By: Andrew Heuss

It was February 13th, 2020 and I drove to my normal Caribou Coffee at 7:30 am. There was a summer blue sky, even though it was 50 degrees cooler than those coveted July days. I had just returned from a ski trip out West, where I had attempted to conquer the black diamond ski runs, emphasis on “attempted”. I grabbed my coffee, read the daily news, took a peek in my rear view mirror, and headed to Fiat Wealth Management for my first day as the Case Manager.

The first few weeks were, as people say, a “fire hose” of information.  Learning softwares, logins, operations, the do’s and don'ts. It was going to be a challenge to get my head wrapped around everything, but I was ready for a challenge. Three weeks later, that challenge decided to dent my ego even more when I was sent home because of Covid-19 quarantine guidelines. For me, working from home is not the most enjoyable experience. It involves slow internet, forgotten documents at work, kids in the background of Zoom calls, and the ever-blended home office/living room combination.

For me, working from home was tedious and tested my patience. My learning was slow, my output was meek, and the final product of my efforts weren’t what I would call “usable”. It took a lot of back and forth with my new work colleagues, many late nights and early mornings of learning, listening, doing, and redoing before I started to progress in my position. Slowly, but surely, Fiat and I were able to adapt to the new work environment that unhinged the daily lives of billions of people worldwide.

Throughout the past year, I’ve been able to learn more than I thought possible, all while dealing with Covid restrictions. I have become a fairly good (maybe I’m a little arrogant?) Case Manager at Fiat. It’s been a lot of work to start at ground zero, and learn everything from scratch, but it became a worthwhile challenge.

Throughout the Covid work-from-home guidelines, being employed at Fiat has been a blessing. The flexibility and patience provided by not only my managers, but by the other employees, has been more appreciated than I have ever let on. Sometimes in our industry, we find ourselves in intense and high pressure situations, but we realize that everything will always get done, everything will get finished, and we are in this business together for the betterment of ourselves, our clients and those in our community.

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