angle, that greatly affected your "numbers." We would either spend time trying to get photos (documenting in the Activity Log as explained above), fix photos, or get someone else to fix the photos (documenting in the Activity Log as explained above).
"Numbers" became especially important around billing time. We would get emails telling us that we had posted "X" number of reports up to that point. It was supposed to motivate us.
6. HOW TO CO-OPT
The Christian and The Optimist suggested once that I could be a supervisor. I said I wasn't interested. I've been a supervisor. I consider it a no-win position. You can't please management and you can't please the people you supervise. You frequently get put on salary, which means you don't even get paid overtime. And overtime was very important in the The Christian-Optimist regime.
I wasn't a big fan of overtime at Anonymous. It's reminds me of a scene from the movie The Little Shoppe of Horrors. A guy is having his tooth drilled by a dentist. He doesn't use Novocain. He enjoys pain and tells the dentist "My God! Don't stop now!" Unlike that man, I don't enjoy pain. Reviewing for 40 hours was enough pain (see above regarding Activity Log, inspectors, diagrams).
Team Christian-Optimist tried another innovation. They designated people as "account managers." An account manager was in charge of a specific account or accounts and would usually have two or three members of a "team" ( we didn't get pennants or cheerleaders, unfortunately) assigned to work on that account. As things evolved, the chief function of the account managers was to harass members of their "team."
One of the classic strategies of warfare is to divide and conquer. In the business world that concept frequently means management co-opting employees. You get them to identify with management rather than with their coworkers.
I would have a typical report with problems, go through the process of contacting the inspector, and then document it (see documenting in the Activity Log above). In a flash I would get emails from the account manager wanting me to follow up. Or I would get an email claiming that a question I had wasn't really a problem at all (I was just too stupid, I guess).
After a series of condescending emails from one specific account manager, I'd had enough. I emailed her that I was tired of the nasty emails.
The Christian thought that was "disrespectful" and--poof!-- I was suddenly out of a job.
7. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK
The Christian is religious, or claims to be religious. You half expected there to be a bright heavenly glow from the aquarium-like office, or perhaps a chorus of angels. An altar for blood sacrifice would be apropos.
I'm tolerant of religious belief, although admittedly skeptical. I've done the religion thing and the more I examined things the less I believed. But I don't think religion mixes with business any better than it mixes with politics.
It's especially disturbing when religion is used as a hammer. Its punitive and vindictive side comes out instead of the compassionate side exemplified by The Golden Rule. I have the feeling that The Christian knows more about the punitive side of religious belief than about the compassionate side.
It was a little like the climatic scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. The Nazis believe they have found the ultimate weapon in the Ark. But when they open it all kinds of monstrous creatures rush out. People are being killed and faces are melting. You had to walk softly when you walked by The Christian's office.
8. QUIET DESPERATION
Henry David Thoreau wrote, "The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation." Thoreau could have been a reviewer at Anonymous Inspections.
When you talk about how much you hate a job some enterprising sort will ask, "Then why don't you just leave?" It should be so simple.
In our system jobs are a little like musical chairs. When the music stops people scramble for the chairs and someone is always left out. You need some things, like money for rent, or health insurance, so you grit your teeth and try to slog through another day or week.
I've spent a few decades now going to jobs I hate because it's the lesser of two evils. It's go to a job I hate or starve.
Many of us spend our lives in quiet desperation, not getting the opportunity to fulfill our dreams or potential. We spend our lives on the treadmill of working paycheck to paycheck for too little money and no appreciation, hoping for that little annual raise, and that someway somehow there is a way out. But it's a system that rewards the few at the expense of the many with reminders of how “lucky” we are to have jobs. Some luck.
