The Reliance Ins. Co.

I must begin this post with an apology to Robert, my boss at AIG, my good friend, my teacher, my boon companion, my favorite boss, and one of the funniest human beings ever. I’m so proud and grateful that he’s chosen to continue being my friend over 20 years after we left AIG. I contacted him about this post, and he said I could write what I wanted. We’ll see about that, won’t we?

I imagine you know, Robert, that I applied for other jobs when I was at AIG. Obviously I never got one. Let me plead for mercy, Robert: I was counsel to the Accident & Health and Group Management Divisions, two groups so far off of the legal grid that they didn’t push the envelope of the law but ripped it to shreds while grinning in my face.

And then anytime I showed up somewhere, they’d say, “Uh oh, here comes the lawyer,” and then laugh like hell and give each other high fives. In case I liked those groups too much, I handled litigation for the Credit Life Division, for which I shall surely burn in hell with extra pitchforking in case I didn’t get the point.

Maybe it was the 90% blockage of my left anterior descending artery (known cheerily as “the widow block”) that caught my attention. The nice doctor said I had no risk factors and wondered why I’d developed a fatal heart condition. “Do you like your job?” he asked. “It’s kind of stressful,” I told him. He said, “You have to quit.” This though running three miles regularly at the high school track. I should note, though, that every stride brought forth a new imaginary angry conversation with a client.

And I was having AIG nightmares constantly. In one, Leigh Herrera, head of the Long-Term Care Division, kept looming up from far below me in the dark to balloon in front of my face. All night she did this. I can still see her dark brown eyes gazing at me, inspiring guilt and revulsion.

Anyway, please forgive me, Robert, but when a headhunter approached me for a job at Reliance, an insurance company in Philly, I was willing to listen, and I got an interview. Faithful readers, I don’t recall if I even knew what products they sold.

It’s odd that I remember speaking with only two people at Reliance: a gentleman from Human Resources and the General Counsel. Weren’t there any other lawyers?

Their offices were very dark and colorless; my recollection is that the walls were painted black, which can’t be true. The walls seemed flimsy, like backstage in a dark theater.

In any event, the first person I met was the HR guy, whom we shall call Anthony, because he had an Italian aspect to him. He was in his 50’s, chubby in a black sweater and a colorless tie. He had olive skin, curly greying hair, glasses, and a mood that was carefully friendly. He looked like a cozy comfy former priest who liked his drink. He had, he told me pointedly, a Ph.D. in psychology.

Anyway, he asked me a series of questions not atypical of those that one gets at an interview. Maybe there was a personality questionnaire to fill out? It seems likely. The question that Anthony asked that I remember most clearly was, “What kind of environment are you used to working in?”

I believed that Reliance was as free-wheeling as AIG, so I said something like, “I’m used to extreme working conditions. Our businesspeople are under constant pressure to produce business all the time, and they’re prepared to do anything they have to. I’m used to turning around an agreement in 24 hours.”

I worked very quickly on agreements. In the end, sadly, they’re all the same, at least in the couple of lightly-forested acres that were my purview. I thought I’d really nailed that answer, which is why I remember it.

But Anthony didn’t react; he never smiled, never seemed interested in being there. I don’t recall him breathing. I remember him because he kept me so long and because I don’t recall being interviewed by HR people in my career. He didn’t do small talk and took a lot of notes. Truly, I could have been at my therapist’s but with a complete lack of empathy.

Then I interviewed with the General Counsel—let’s call him Will. Or Chad would work, too, or Biff. I have truly never been in the presence of someone so stressed out. He was young, not 40, and blond and good-looking. His eyes flickered, his head twitched, his speech was slurred and balky, and his long fingers shook as they fidgeted. I recall very little he said because I was so enthralled by his stress. His eyes roved wildly over his cluttered desk, his thin shoulders hunched and shivered. His lamp shone on his face and lighted the rest of his black office funereally.

“We’re very busy here,” he told me. “We’re under a lot of pressure to perform.” He looked at me, his eyes wide open in terror, and blinked rapidly three times. A couple of times he glanced over my head, and I resisted the urge to check: maybe Anthony was lurking in the dark?

Will was a terribly nice guy; eventually he calmed down enough to ask me about what I did, and he would nod and blink excessively. Eventually I began to feel stressed out as well and couldn’t wait to leave.

I also began to feel some despair; was this a place, with my history, that I wanted to work?

Oh. “Well, I thought I did pretty well,” I said, feeling bad for the headhunter. I hoped she had another candidate for them. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it happens,” she said breezily. She didn’t waste a lot of time but said, “We’ll be on the lookout for something else for you, if you’d like.”

Forgive me Robert, for I said yes.

Then a day or two later, sometime late in the day after the administrative assistants had left, Robert took a phone message for me and left it on my desk, where I saw it after a visit to the restroom. His handwritten note said, “Will said to call back if you had any questions.” And a phone number with 215, the Philly area code.

Oh man, I was so embarrassed. You’re not stupid, Robert, so you must have known what was happening. Meanwhile I was furious with Will/Chad/Biff/Josh. At least he didn’t say that he was calling from Reliance about a job. But what made him think he could leave such a provocative message for me so late in the day?

I called him back. “Hi,” I said. “I just thought you ought to know that your HR department already decided that I wasn’t a fit.”

“Oh,” he said. He waited and then stammered, “I’m s-s-sorry.”

We made our awkward farewells.

I called the headhunter later and told her what happened. “I really wish Will hadn’t left a message with my boss.”

To her credit, she was mortified. “I’ll tell him,” she said. “That wasn’t good. He can’t have thought that was OK.” She paused. “If this effects a change of heart. I mean, if Will can tell Anthony that he’s really interested in you, and they call you back, would you be interested?”

“No,” I said. I was filled with a sudden virulent dislike for Anthony. He hadn’t even checked with his General Counsel, a guy who clearly needed even a warm body, a guy so whacked out that he was calling me—that never happens. He was desperate, Anthony had decided on his own that I wasn’t a good fit. “I don’t want to work in a place where HR doesn’t talk to its clients.”

“I understand,” she said, and we said goodbye.

I later heard that everyone at Reliance got so fed up with not getting that position filled—Anthony had apparently nixed tens of people—that Anthony got shitcanned himself. What was he thinking? That everyone wants insurance lawyer jobs? You ought to be able to pull five lawyers off the street and teach one of them enough to get by. That’s what happened with me, after all. I was lucky to get hired before Robert came on board. He would rightfully have laughed at my candidacy.

I didn’t leave AIG till we moved to Seattle, and even then, I worked for AIG for a while. Robert said, “You’ll go a long way to work from home.” Good thing Robert retired before the pandemic settled everyone at home in their pajamas. Finally, virtually on his own way out the door to be General Counsel at Mass Mutual, Robert hired someone much more qualified to do my job. Thus the G.W. Jarecke Era at AIG came to its sad end. No one cried. I wasn’t told of any further high fives, though.

Once every couple of decades, I wonder what happened to Anthony. He was a real douche canoe and probably still doesn’t think so. Robert, if I had any cognitive abilities left, I’d come back to work for you anytime.

The stunning work of art that was ALICO Plaza: how could I think of leaving it?