Turning a negative into a positive isn’t always easy, but that’s what a Kansas-based shop owner is striving to do.
After hearing the same expressions used by insurance adjusters over and over, he began to store some of these tiresome phrases, such as “We don’t pay for that” or “But we’re giving you full clearcoat,” in the back of his mind and on paper. The once-frustrating expressions suddenly seemed funny, and that’s what sparked his idea for the That’s Included! Insurance Adjuster Quote of the Day calendar.
“You’re mad as hell at the time when you hear [those sayings], but later on, we’ll be shaking our heads laughing about how lame some of them are,” he said.
In a style that’s similar to The Far Side, the six-day-a-week 2013 calendar features a different caption and corresponding cartoon every day. The stick figure stars of the product are depicted doing somewhat quirky things, like vomiting in a toilet or gazing down a black hole, to emphasize the discontent that some body shop owners experience with adjusters.
Between sorting through his hefty backlog of memorable quotes from adjusters and finding a company to publish the product, the creator says the calendar took about eight months to produce. But that’s an effort that he was willing to put forth in order to bring humor to the collision repair industry.
“The people that we’ve showed it to start laughing, even though these are lines we’ve heard a bunch before. The stick figure cartoons on each page help lighten the mood and make it funny,” he said.
The calendar can be ordered online at www.thats-included.com for $19.99 via PayPal.
