Deborah Ford retires today, after a career that’s older than Sesame Street, the Moon Landing, and The Brady Bunch, and that, in and of itself, would be impressive enough. But the sixty-four year old postal worker has also completed her forty-four year career without taking a single sick day.
She doesn’t want any praise for it, however. To her, it all comes down to doing the right thing. From Yahoo! News:
“I was trying to do the best I could, and that just evolved into working all my scheduled days…” Ford said her father, who is 86 years old and never took a sick days in 30 years, also doesn’t see what the fuss is about. “It’s just part of our work ethic.”
And it’s not that Ford never got sick. She did! She just “shook it off” or at worst used a vacation day to see the doctor. And that sacrifice of more than four thousand hours of paid sick leave has at least paid off a little: with a 5% increase to her pension. What’ll she do with it?
Ford says she’ll “rest up and see where life takes me,” maybe do some volunteer work, or take some classes. But that she’ll definitely be spending more time with her eighty-six year old dad. She won’t miss the job, but she will miss her coworkers, “the lives you touched and the lives that touched your life,” and we’re sure they’ll miss her too!
(via The FW.)
