WORKING IN AN OFFICE

 

First of all you need an office building like this one at 160 Pine Street on the northeast corner of Pine & Battery Streets in San Francisco, CA where I worked for an insurance company for several years.

 

Or this building on Webster Street in Oakland, CA where I also worked for the same company.

And if you were a clerk typist as I was to begin with, you would need a desk and a typewriter.  In this case my desk was being moved to a new location.  I worked in the automobile claims department of an insurance company taking calls from unfortunate insureds who had had accidents and were calling to report them.  I took down all the information, set up a file for them, contacted the underwriting department to check on their insurance, then turned the file over to the Examiner who would be handling the claim from that point on – assigning it to an adjuster who would go look at the car, assess the damage, and talk to our insured about the accident.

Sometimes an adjuster would need more information and I would see what I could find out.  I remember one time it was unclear who had had the right-of-way at the intersection where the accident occurred.  Our insured said he had the right-of-way, that the other person had run a stop sign.  The other party in the accident, however, said they had had the right of way, that our insured  had run a stop sign.  Hmm?  Who to believe?

I called the city’s department of streets and roads and asked what their records showed about the placement of stop signs at that intersection.  Their records showed our insured had had the stop sign, but he continued to insist the other party had.  So I sent the adjuster out to take a picture of the intersection which clearly showed the city’s records were wrong.  The other party had had the stop sign and our insured had had the right-of-way!  Things like this happening now and then made the job interesting, a bit of a challenge, and kind of fun. J

I was later promoted to an examiner position handling cases where opposing insurance companies, unable to agree on who was responsible for the accident, had to submit information supporting their side to subrogation court where a final decision was made.  This involved researching and finding every possible piece of evidence supporting our claim on our insured’s behalf and I loved doing it.

On occasion I was required to spell our switchboard operator in the smaller Oakland office, so I had to learn how to run one of these babies.  Connecting incoming calls to office personnel, or placing outgoing calls for them was easy. Putting conference calls together, however, was a bit tricky.  I did okay though until the day I put together a 3-person conference call from our office in Oakland, to offices in Chicago and New York.  I was relieved to have gotten it done and sat back to relax - accidentally catching one of the trunk lines as I pulled my hand back through the tangle of cords and disconnected the office in Chicago!  Fortunately I realized what I’d done right away and was able to reconnect the line in time to avert a catastrophe.  All the Chicago party would have experienced was a slight “blip” in their phone conversation.  Whew!  

A famous lady who made up a famous comedy routine about operating one of these things.  "One ringy-dingy . . . "

Speaking of phones & switchboards, if your job as a high school receptionist was to answer phones and your office didn’t have an actual switchboard, you’d be ‘it’ with a telephone like this one with 4 incoming/outgoing lines, and 26 intercom lines for the teachers and office staff.  It was a bit daunting at first, but once I learned to answer an incoming call with “Please hold.” it was fine. J  I do have to admit I’m not all that pleased when I call a place and am told to “please hold”.  But one can’t be on every line at the same time!

I’m retired now, but I have a sweet little roll-top desk which is rather crammed full in this photo.  I do clean it out once in a while.  It has a nice little pull-out writing board.

And once upon a time I had this pretty little blue portable typewriter.  It wasn’t electric, but it was easy typing for a manual.

Now I have a handy computer & printer set-up with a nice view out the window of the houses across the street, lots of trees, and the hills beyond. (and yes, that’s a polar bear hugging a lobster in the side chair.) J

The best loved job I ever had, however, was not in an office, but in a classroom or the cafeteria/event room teaching elementary school classroom music and directing an all-school chorus of 75 kids!  So much fun.  I did it for 6 years until sadly, funding for music programs dried up.  In the photo I was directing the all-school chorus in a musical called “Kids for America” in the spring of 1985.  In the picture, though you can’t see it, the chorus wraps all the way around to the other side of the stage!  I’m standing at the middle of it.  The “all-school” title is a slight misnomer.  The chorus included 5^th through 8^th grades.  What a joy it was to work with those young voices - usually singing at the top of their lungs unless, of course, the music called for pianissimo. J 

:->

La Nightingail