ANDOVER, Mass.—The year was 1954. Roger Banister broke the four-minute mile barrier. Philly-born pool player Willie Mosconi sunk 526 pool balls without missing. Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren, and Lana Turner were sizzling Hollywood stars. Doris Day topped the song charts with “Secret Love.”
And a young 16-year-old walked into the Andover Companies to fill a job slot recommended by her school—and never left.
Same job description. Same company. After 60 years, Olga Sarkisian will finally call it a career July 1 when she begins retirement. And it won’t be with a dry eye.
You might say she’s been a creature of habit all these years, living in the same home where she was raised, surrounded by her brother and other family members. She lived and cared for her mom Satenig, until she passed in 2008.
The myth around the company was that Olga would retire after her mother died. She worked another year…yet another…and several more after that.
“If you love your work, why leave?” she told 350 guests at a farewell party. “Overall, it’s been a wonderful career with a wonderful company.”
All of it was spent in the accounting department where Olga outworked everyone else, seldom missed a day, and was known for her extreme loyalty. There were various changes along the way with personnel and buildings, processes and equipment.
She learned it all, including the current process of online payments. Olga preferred the rolodex for looking up mortgage information rather than the internet. No such thing as voicemail or e-mail when she started. Policies were in paper form and letters were done with carbon paper in between.
Making a mistake meant changing three copies. She preferred the use of regular pencils and kept a sharpener handy while being the last puritan to relinquish a manual typewriter in the early 1990’s.
The swatter she kept handy was not for chasing flies, but was used to tap a careless employee’s shoulder when an error could have been avoided.
She has seen her staff grow from young adults to grown adults having children of their own and then retirement age. Rarely did she take a sick day, not when you have accumulated 400 of them over time.
What’s more, Olga drove the same car to work for 20 years. Her 1991 Honda Accord had fewer miles on the odometer than some of the newer models, thanks to a five-minute commute. It should be mentioned that she was also a Mercedes owner, but preferred the Honda for day-to-day.
Off the job, Olga’s passion has been her faith. She was a founding member of St. Gregory Armenian Apostolic Church in North Andover, where she’s maintained the books ever since its inception in 1970. So precise is her bookkeeping, you’d be hard-pressed to find one penny off balance.
A bad day with the Boston Red Sox usually meant a dour moment at work. Nothing that a frozen mudslide wouldn’t cure after business hours. Now that she’s leaving, someone else will have to draw the winning raffle ticket for a TV at the company’s Christmas party, ending a 30-year tradition.
As her co-workers so aptly put it, “One thing Olga will miss is the holidays. In retirement, there are no days off. You will be officially retired every day!”
Tom Vartabedian
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What’s especially amazing is that anyone could maintain a job for six decades, especially in today’s environment of right-sizing, re-sizing, down-sizing and any other sizing that usually involves reducing people to nothing more than numbers.
A retirement well-earned and well-deserved. Enjoy it.