By Narelle Coulter
Long-serving Patterson Cheney employee Ann Borradale has been one of “Patto’s little angels” for 40 years.
That’s the term she and other warehouse workers used to employ when teasing each other.
On 29 June Ann clocked up four decades as one of “Patto’s little angels”.
She has spent her entire career working in the warehouse of the iconic Dandenong business.
Ann makes sure orders for parts are filled correctly and make it undamaged and on time to customers all over country Victoria. On a busy day she can handle up to 50 packages.
Fastidious about her work, when she knocks off at night Ann locks away her tape dispensers so they don’t “disappear”.
Ann started at Patterson Cheney in 1977. That same year Australia experienced its worst rail disaster at Grenville near Sydney, Jimmy Carter was US president and Malcolm Fraser was returned for a second term as Prime Minister.
Ann, who grew up in Mordialloc, was 21 when she joined the Patterson Cheney team.
She remembers large pipes snaking around the upper walls of the warehouse leading to the telephone room.
Ann’s job was to collect orders ready for dispatch. She would wrap the items and place them in tubes. The tubes would be sucked up the pipes and transported to the dispatch area.
“Orders would come down to us the same way. One pipe went up, the other went down,” Ann explained.
In those days the warehouse staff often laboured amid a haze of cigarette smoke.
“You could smoke just about anywhere,” Ann remembered.
“There were big ashtrays everywhere for the staff to use. You could smoke and do your work at the same time.”
She remembers a supervisor by the name of Merv bending over a crate full of shredded paper, a cigarette hanging from his lips. Miraculously, the paper never caught alight.
“No one used to bat an eyelid,” Ann said.
She also remembers Kath the canteen lady, wheeling around a trolley at 10am each morning laden with cakes and biscuits for staff morning tea and warehouse staff routinely climbing up on shelves to retrieve items that had been pushed to the back.
“Then we’d climb down or jump down. I wouldn’t be able to do that now,” she said, laughing.
To mark Ann’s four decades of service, managing director Cameron Bertalli presented her with a plaque and a cheque at a special celebratory morning tea.
“Ann is such a truly valuable team member, we are very proud of all of her achievements and 40 years’ service is just fabulous, we love the energy that she brings to our warehouse every single day,” he said.
Logistics manager Daniel Turner said Ann was a well-respected employee who “gets along with everyone and is the first to offer assistance”.
“Ann is not a clock puncher, she is a part of the Patterson Cheney family always leading by example.
“If she has not finished a job at the end of her shift she will stay back until the job is completed, no questions asked.”
At 62 Ann has no plans for retirement.
“It’s been quite a good place to work over the years. It has been really nice.
“You just try to do your best and I like the contact with the couriers, we have a bit of a joke.”
