NEARING the end of her last day as office manager at The Spectator, a very relaxed and cheerful Annette Moore happily sat down to have a chat and laugh about her decades of service, covering the changes in staff, technology and in herself over the journey.

“When I first came in here, I came in to work in the accounts area on the accounting machine, and there wasn’t a computer anywhere,” she said.

“Every little ad in the paper had to have a docket written, so before a customer got an entry on their ledger card, it was 23 times that one piece of paper got handled by the time it was balanced up, added, checked, whatever.”

But it wasn’t long after that things started to dramatically shift.

“(Publisher) Richard (Beks) came in and said something about computers,” Annette said.

“So he and Nola and I went to Albury and had a look at them operating their computer system - and it was magic. It was absolutely awesome. So we said, ‘Yep, let’s go’ - we drove that, so we got that down here.”

She said that system was quite “sophisticated” and worked very well but although updating to a Windows-based system in 2001 caused some headaches, it was “plain sailing after that” and she said they never looked back again.

“We don’t have to fold accounts anymore, we email invoices out, all the things that used to be time-consuming (are gone),” Annette said.

She was grateful for the original start she got here, as back in 1982 many of her job applications went nowhere, for a reason now considered an anachronism.

“I would get interviews, but you know why I wouldn’t get the job?” Annette said.

“I had children.”

But through her sister already working at The Spec, and “knowing nothing about the newspaper industry”, she was still considered a worthy candidate and given the job, starting just days after her youngest daughter’s fifth birthday.

Annette laughed as she remembered how her first day left her feeling “a bit overwhelmed”.

“The thing that’s always lived in my head whenever I think about it is everyone going to lunch and leaving me by myself,” she said.

“The phone rang and people walked in the front counter - because it used to be a really busy front office years ago … we never had emails and people just used to walk in and place their ads and you had no EFTPOS, it was always cash.

“I knew nothing. I didn’t know how to charge an ad and I was taking ads over the phone and by the time somebody got back, my wrist was nearly dropping off because I’d been writing (constantly).”

Her early lack of proficiency appears not to have lasted long as it only took 18 months for her to be offered the position of office manager - and she said she was always happy in the working environment.

“You sort of develop a certain loyalty to the people you work with, especially when they’re good to you,” she said.

“They were always really supportive.”

She said she was especially appreciative of how several personal and family turmoils had been accommodated by management and thought they were ahead of their time in terms of flexibility and looking after staff.

“Even though now there’s laws that say people are entitled to this or entitled to that – we’ve had them anyway,” Annette said.

“I just enjoyed working here at The Spectator.

“It’s been a big part of my life – actually it’s longer than anything else I’ve done in my life, except being married and I’ve really enjoyed the challenges along the way. I’ve enjoyed learning all the new things.

“I have a sister who changes jobs every five or six years, and she can’t understand how anyone could stay in one job for so long (but) I’ve loved doing it, and I’ve had some really lovely people to work with.”

Speaking at the staff morning tea celebration of her career, publisher Richard Beks said her 41 years of knowledge “has been really valuable to us” and hoped “that won’t be totally lost when she heads off this afternoon with (husband) Peter into the sunset”.

Her immediate plans were to complete a Certificate II in Horticulture at TAFE - “I love gardening” – and was grateful for the retirement gift from management – an overseas holiday for two – but was happy to make the trip something modest, rather than the potential big jaunt to Europe or North America.

She was given an A4 envelope with various travel brochures to consider, but of them said “I don’t really need to look at those because I really want to go to Vanuatu”.

Colleagues laughed as the variable of the ‘plus one’ was briefly discussed, husband Peter maybe not being first on the list.

“Peter’s feeling a bit left out on that one – he reckons everyone’s laughing because my daughter’s desire is – she’ll want to go,” Annette smiled.

She said it was more likely to make the trip effectively a ‘four for the price of two’ holiday that wasn’t a fancy cruise and instead “live in a hut somewhere on a beach for a week or two” and “just chill out”.

Asked about the unusual weekday (a Wednesday) to finish her career, Annette said the date held special significance for her, being exactly 41 years after her frantic baptism-of-fire lunchtime hour in the front office.

“I’ve been (thinking) to retire on and off for about 12 months,” Annette said.

“I just never ever found the right time to do it because I always wanted to leave as if I’d never been here.”

Although she had been outlining a rough pathway to her retirement as long as 10 years earlier when she went from full-time to part-time – which she happily admitted helped her extend her time in the job – she said she had finally relaxed about the office running without her.

“I thought, ‘I’ve got to set a date now’,” she said.

“(I then counted) August, September, October, November – four months, that sounds good.

“Then I thought, ‘I started on the 29th of November, (and) I’m going to finish on the 29th of November’.”

So as the day arrived and her career only a few hours away from completion, Annette said she was grateful for the “respect for one another” that defined her experience of working at The Spec, and conveyed how much it meant to her by relating an experience from earlier in the day.

“My daughter … came in here to say, ‘we’re just going to give you a hug mum,’ and she’s crying and everything,” Annette said.

“She sent me a text about half an hour later and said, ‘I’m sorry I cried’ and I said, ‘Well, that’s alright. I didn’t cry because I knew that if I started, I wouldn’t stop!’”

Again, her laughter fills the air; she will be missed.