these are my hands, these are my faults, these are my plans, these are my nasty little thoughts

I had a good day at work. For like... the first time ever.

Basically, the company I work for helps a lot of people. Not for the hell of it, they do it for money, but still. They care about their employees (my dad's insanely awesome retirement package from them, for instance, is why my parents can afford to help me out with a condo). They help a lot of policyholders when they need it most.

Yes, there is legal BS. Yes, sometimes people don't understand their policy, and end up with severe problems. But in general, I do believe in the company I work for and think that they help people.

But I am not helpful. I'm basically a placeholder. I'm there to get someone who can really help the person if their house burns down. Other than that, voicemail could probably do most of what I do. So every time someone calls, one of two things happen: 1) I will disapoint and be unable to help someone nice. 2) I will disapoint and be unable help someone jerky, who will then take it out on me and make me feel like shit.

But tonight I had this lady who called because she lost her car keys. This, and people who need towing, are my least favorite call. Because people generally don't understand their policy (they think we're triple A, a company not affiliated with us in anyway whatsoever. I have literally had people call up and ask me for Triple A before) with regards to this. Basically, we reimburse people for towing, locksmiths, tire changes etc. And I can't even tell people how much of the bill will be reimbursed, because it's at the Agent's discretion. She had apparently called us up about this before several times but kept getting disconnected. So I got the phone number she was calling from, and told her I'd call her back if she got disconnected. I called up several locksmiths (normally I give people phone numbers and tell them to do it themselves but so far this lady had been nice to me). I finally get one, and I ask her if she wants me to stay on the line. Normally I never do this, but since she kept getting disconnected (I had to call her back several times during this) I decided to stay on, and call her back if she got disconnected from the locksmith. The locksmith actually can't help her, her car has some sort of alarm system, she'll need to be towed to the dealership. So I end up calling tow people from her. And they put her on hold an insanely long amount of time, and I stayed the whole time. I wanted to help her, because she was afraid to stay in this random remote place (the reason for the phone problems), and it was getting dark out, and she had two children with her. She was really nice to me, and kept thanking me profusely for something that it really took very little effort for me to do. It wasn't even busy tonight, so spending so much time with her wasn't at the expense of any other customers. The only cost was pretty much the phone bill, which, I think is a drop in the bucket next to the insurance premiums she has probably paid in the past and will probably continue to pay in the future.

To sum up a needlessly long story: I felt really good because I actually felt like I helped someone. And that someone was appreciative, which is nice for the ego.

PS: There was also a lady whose last name was Beaver who called in, and her home was located, I kid you not, on Dick St.