Thursday, December 25, 2008

Honouring a Truly Lovely Servant: Now that’s the Spirit of Christmas!

The mark of any good workplace, in my opinion, is how it treats its people. At my workplace on Christmas Eve, we had a truly lovely servant of ours retire after twenty-three (23) years of loyal service, and the event of celebrating this achievement is noteworthy.

Such was Trish Hill’s scope and influence within the workplace, many more than normal packed the seventh floor than normally would have, for just about anyone else’s leaving. But leaving it at that would not do justice to the reason why so many came. Trish is a very special person to each one that came.

Her demeanour, value of respect, courtesy, and allowance for fun and the finer things in life simply won hearts. When we dealt with Trish, we dealt with a human being who valued things differently than the typical transactional ways we’d expect. Her currency is love, and she tendered it consistently and graciously.

She brought a sense of personal and eternal value and selflessness to our workplace that is not often seen.

Of all the people at my workplace that are found to be inspiring for quite different and unexpected reasons it is people like Trish that stand out. People like her remind us, by their presence, of the enormous value of the human being; of kindness, love and generosity, and time taken to appreciate the very human aspects of life. And it was just so apt to celebrate her retirement with her on the cusp of Christmas.

Trish will be sorely missed, but then again she’s left an indelible mark on others as a model for how to treat people. And we can only hope that her example has rubbed off on others as she departs and a new ‘Trish-less’ era begins.

We will miss you, Trish!

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