As promised, here's the brief saga of the Jesus Insurance Company.

Don't get me wrong, people. I am not your average hipster boi who believes that Organized Religion is the opiate of the masses, an evil plot to control the world, or anything else. I am a devout Catholic. Okay, maybe I don't go to Mass when I'm hung over, but still... That said, I have no problem with other religions as long as they leave me well enough alone and don't try to convert me. As my mother once told a pair of "missionaries"--who apparently believed that already-Christian (mostly Lutheran, Catholic and Methodist) Walkersville, Maryland needed conversion--"If I really gave a rat's ass, don't you think I'd be at my own church right now?"

So imagine my horror when, on a temp assignment, I was confronted with an insurance company that was, apparently, CEO'd by the Fundamentalist Protestant version of Christ Himself.

Mind you, this was a temp job, but I did sort of need work, so when I saw the Mission Statement in the lobby (why on earth does every modern company need a Mission Statement?) and noticed that it involved several references to God, I very nearly disappeared in a puff of Catholic incense smoke. I mean, seriously: lots of companies are run by Catholics, but we don't have freakin' crucifixes and statues of the Blessed Virgin in the lobbies.

I survived the place for two weeks. They had morning prayer meetings. I shit you not. It wasn't mandatory--I don't think they could have gotten away with that, legally--but it was fairly clear that anyone who wanted to get ahead in the company was going to show up and "testify" and talk about how he (note that I don't include the feminine pronoun; I'm pretty sure that women weren't supposed to WANT to get ahead in this little world) had discovered the power of Jesus and how Jesus had become his personal savior.

This is one thing that bugs me about fundamentalism: the insistent use of that phrase "...accepted Jesus as your personal Savior." Here is why it bugs me. The whole concept of Christianity is that Christ is supposed to be everybody's Savior. It's not all about you. This "personal Savior" thing freaks me out. I have a personal toothbrush. I have a personal cell phone. I have personal lubricant for personal reasons that will remain personal, unless you happen to be the one getting very personal with me, in which case, one of us will use a personal birth control device. So, when Joe the Fundamentalist asks me if I've "accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior," my usual answer is along the lines of "No, I haven't. I didn't have to him as such, because He already was, and He's not MINE, He's the Savior of us all." (Except, I'm tempted to say, assholes like you who want to pre-empt His entire philosophy to make yourselves feel like the cool kids on the block.)

Diatribe over. So, here I am, toiling away in The Lord's Own Li'l Insurance Company. Small problem...or, rather, one overwhelming problem. Nobody in this place seems to have the SLIGHTEST FREAKING IDEA of what they're doing. My job, nominally, is to review claims, look for discrepancies, and if one exists, trot over to the document storage room to find the paper file and try to reconcile the discrepancy. Except that: nearly every file on the computer system has some kind of discrepancy, and invariably, there is no paper trail sufficient to clarify anything whatsoever.

This means that what I actually end up doing is a)alphabetizing the files in the system, which seems to have never occurred to anyone, and then b) for each batch of 50 or so, finding the corresponding paper files, bringing them back to the desk, and then c)fruitlessly searching for something that will clarify the problem. For each batch of farbed-up files, I am able to find approximately ONE paper document that helps out. In other words, the whole process could be solved by just saying "Yeah, this whole thing is hosed. Y'all need to just start over."

Except that of course I can't do that, because I'm a temp and I'm an English major, not an Insurance Professional. That, and I'm not a member of the Reformed Church of the Redeemed of the Evangelistic Saints of the Lord, or whatever it is.

Actually, most of the people with whom I interacted were not at all of the creepy "I'm going to convert you or kill you trying" type. That was obviously just a function of the company's owners; most of these folks just needed a job like anyone else. The inherent problem was really that they didn't seem to know what they were doing themselves and therefore really didn't know how to explain to me what I was supposed to do.

After two weeks, I was done. This job, in my view, was like an already-inferior cut of meat that had been left on the grill for three hours and was burnt into charcoal. It was unpalatable, at best. So, I called my *other* temp agency and told them that I needed something, anything, else. They had a new job for me within five minutes. It offered better pay, and it was actually in the city. (Did I mention that the Evangelical Insurance Concern, Ltd. was twenty miles into the suburbs?) Natch, I took the new post.

I told my supervisor at the insurance company that I'd been offered another job and needed to start the next day. She was fine with it, and told me that if I wanted, I didn't really have to come back that afternoon. She also congratulated me on the new job (I didn't mention that it was really just another temp job) and hung out with me to smoke a cigarette.

Here's the best part: After clearing out of the place, I discovered to no small horror that I'D FUCKING LOCKED MY KEYS IN THE CAR THAT MORNING. Thankfully, this place was close to the very last stop on the city's public transit line. Unthankfully, about the time that I started walking towards the station, the mother of all cloudbursts opened up.

Right as I was getting on the train, the temp agency that set the job up in the first place called, and were they ever pissed. The temp coordinator lambasted me because "You knew how much they needed you, and you left in the middle of the day!" I reminded her that the supervisor herself had told me it would be cool to leave, that I wasn't under contractual obligation, and that for God's sake...oh, wait, poor choice of words here...no one actually knew what the hell he was doing in the place, and so it was clear that they didn't need me that badly. I also pointed out that the company's overt display of religion made me rather uncomfortable and recommended that the agency brief any future temps before sending them to this company. After I made the (wet) trek on Baltimore's light rail to get back to the city, I was able to bribe a friend to haul me back out to get my car, and the chapter closed.


In the long run, everything was fine. The next temp job(s) were with Johns Hopkins. I made a lot of good friends and some good professional contacts (I was already working towards a teaching job), and spent a few pleasant months there. Needless to say, the old temp agency didn't offer me a lot of jobs after this little drama.

The two weeks left me with a few questions that remain unanswered: How can a company in 2001 (that was the time frame) get away with such overwhelming religious jingoism? At least, I *am* Christian; what would a Buddhist or Moslem have had to endure in that environment? How can a company continue to function, when it clearly has absolutely no idea what it's really doing? How is it possible, in a world where almost everything is documented in carbon-copy triplicate AND on labyrinthine computer records, to have NO information about 95% of one's transactions?

And, as you might expect: Why was I still temping?

Next in the series: The pleasures and vicissitudes of temping at Hopkins.