WHAT IF, the One You Love Isn't the One for You?
My wife and I married young, by today's standards. Her first job had been teaching 8th graders, and she hated it almost from the start, but tried to keep a good face on it. Maybe it would get better. By year three, she disliked the school, the kids and the administration, and the dislike was reciprocated. We spent endless nights talking until she accepted that teaching wasn't for her. For her, there was no competition, no excitement, and doing a good job brought no accolades, other than the satisfaction of a job well done.
The older teachers said it was impossible to replace their salary anywhere else, but they had worthless (to the rest of the world) Masters plus 30 credits towards a PHD in teaching, so they were trapped. Beginning teachers don't make all that much money, so it was relatively easy for her to find a comparable paying job. She ended up as a claims adjuster for a big insurance company. She understood this was a job where results mattered, and success was public and praised, and failure got you booted out the door. They trained her in the basics, but she went way beyond that, studied like hell everything else she could find, as she was serious about her career. She worked in the regional office of a big insurance company; you've seen their TV commercials, with about fifty people in her office.
In a small office like that, it's very clubby, and since they tended to hire young, bright people, she had lots of colleagues much like herself, which she liked. When she was a teacher, nearly all the adults were twenty or more years older than her; here she's one of the group. They did a lot of team building, going out to lunch as a group about every other week, Occasionally a few drinks at a bar on the way home, and one rah, rah overnight sales meeting (with spouses) once a year. I go to most of the social event, the Christmas party, summer picnic, and occasional house parties and I've noticed a fair turnover. If you managed to hang in for 6-9 months, you would probably be there for 5 years or more, but very few were ten year veterans.
The work was evaluating and paying off claims, about 95% were small claims, and 5% large ones. Most of the business involved giving overly generous payouts on small claims, it was pretty simple work and this area didn't pay well. However, once you learned the business and if you had the talent, you could move up and make big money on the large claims. The company fought hard to avoid these payouts, if you denied the claim entirely, or offered only partial reimbursement, and the company didn't get sued, you got a bonus.
The principle was, lots of people submit small claims, but the cost to pay the small clams was modest. By somewhat over paying and not quibbling it built the perception that the company was easy to deal with, good about paying claims and all. Of course it didn't hit the bottom line too hard because something like 95% of all claims only amounted to 10-15% of the total payout.
Obviously 5% of the claims were 85% of the payout. On the bigger clams, the big boss, Ivar Lund scanned the contracts and came up with a worst case payout, which was their potential liability. Big claims were stuff like your house burning down, or somebody was maimed in an accident. On these claims they worked hard to pay as little as they could as opposed to what they contractually owed. The agents were paid a bonus based on how little they could settle the claim for, with a claw back if the policy holder sued them.
It was a tribute to Karen's mastery of the business that after six months on the job, Karen was given her first "Big Claim" and got a $3,000 bonus. She didn't get a lot of them, maybe one every month or two, but soon she was rolling in cash because of her track record, they were giving her some of the really big claims. It was like snorting Cocaine for Karen. She loved her job, she had the lowest pay out rate in the office as well as the lowest incidence of pre lawsuit letters from lawyers in her office, and second lowest in the Eastern United States. Apparently she had a knack for screwing people out of what was due them, and having them thank her for it. A dirty business, to my way of thinking, but she argued that like everything else in life, you get what you can negotiate.
Still, she liked her coworkers, and her job, liked traveling to the yearly sales meetings in nice hotels; and...for my part, living with a happy woman is better than sharing life with a miserable one, I know, I've done both. While we wanted children in a few years, we were in candy land, money, youth, no house, no kids, and interesting things to do.
With money to go on vacation! We had options besides seeing the folks back home, or going camping. The two of us were looking at the Caribbean islands, what you think of this one, that one. Karen mentioned Martinique, in the French West Indies. It sounded good to me, the French part should insure that the food would be good, and beach, sun, and sand are the same everywhere.
Karen was excited,
"On a lot of their beaches, you can wear as much or as little as you please. I think it would be neat to run around topless, or even naked. I mean skinny dipping feels really great doesn't it? That wouldn't bother you, would it?"
"Well, no...I mean after I got use to it, I suppose I could look at naked women and not get a hard on. I imagine it's like seeing people anywhere, only without clothes."
"Duh! I bet you this, Chris; I'll bet you there will be a lot of people that we'd wish had kept their clothes on!" we both laughed at that one,
"One of the women and her husband, at work, they go to swinger parties, and was saying that open ones, you know, the public ones attract some really awful looking people. She says the ones they go to, the people invited are pre-selected."
"That's wife swapping and group sex, isn't it?" she shrugged
"Well, I certainly use to spend a hell of a lot of time pre-selecting who I would try to fuck, so I don't think I would farm out the job to somebody else. How the hell do they determine who's invited and who isn't?"
"You have to be personally recommended by both a husband and a wife, and submit a picture. Also no singles or dates, everybody has to attend with their spouse."
"Group sex?"
"I gather you're not good with that, but I think you do whatever you want. Certainly you can say no to anyone, or they to you. I mean it's not like I've ever been to one."
"So it's a beauty contest. Do they have to submit a doctor's report that they have no STD's? Even with condoms, especially in group sex, I imagine you could pick up any number of diseases. Sounds like a recipe for a disease epidemic."
"I agree, it sounds risky. That's why I told her we weren't interested right now."
Gosh, what women got to talking about!
"Jeez, Karen, she was recruiting us?"
Karen laughed,
"Oh look at you! Well she never met you, so I suppose she assumed if you were good enough for me, you would be good enough for them. Sure, how else to you suppose they find new members?"
We ended up going to Martinique, and it was even better than I imagined. On day one, Karen was turned on by going topless while sunning herself and then embarrassed as she skittered with tits jiggling to the water, where she mostly stayed with her tits underwater. We managed to avoid sunburn, and had great sex during our lunch time break from the sunshine. That night we had a grand supper in a small restaurant, neither of us wearing any underwear. Followed by more sex. We both bought wraparound sun glasses so we could look without being obvious, plus the sun was really bright.
On day two, being an old hand showing her tits to the world, she got up the courage to walk topless with me along the waters edge for a mile or more another big turn on, and she saw the very wide range of body types on display, she realized that for all the 'imperfections' she fretted about on her own body, she was surly in the top 10% of females, and thereafter was completely relaxed, not even wearing clothes in our room. By then seeing people as god made them (and occasionally with help from cosmetic surgeons) became quite ordinary, and I too enjoyed the freedom of it. It's nice to fee the ocean breeze on you balls!
At supper we were chatting, Karen said with a bit of a blush,
"Isn't odd how quickly going naked became ordinary. Now I don't give a second thought to going without a bra in a nice restaurant."
I smiled, pointedly looking at her chest,
"Well I certainly notice and appreciate the nipple pokes and the swaying. You're confusing naked with nude, though."
She looked puzzled, "Aren't they much the same?"
"Malachi McCourt gave a definition once. He stepped into a bar for a quick shot, and the bartender said "You have to hang up your coat to be served."
