Nesting day one has come and gone, and if training was standing at the top of a high dive… yesterday was the jump.
It was not a swan dive.
It was a bellyflop.
The day started with our huddle, the meeting meant to gently usher us into our first real day. We were all mostly ready to begin, but the vibe was immediately clear: this was going to be one of those days where everyone was learning as we went. Not because anyone was unprepared, but because the situation itself was unpredictable.
Then came the most dangerous phrase in corporate America:
“Oh, by the way…”
That “by the way” turned into roughly three extra days’ worth of training material delivered in about thirty minutes. Important things. Required things. Steps we needed to do after every call. Steps that had not been mentioned before. My brain nodded along politely while quietly pushing several of my carefully organized processes off a mental ledge.
And then the calls started coming in.
Which is how we discovered our main quoting system was down.
Not dramatically down. No error message. No apology screen. Just a spinning circle. Calm. Silent. Judgmental.
So there we were, brand-new nesters, mastering the advanced skill of professional small talk while staring at a loading icon that refused to participate in our growth journey.
You can only talk about the weather for so long.
“Yes, it is hot there.”
“Oh wow, snow already?”
“Isn’t it wild how weather exists everywhere?”
At some point you’ve exhausted the climate, the city, weekend plans, and whether they’ve lived there long, and you’re just circling conversationally like a Roomba that’s lost the will to live.
Eventually, we learned the workaround… the scenic route through the systems, if you will. It worked, but it came with a catch.
The main system, when it behaves, creates quotes for both systems at the same time. That’s ideal, because if someone isn’t eligible for Farmers, I already have everything I need to quote them with the other company. Efficient. Elegant. Beautiful.
The workaround, however, required me to use my brain.
Specifically, it required me to ask upfront questions. The uncomfortable ones. The kind of questions that make you feel like you’re prying into someone’s soul just to figure out which company to quote them with.
Meanwhile, I’m thinking, Please answer this in a way that lets me put you in the nice system.
Because the second company will insure anyone. Anyone. No judgment. No hesitation. But you’re going to pay. And oh boy, did a few customers not like those prices.
They liked them even less when I was the one reading them out loud.
Somewhere between the quote and the silence on the other end of the line, I learned a valuable lesson: people do not yell at pricing… they yell at the messenger. And yesterday, I was absolutely the messenger.
Despite all of that, it still wasn’t a bad day.
I didn’t sell a policy… yet. But I did successfully send out a couple eCheckout links, which give customers up to five days to review, decide, fill out paperwork, and bind their policy without me hovering nervously on the phone. If they complete it, I still get credit. Future Me remains very appreciative.
I only accidentally hung up on two people while transferring them to affiliates, which feels like a reasonable and respectable number for day one. And one man even praised me for how good I was at my job. I did not tell him it was my first day. I accepted the compliment like someone who had definitely not just been fighting a spinning circle for survival.
Yesterday wasn’t funny while it was happening. I laughed a little, mostly because the alternative was crying into my headset. But chaos has excellent comedic timing once you survive it. It teaches you things training never can, like how to stay calm without tools, how to think fast when systems fail, and how to smile politely while being blamed for math you did not create.
So yes, it was messy. Systems were down. Workarounds appeared. Prices offended people. But I stayed calm, I stayed compliant, I helped people, and I learned more in one chaotic day than I ever could have from a perfect one.
Sometimes progress isn’t a clean dive. Sometimes it’s a splash heard across the pool, followed by a deep breath, a laugh, and the realization that you can handle more than you thought.
Nesting day one is done. Bellyflop and all. And now I get the weekend to recover before I jump back in Monday.
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