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http://www.mlive.com/news/grpress/index.ssf?/base/news-39/119830773665410.xml&coll=6
After 60 years, it's quitting time Saturday, December 22, 2007 By Tom Rademacher The Grand Rapids Press
When Rosie Wysocki hired on at American Seating way back in 1947, an executive predicted that because she was a woman, she wouldn't last long.
Rosie shot back, "I'm going to prove you wrong if I have to work here 100 years."
That executive is long gone. But Rosie has endured and, at the age of 87, put in her last day Friday at the Grand Rapids institution, logging more than six decades as a full-time employee.
At just shy of 60 1/2 years, she may well be American Seating's longest-serving employee ever, which is saying something for a company that has been around since 1886.
Company Chairman and CEO Ed Clark knows of a couple of folks with more than 50 years but none in excess of 60.
Dozens of people showed up Thursday at a luncheon staged in front of Rosie's work station, known as "C-13." It's where she weighs and packages hardware from 6 in the morning until 2:20 p.m.
She is paid just less than $17 an hour for her labor -- a far cry from the 89 cents per hour she hired-in at on Aug. 1, 1947.
A native of Grand Rapids, Rosie dropped out of Union High School in the 11th grade during World War II when her father fell sick. She first signed on with Hayes Manufacturing at 85 cents an hour but was laid off on V-J Day.
In applying for better pay at American Seating, she submitted a reference from her parish priest from St. Adalbert Basilica. He recommended her with this handwritten testimonial: "She is a woman of good habits as far as I know as a pastor," and signed it, "Sincerely yours, the Rev. John Maksymowski."
Rosie stands barely 5 feet -- "Put down 5-1; it'll make me feel taller," she instructs me -- but her stature is legendary at this West Side business.
"She's going to create a huge void here," said Paul Dieterle, who directs human resources. "And I'm not just talking about her job packing hardware."
No lollygagging here
Indeed. Rosie is a living, breathing throwback to another era, when you savored your job at any cost, worked whatever hours the boss asked and were thankful for a paycheck at week's end.
"You know what I can't stand?" she asks. "People who say, 'That's not my job.'"
According to Rosie, people worked "a lot harder then than they do now," and to illustrate, she tells a story about how she once stopped working to blow her nose:
"What did you stop for?" she says a foreman challenged.
"I don't want my snot on the merchandise," she told him.
"Don't let it happen again," he barked.
It's the sort of confrontation that could breed contempt in another employee, but not Rosie. "I never met a boss that I didn't like," she says. "You do your job and nobody bothers you. You lollygag around, though, and you hear about it."
A widow since 1981, when she lost her husband, Stan, to a heart attack at the age of 64, Rosie focuses on her three children and a half-dozen grandkids -- the reason, she says, she has worked so long.
"They didn't come out of college with the great big bills," says Rosie, who helped all of them with school finances. "And let me tell you, they're all smart kids, too."
Smart enough, you might argue, that two of them -- sons James and Edward -- have retired before Rosie.
Rosie has been working so long, in fact, she has been collecting her pension for more than 17 years, not to mention Social Security. All of which makes one wonder if she's well off. So I ask her, "Are you a rich lady?"
She lightly slaps my hand and says, "None of your business. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!"
She enjoys casinos
She lives simply, in a modest home on the West Side. She eschews going out for lunch during the work week, instead packing a bologna or tuna fish sandwich. "You want some?" she teases. "But you can't have any fruit -- I ate that."
When I ask if she's ever taken an exotic vacation, she says, "You better believe it," and singles out, of all places, some place called Bullhead City, Ariz. "You should see their casino," she marvels.
Apparently, that's her only vice -- a little gambling. As far as liquor and tobacco go, she has never tried either.
"I don't even take the church wine," she says of the Communion offering available at Mass.
And as for smoking, she blurts out, "Do you see a chimney sticking out of my head?" Still feisty after 60-plus years on the job.
Even though, with the grandkids out of college, she's retiring from American Seating, who's to say she's done working?
Waving a thumb to the north, where American Seating's chief competitor is less than a mile away, she winks and says, "I hear Irwin Seating's hiring."
Tom Rademacher's column runs Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. E-mail: trademacher at grpress.com