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Last time, I talked about using Insurance Adjusters
as romantic heroes. To successfully design such
a character, you first need to know about the
traits common to real-life adjusters. For the
sake of analogy, think about these traits as rules.
It's not that your character has to have them
all but, as with grammar, if you decide to break
one, do it knowingly and not out of ignorance.
Breaking a rule, done knowingly, can add depth
and individuality to your hero. Breaking a rule
out of ignorance will most likely just make your
hero unbelievable.
The first trait common to the modern adjuster
is good customer-relations skills. I've known
crusty old adjusters in my time, the guys who
were rude, insulting and confrontational. Like
the Dodo, though, they're gone. Consumers, these
days, are too savvy to tolerate ill treatment
from their adjusters. They'll either complain
to management, threaten to take their business
elsewhere, or, most likely, get themselves a lawyer.
The last is definitely not desirable, because
once a lawyer steps between the claimant and the
adjuster, the chance to ask questions dries up
for a long time (until Discoveries, but that's
another topic).
So, if you want to break this rule, do it wisely.
Make sure the crusty adjuster character works
in a small town, where it's so hard to find good
adjusters, the company has no choice but to keep
this relic on staff. Or, make sure there's another
reason why he's still on staff. Is he one infraction
away from being fired? Or, does he have something
he's holding over the boss' head? Or, is his sister
married to the boss? The reason has to be powerful
enough to justify a large corporation keeping
on someone who no longer fits their mold.
Another trait is nosiness. Sorry, I meant to
say inquisitiveness. Being curious about things,
and asking questions to satisfy that curiosity,
is the life-blood of adjusting. How skilled the
adjuster is at asking questions will determine
how good an adjuster he is. Some, the mediocre
ones, ask only the most obvious questions, don't
really think about the answers, and don't probe
for what the claimant isn't telling them. The
good ones do all those things. I call it looking
below the surface. Others call it reading between
the lines.
If you want to break this rule, you'll have a
tougher time making your character believable.
In my experience, those who don't know how to
look below the surface don't usually last in the
business. So, if your character doesn't look,
making it a conscious or unconscious choice might
be better. He's capable of reading between the
lines but for some, believable, reason, he's shut
himself off. Maybe he's burned out, or perhaps
he's so angry at being passed over for promotion,
he just doesn't care anymore.
And then, there's stress. Everyone knows that
doctors and dentists, lawyers and cops, are all
under a lot of job stress. So are Insurance Adjusters.
Why? There's the obvious but true answer of workload.
Most large companies today have fewer frontline
employees doing more and more work. Caseloads
are often impossible. Catching up is an illusive
dream. Most stressful, however, is having to deal
with the public while keeping a smile on your
face. Don't get me wrong—most people, under
normal circumstances, are terrific. Put these
same people under their own stresses, such as
a loss of any kind, and a large percentage become
demanding, arrogant, rude, irritable and downright
cranky. And those are the ones with honest claims!
So, either your character can deal with the stress,
and you'll need a believable way for him to do
that, or he'll start to burn out. If it's the
latter, the signs can be anything. Alcohol is
one but this guy's supposed to be a hero, so you'll
need a way for him to overcome his problem. Not
caring about his job, doing only the minimum required
to get by is a very common one, and one that's
harder for management to deal with. That fact
makes it completely believable that this type
of adjuster would still be on staff.
In the end, this hero is yours to create. Make
him anything you want him to be so that he's uniquely
yours. But, know the rules so that when you break
them, it's because you're creating a character,
not a caricature.
Deb Sarty is a member of GVC. She has been adjusting
insurance claims, both as a staff and an independent
adjuster, since 1981.
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