Wednesday July 24th, 2013

The exercise:

Write something that was to do with: insurance.

Had a relatively quick pick for the restaurant this morning before taking it easy for the rest of the day. When it's 40 degrees in the shade before one o'clock, it kind of inspires relaxation.

Funny, that.

Mine:

"I'm not quite sure I understand." The woman on the other end of the phone line, to her credit, is remaining very polite. "Perhaps we have a bad connection and I misheard you?"

"I don't hear any static."

"Well, no, I don't either." She sounds a little flustered now. Poor thing.

"Then I guess the problem is not, as you suggest, between our phones, but instead between your ears."

"Mr. Blake I do not appreciate -"

"And I do not care what you do or do not appreciate." This is so much fun. I should have retired years ago. "So please stop dallying and do your job. Just tell me how much it would cost to get life insurance for my ten goldfish."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow that sounds far too hot! We're cooling down again, we had 1am rain a couple of nights ago (it was hot enough that I was still awake and got to enjoy a half-hour of thunder and lightning!) and 4am rain this morning. Temperatures are definitely feeling better right now.
Your story puts me in mind of this urban legend that you might enjoy, but I like yours rather more. But... did you ever tell us before that Henri's surname was Blake? ;-)

Insurance
Miss Snippet frowned as she read through the documents that Lucy had laid on her desk. Lucy, aged 5, had excellent handwriting for her age, and was meticulous with her calculations, but every so often she would get distracted and something erroneous would creep in. Miss Snippet understood this, but right at the moment her other underwriter was at a ballet class and the estimates couldn't wait.
"Hmmm." She looked up, and looked at Lucy. Lucy quailed.
"This is pretty good," she said, her voice a little stern. "You've clearly got the hang of the actuarial tables now, and some of your assumptions are... well, inspired in the right word, I believe. The only problem with this estimate for life insurance is...." She let the sentence hang in the air for a few moments.
"...is that I am sure that the applicant will be dead by Tuesday and I don't think we should insure such a certainty."
Lucy looked puzzled. "But it's my daddy," she said.
"Quite," said Miss Snippet.

Marc said...

Greg - haha, I'd not heard of that one before. Shame that it's not true.

And funny you mentioned it, as I did sort of have Henri in mind while writing mine :)

Oof, that ending was unexpected. Darkly hilarious though :D