LAST DAY
38 years working for one company is a profoundly long time. I’d venture a guess and say that it’s not the norm any longer, with most young people changing firms at the drop of a hat.
I’ve had the good fortune to have just one company controller at Reliable, his name is Rex. Rex decided to make it a career and retired on June 30, 2021, he started in 1983. That’s a long time ago.
As hard as I try, I can’t really remember much about 1983. But I do know it was the year that I started working for what eventually became my company. At that time Rex wouldn’t have been much on my radar. I was a young sales rep trying to do what sales reps do, I didn’t have the luxury of hanging around the office much. It wasn’t until 1991 when my father passed away that my relationship with Rex started to evolve. He was the guy looking after the books and I was as green as the grass. Thankfully, Rex stuck around, in both good times and bad and there was plenty of bad on the horizon.
The cliche is that it’s another “end of a chapter”. When you’re a company that started in 1955 we can count lots and lots of chapters. They haven’t always had a good ending. I believe this one has. Rex has good health and we were able to hire his replacement long enough in advance that the transition should be seamless. And while Covid restrictions forced us to scale back our celebrations, I think that all in all it was a good day for Rex and a good way to say “thank you and farewell”.
SHOT WITH FUJI X100V
