Goodbye my friend ❤️❤️❤️

It’s hard to believe I retired from Aetna over 2 1/2 years ago. When you work at a job for over 22 years it becomes a big part of your life. And the people you work with become family. You don’t always realize just how much time you spend together. You take it for granted…

The year 2000 was possibly my best year ever at Aetna. Our Seattle sales team was trying to land a big client, Nordstrom, known for their excellent customer service. Up until that time, in our office at least, claims were handled in one unit and customer service in another. A decision was made to offer Nordstrom a dedicated unit, staffed by service consultants, who would be trained to take calls and process claims. At the time, I was a supervisor of HMO customer service. Nordstrom was being offered HMO in some areas and PPO in others. Before we even won the contract I was promoted to handle the HMO team. Sarah McQuay was fairly new to our office but not to health insurance. She was promoted to lead the PPO team, which was the majority of the business. We hadn’t worked together but we quickly bonded when we found out that the sales team wanted to interview us for the jobs we had already been hired for!

Sarah was the perfect person to lead the Nordstrom team. She was always stylishly dressed and she loved Nordstrom! I’m not sure if I had ever even been in a Nordstrom and I had to step up my game and do some shopping before we met the customer. Luckily Aetna was ultimately selected to be the health insurance carrier for Nordstrom. Sarah and I went to Seattle to meet the HR staff and learn about the Nordstrom culture before training our teams.

Sarah was a lot of fun to travel with and we had a great time sight seeing and shopping, at Nordstrom of course! We felt it was important to dress the part and we found a lot of great deals on the sales racks!

Sarah and I spent four or five years as partners on the Nordstrom account. Our cubicles shared a wall so it was easy to communicate. We were a great team since Sarah was an early bird and arrived at some ungodly hour like 5:30 or 6:00. I rolled in around 9:00 and stayed after she went home. We shared opening and closing duties with the other supervisors but our partnership ensured that I never had to open and she never had to close.

I was Sarah’s personal IT desk and it was fun to help her over the years. Even years later, when I moved to another position, she would call or IM me and I would come help her. If she remembered something I taught her, she made sure I knew and was proud of her!

Sarah loved meeting Patrick and hearing stories about him. In fact, she was privy to a little bit too much information and usually knew things I would not tell others.

Sarah tended to be more of a homebody and usually didn’t socialize outside of work but one year we convinced her to go to the Christmas party and Patrick and I picked her up. We were in our 30’s at the time, with two small children so a night out was a treat! When the party ended we were reluctant to end the night so a group of us decided to go out for drinks. We ended up at the bar in the bowling alley. We had to practically kidnap Sarah to get her to go. Actually I kind of think we DID kidnap her since she really had no choice. There was only one problem, the bar carded everyone and made you leave if you didn’t have an ID. One person in our group had forgotten their ID and it was the oldest person, Sarah! Patrick offered to take her home to get the ID but she was thrilled to have an excuse to leave and no way was she coming back!

Sarah loved birthdays and her team loved her! They always decorated the entire unit and made her feel like a celebrity. One year the theme was her beloved Rod Stewart. Another year it was the academy awards. I managed to find some pictures from her birthday on October 10, 2002 and I’m including them below.

I don’t think I had seen Sarah since we both retired in January 2017. I’ve been told she was devastated about Patrick and was worried about me. I don’t know if she had heard I am getting married but I would have loved for her to meet Bruce, she would have thought he was really cute!

On Friday I was driving near where she lived and thought about calling her but I was going shopping so I decided not to. I had also been thinking about her when Aaron’s name kept popping up as a friend suggestion. I’ve said before that i don’t think those sort of thoughts are a coincidence so next time I’m thinking about an old friend, I’m going to call.

I will miss you Sarah! If I know Patrick, I’m sure he made sure you had a glass of white wine in your hand as soon as you arrived!