11:09 p.m. | 2005-11-29 Wise Word. A long, long time ago, I worked in an insurance claims department. I was one of two people who did intake (dealing with insureds/claimants face-to-face) and processing (dealing with shops/lawyers/other parties face-to-face). It�s a thankless job. Every single person you deal with has a problem. Every single one is decidedly unhappy. One day, a sweet-looking elderly women appeared at the counter. I knew from experience that looks can be very, very deceiving. My counter partner took a pass on her � we had a system � so I stepped up. Here�s what happened. (CI:) Good morning. How can I help you? (OlderWoman:) How can you help me?! Someone ran into me! My car is ruined. How can you help me? FIX IT. (CI:) Okay. Are you insured with us? (OW:) I don�t know. Why are you asking me questions? FIX IT. (CI:) Can you tell me what happened? (OW:) I already told a dozen people what happened, including my agent. You? YOU want me to tell it again?! Someone called me and told me to come here and it�d all be fixed. FIX IT. (CI:) Okay. We�ll fix it. (OW:) Thank you. (CI:) Would you like some coffee, water? (OW:) Water please. (CI:) Have a seat, I�ll bring you some water. (OW:) Thanks you, Miss. (I was young then.) (CI:) Here�s your water. (I looked up a bunch of stuff and located her file. She was a claimant.) Looks like one of our insureds ran into you. That must�ve been awful. (OW:) Oh, I�m in such a quandary. (CI:) (Chuckling inside. A quandary? Heh. Like in a pickle? At my young age, those were grandma words.) Tell me about it. (OW:) Oh. My husband died a couple of months ago. He did all the driving and handled the insurance and everything. After he died, I had to learn how to drive. I did. Except, it scares me. Then my friends wanted to cheer me up by going out and so I had to drive THE CAR. My HUSBAND�s CAR. (CI:) The Nova? (OW:) Yes. The Nova. He loved that car. Now, it�s wrecked. (CI:) Yeah, it is. It�s awful that our insured ran a red light and hit you. But, it can be fixed and we�ll take care of that. (OW:) You will? (CI:) Sure. I�m glad you drove it here today. Look outside. See that guy right there? He�s running up an estimate for the repairs. I�ve run all the paperwork and all you need to do is take these papers outside to him and he�ll tell you how to get it fixed. (OW:) Really? (CI:) Yes, really. (OW:) Thank you so much. I�m been so lost since my husband died. I�m sorry I was rude to you� it�s just� it�s just all this driving and insurance and� all this... He used to take care of it all. I don�t know what to do. (CI:) I�m so sorry for your loss and it must be really scary to handle all these things but you�re fine. You did it. All you need to do now is go talk to the adjuster and he�ll set you up. You�re good to go. (OW:) Thank you, Sweetie. (CI:) You�re welcome. That whole exchange seems all nice and sweet, and it was (except that part where she kept yelling at me), in fact, she wrote a letter about me and I received a customer service award. Which was nice and much appreciated. But what you don�t know is what happened behind the scenes. First off, I�d never heard �quandary� used in a sentence. I knew what it meant and had seen the word many times in the books I read. However, the absolute best way to be introduced to that word is to have an elderly (70�s), middle-class, church-going, white woman, dressed to the nines, tell you, in a desperate way, that the situation that she�s in �is just a quandary�. After she�s just exited a fire-engine red, totally tricked out 1960�s-something Chevy Nova with a slight dent. Couple that with the fact that it�s actually Halloween and her claims adjuster just happens to be convincingly dressed as Spock (Star Trek) with pointy ears and everything. Triple that with the fact that she doesn�t even notice that he�s in costume but tells me that he seems really �familiar� to her. For the cherry on top? Her adjuster and I had this conversation. (CI:) Hey. I don�t mean to rush you but can you look at the Nova straight away? The claimant�s (discretely nodding her way) husband recently passed away and she�s in quite a �quandary�. (Adjuster:) A quandary? You mean, like �in a pickle�? Like a grandma kind of �pickle�? (CI:) Yeah, Spock. It�s that kind of pickle. (A:) Okay. Sure. What car is it? (CI:) The fire-engine red 1960�s-something tricked out Chevy Nova. (A:) That�s the car she (discretely nodding her way) was driving? (CI:) Yeah, that�s the one. Can you look at it right away? (A:) Are you kidding? He was out the door so fast. I watched them through the windows. A Spock look-a-like (he really nailed that look) and a totally clueless elderly woman hovering together over a fire-engine red totally tricked out Chevy Nova. He handled her with kid gloves � since she was in a quandary and whatnot � and she got through the ordeal like a champ. Right before she left, she thanked me once again. I took that opportunity to ask where she was headed (to meet her lady friends) when the accident occurred. She hadn�t gone more than a couple of miles when she was hit but she was heading towards a gambling mecca. Quite a quandary, I�d say. your thoughts? seed flower