Anniversary Speech

With the sales manager on vacation, today I was given the chance to speak at a co-worker’s anniversary celebration. If you don’t get all the inside jokes, you need to come work here.

Good morning. Warehouse wise…

Sorry, wrong speech.

We are gathered here today to celebrate Sue’s 30th anniversary. First off, I don’t want to hear Josh or Ben talking about how old they weren’t in 1991.

Or Rachel or Lauren or Cal or Rachel or Taylor or Jack.

Or Alex or Ashley or James or Buck or Zack.

In 1991 I had worked here for three years, and had just turned 17. Why is that so funny? Now I’m at the age where, whenever I think of my age, I think “I should go lie down.”

But I digress. We are here to honor Sue.

And eat cupcakes.

My favorite thing about Sue is her laugh. Have you heard Sue laugh? Quite infectious. Not quite as infectious as covid, but you get the idea. Maybe more like Ebola. So the goal of this speech is to get her to laugh. Wish me luck.

Sue so you started working here before the AS400 came along? You’ve all heard Steve go on and on with his boring stories about that old computer system. Salespeople would write up the order. And I mean literally WRITE up the order. The order was then handed to someone else to be entered. Then someone else pulled it off the printer and sent it out to the plant. After the order shipped the paperwork would come back to the office to be billed. We were lost without all that paperwork.

When we converted to the AS400 in the early 90’s, we heard that salespeople would have to enter their own orders. A disaster in the making for sure. One or two veteran employees chose to retire. Back then the AS400 had no billing ques or batches. Work orders hadn’t been invented yet. Those were simpler times back then.

I first started hanging out with Sue when a group of Norcross employees were training the Chattanooga office on the AS400, just after the turn of the century (always a good phrase to throw into any 30th anniversary speech) We’d eat key lime pie every day. Good times and bad times.

Sue just think, soon WE’LL get to convert to a another new computer system. Right? Sue? It keeps us young.

Yeah I’ll keep telling myself that.

Sue knows things about the AS400 that I don’t know. Whenever you see me walking though the sales office, it’s usually to ask Sue to solve a problem that I can’t fix. Just recently we were putting our heads together to make sure certain orders were being costed right.

And of course we HAVE to mention what extravagant anniversary gift you’ve chosen from the exclusive Ryerson prize catalog. Everyone wants to know so they’ll know what to look forward to after working here for 30 years. I spoke to Jerry earlier and he’s especially excited about this. Jerry says Sue got this for him to use. A vacuum cleaner.

Steve Garrett isn’t here this week, so we can talk about him behind his back (instead of to his face, right Alex?). If you haven’t noticed, Steve has a fanatical obsession with…say it with me…physical inventory.

Right now Steve is probably at his house resting up, making inventory plans. I can hear Steve now: “Remember, we’ll try to finish up on Friday night, but don’t make any plans for Saturday. I know it’s Halloween, and the Georgia Florida game, and Lauren’s wedding day, but we’ll get through when we get through.”

Sorry about that.

Physical inventory is when Sue emerges from her hidden office space and keeps Steve from completely bouncing off the walls. Of everything Sue does around here, this is perhaps her most important function.

What would we do without you?

So congratulations to my long-time friend and co-worker Sue on her 30th anniversary, a lady who is also my long-time co-worker and friend.