Death, dismemberment, and a walk in the park. Just your typical Wednesday afternoon.

I spent the greater part of my day learning about all of the benefits that will accompany my new job with the government, along with my protection from harassment and various other workplace unpleasantries. I am now a Teamster member for life, which is great because I love rights and a good collective bargain every now and then. Later in the day, I had some time to walk around Pioneer Square and reflect upon my new position as a civil servant.

I realized that the meeting was indeed very informative and I now have enough literature about my employment to create a small textbook. At the time, the meeting seemed rather upbeat, but in retrospect I realize how taken aback I am by the casual tone in which one benefit was discussed: Accidental Death & Dismemberment insurance, or AD&D as it is playfully abbreviated for those who use the phrase with enough frequency. AD&D comes as a separate entity to life insurance, although really, at the end of the day, both forms of compensation are reminders of our fragility and our mortality.

From what I've been able to understand so far, LIFE INSURANCE is the government's (or any other corporation's) way of saying, "Your life was worth something, $X, in fact. You = $X. Now your loved ones can have $X instead of you. It's close enough, right?"

AD&D INSURANCE is a bit more like saying, "Oops! That wasn't supposed to happen. Here is $X for the whole of you (remember You = $X), OR $X (whole) ÷ Y (loss of various extremities) - Z (loss of workplace ability e.g. typing) = x (new worth)."




This may be a rather morbid way of quantifying the goals of insurance, but isn't insurance all about quantifying us? It gives us and our massive amounts of stuff a numerical value. I do find it somewhat disturbing that my hands are now worth a value inasmuch as that value contributes to my work performance. Even worse, this value exceeds many families' entire gross annual income around the world. AD&D really gave me a new perspective on the phrase "it costs an arm and a leg," but at the end of the day the trade-off just doesn't seem worth it. A topic of discussion for my next Teamster meeting, perhaps?