A little long but PLEASE READ

I have been an agent for over 3 years now and my DM is trying to force me to resign. My business has been going downhill for the past year (like every other agent I know in TX) and due to other circumstances I need a supplemental income ASAP. I had hired a licensed producer over a year ago who is very good and running the day to day operations and selling policies.

So I started looking for another form of employment that would keep me in the same town and would allow me to still be in contact w/ my agency throughout the day by phone and email. After a few months I did get a job offer in my local town that is a normal 8-5 job in an office. I am able to still take phone calls from my producer most of the time and I work at the agency every day from about 5-8 in the evenings as well as about 6 hours Saturdays. I still write all of the commercial business and most of the life business. I have been working my second job for about two months and our production in each of the last two months is more than double than any month in the last 8 months. We have had zero customer complaints and business is running very smoothly, so good in fact I will be able to re-hire my secretary next month (I had to let her go back in September due to tight finances).

Now my DM insists I sign a resignation letter?!?!? Am I wrong to think that in my contract is specifies that “The time to be expended by the Agent is solely within the Agent's discretion” and “The Agent shall, as an independent contractor, exercise sole right to determine the time, place and manner in which the objectives of this Agreement are carried out”. If I am writing new business and servicing my existing clients…does my DM or the company have any grounds to terminate my contract if I am not violating any of the 5 reasons that the company says they can terminate my contract? If you know anyone that has gone through this or can give me some advise please respond. Thanks.

You're just not part of your DM's "IN" crowd, they all have an inner circle. If you're not in it, your outside of it and you are fair game for anything. What he plans to do is re-assign what policies you have written to one of his buddies. Same thing is done throughout the company and management would never acknowledge this is common practice but they know it is. The DM's can do whatever they want as long as they produce recruits and sales. I'd love to see all the DM's hit the street. It's appauling how they run the district, they have their buddy agents who drink and womanize to get to the inner circle, other agents are treated like pond scumb. Rules are only applied to those outside the inner circle, if you're in you can do whatever you want which includes writing outside business, stealing clients, whatever. Stinks and I no longer respect the company for condoning such inappropriate behavior.