My Fairfax County career

I started writing this just after I retired, then accidentally deleted a small section, got frustrated about it and put it aside. I may have to revisit later to add/update, maybe add some pictures too.

I retired on April 23 after more than 31 years working for Fairfax County. As I think back over those years, I decided it would be good to document my career...as I wrote, I realized it is also a bit of a life timeline as well. I'm guessing on some of the details here, but as they say "good enough for government work," right?

Back in 1989, my second cousin Debbie Hutchison was working as a secretary for the Substance Abuse Services (SAS) office in Reston. They hired staff from a temp agency to cover the evening shift, which was from about 4 to 8 p.m. At the time, I was taking classes at the community college, so this was a perfect gig. I answered the phone, which didn't ring much...and when people called for directions, I didn't know anything about Reston so I was truly unhelpful. I typed some letters, made some copies. An easy job. Debbie and the other secretary Jo Czoski, and sometimes Debbie's friend Sally Dunn (who worked upstairs for what was then called the Department of Human Development, which later turned into the Department of Family Services), were there for the first part of the shift so we'd shoot the breeze and have a good time.

Jermantown Road office

Then in 1990 I made that ill-fated decision to quit taking college classes and get married and I needed a full-time job (I mean, it all worked out really well in the end, but what a dumb couple of decisions!). By that time, Debbie had moved over to the Jermantown Road office in Fairfax, which was the administrative office for Alcohol and Drug Services (the new name of SAS). They used temps to cover the various ADS sites when the regular people had days off, so Debbie connected me with Frances Brown, who brought me on, still through the temp agency. I think I made about $8.74 an hour, which I thought was pretty amazing. I remember being sent to our A New Beginning residential substance abuse program in Chantilly, which at that time was in this dark, small house, and being completely clueless. I also remember being sent to work at our Falls Church Youth office, and even though I was living in Arlington by that time, I still had no clue where anything was. One afternoon as I left Falls Church, I got on Route 66 headed west....I immediately realized I'd gotten on the wrong way and needed to go east. Take the next exit, and what do you know, there's a police officer there who pulls me over and writes me a ticket for an HOV (high occupancy vehicle) violation. Somehow he didn't believe my true story that I'd simply gotten on the road going the wrong direction. I truly don't think I ever drove on Route 66 before moving to Arlington. Live and learn!

By April 1991, I was hired in a merit county position as a Clerk Typist II. I sat at the front desk for the admin office, greeting visitors, answering the phone, dealing with the interagency courier, mail and office supplies, and generally figuring out what it means to work for a living. Oftentimes we ordered in (Pizzarama was a favorite) or someone picked up lunch and we'd sit in a conference room and watch soap operas or CMT music videos. Good fun! It was a low-stress job, working 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. with no need for any overtime that I can recall.

With Margaret Kollay and my really big hair.

Next up was a Clerical Specialist position in September 1992. This position worked with the payroll team – well, a team of just two people so not much of a team I guess. I remember sitting in my very first office (with a door and everything!) the first day without a clue what to do. But then they got me trained up and I did tasks like reviewing people's time sheets – hard copy, NCR paper time sheets! – sending out performance evaluations to supervisors to complete, meeting with new employees to do their county paperwork, and that sort of thing. Somewhere in this time, I think, is when I moved from Arlington to Leesburg. My boss was a very nice lady named Pat Hicks, who was such a hard worker. Somehow in this time frame I even got to move to a couple different offices. I think I was in this job when we first got a thing called "email" – I think they called it PROFS – I wonder what that stood for? No clue now, all these years later! One of my responsibilities from time to time was to be the one to go pick up the pile of hard copy paychecks and then help hand them out back at the office. I think direct deposit was possible, but most people still preferred the physical paycheck. It was several years later that it became required that you use direct deposit.

With Cousin Debbie. I loved that jumper, but not
sure what's happening with my hair!

I was promoted to a Secretary II position in September 1993, taking over after good ol' cousin Debbie got promoted to a new job over at the CSB's office in the Pennino Building. I was the secretary for the Director of ADS, as well as supporting the Service Directors, of which I think there were four or five. I had an even bigger office (wooo), this time with windows! This was pretty much the most fun time I ever had at work. We had the "Lara/Laura Coalition" – myself, Laura Weekley, Laura Yager and Laura Schmitt – if people called and asked for La(u)ra, they had lots of options to choose from. Laura Yager was the queen of making things fun. We had scavenger hunts, "yard" sales, and did things like creating hand turkeys for an art competition. There was a balcony on one office where we hung out a lot on breaks – some of the gang were smokers so they had to go out there - and had a million laughs. (Side note: for the first couple of years I worked for the county, you could actually smoke at your desk!!! So crazy.) The job also included taking meeting notes at the Alcohol & Drug Committee, which was a subcommittee of the main Community Services Board, a group of citizens that provide policy oversight for the agency. This was something new and different, and it required working one evening per month since the meetings were at night. I learned a lot about capturing what happens during very detailed discussions in that time, and met some great Board members. I also did general sorts of secretarial work – typing letters from handwritten drafts, setting up interviews and meetings, organizing their mail, etc. One thing I remember from that time frame is when the O.J. Simpson trial was wrapping up, a whole bunch of us gathered in a conference room with a TV to hear the (disappointing) verdict. In this job, I also started doing my first graphic design tasks, learning as I went.

It was somewhere in this time frame where we got another amazing new thing at the office....the internet. Wild and crazy! Also wild and crazy....I got divorced somewhere in there. A while after that Laura Yager set me up with a guy from her softball team, who I dated long term. His best feature was that through him I met a cool new guy on his softball team by the name of Tod. Fortunately that first guy decided to move to Phoenix so we broke up, and that guy Tod and his fiancé broke up, and the rest was history. Laura played matchmaker with us as well...I remember we'd arranged for the three of us to go to a movie together but at the last minute, Laura canceled....all part of her plan.It wasn't long before Tod and I were a thing. I remember one day he stopped by the office to see me and drew a screensaver on my computer (no tech security in those days!) with a red background and hearts with the words "I love you Lara" on it – I wonder if I still have that? Sigh I think it's gone now. Somewhere in here I moved from my apartment in Leesburg, where Jennifer briefly lived with me before moving in with Wayne, back home with Mom and Jim in Sterling. I'm so lucky that they let me do that, and helped with my wonderful dog C.J. as I enjoyed my newly single life.

With Laura Yager and Joan Rodgers outside
Bravos after my farewell luncheon.

Back at work, I took a promotion to an Administrative Aide position in the Document Services Division of the Department of Telecommunications and Consumer Affairs (what a hodgepodge of stuff!) in October 1998. This job was at the main Fairfax County Government Center Building, which had its perks – I even made use of the employee gym for a while. The job wasn't a great fit, though. There wasn't a lot to do and it turned out there was some mismanagement going on in that division (like front page of the Washington Post level mismanagement), and a lot of "good ol' boys" networks where employees took advantage of their status. But I got to know the county Print Shop and mail room folks, which was really great. I did their payroll work and also was the secretary for the director. I spent a lot of time redoing the personnel files in new folders so they'd be more organized, and whatever else I could think of to try to fill 40 hours in a week.

I lasted a year in that job before I got a call from my old pals at the CSB. Someone – I think it was Amy Riggle – called and said they've got a job opening for the Clerk to the CSB Board, and Jim Thur (the Executive Director) wasn't as bad as people made him out to be. Trouble was that I didn't have any bad impressions of him, but that made me wonder! I wanted out of the job I was in since I learned it wasn't very fulfilling to be a paper pusher for a random government agency. Even though I never directly helped any CSB clients with their challenges, I always liked that I helped the people who helped. So I decided to go for it.

The Clerk to the Board job, according to my old performance evaluations, was an Administrative Assistant III and I rejoined CSB in October 1999. I think this means I may have taken a demotion for the job?? I don't remember that, but it could be – the county lets you keep your same pay if you take a demotion like that, so it would have been in name only that I got demoted. That kind of thing happens all the time. Anyway, this new job required working two evenings a month for Board meetings. That became a lot more convenient when I moved in with Tod at his apartment which was literally across the street from the Pennino Building where I worked! We probably only lived there together for a year or so, but it was very nice to be able to walk to/from work and also come home at lunch. At work, it turned out that Jim Thur truly wasn't bad to work for, though he had his quirks – I can't tell you how much time we spent reviewing whether there was a four point space after a paragraph or whether it was six points. He also LOVED executive staff meetings and literally going day by day through the calendar to make sure everyone knew which meeting was happening when. Fun use of time! I also remember once near the beginning of my time in that job when we were reviewing calendars and I had a meeting listed as "12:00 p.m." and I was told by retired Naval officer Jim that there really was no such thing as "12:00 p.m." because the 'p' stands for "post" meridiem and if it's 12:00 on the dot, it's neither "post" meridiem nor ante meridiem (a.m.). Gee thanks. Never made that mistake again...it was "12 noon" from there on out!

Tod and I bought our townhouse in South Riding in February 2001 and then we got engaged on July 23 and began planning our December 8 wedding.

There was one monumentally important day that happened while I was in this job – September 11, 2001. I clearly remember that morning, a gorgeous early fall day with a bright blue sky and big puffy clouds. It was a Tuesday which was the usual executive staff meeting day which I sat in for part of. One of the senior managers, Jim Stratoudakis, came by my cubicle and said that a plane had hit the World Trade Center in New York City. My first thought was that it was a small, single engine kind of plane and was no big deal. How wrong I was. Before long we better understood that the country was under attack and it was terrifying. So many people were on the internet that it basically came to a standstill so we couldn't easily get news updates online, but we had a TV in the office where we could watch the horror. There were rumors and fears that more attacks were coming – an alarm went off at the building, I don't think it was ever clear whether there was an actual threat (unlikely) or a mistake, or what, but we all filed down the stairs and outside. I remember trying to get through to Tod to allay my fears, but he was actually at home fast asleep because he'd been working an overnight shift at Lockheed Martin. The phones were totally jammed, but when I did get through he didn't answer since he was asleep. I also quickly learned that my sister Jennifer, who was pregnant with Aly at the time, was on a plane that morning, flying west on a work trip. We were so afraid that she might be on a plane that had also been hijacked so we were very grateful when we eventually heard from her that she'd landed safely. All planes had been grounded once it was clear what had happened, so she ended up in Oklahoma with no way to get home other than getting a rental car, along with her co-worker, and driving home. That day was so surreal. For a while afterward, no planes flew at all, so the skies were so quiet in our neighborhood, which is so close to Dulles Airport that plane noise is virtually always present. It was such a sad day for our country. Very quickly, my stepdad Jim was activated as part of Virginia Task Force One's search and rescue response at the Pentagon. When that was done, he was sent to NYC to help at the command center there. I haven't ever really talked with Jim about his experiences there, I'm not sure I could handle knowing all he's seen. What a moment in history.

A totally non-consequential memory from this time is when I was sitting at our front desk answering phones (we all took turns at that during lunch breaks) and had a caller who was not happy with something about his treatment. I couldn't help with his issue, and he asked "Is there somebody better than you that I could talk to?" Indeed! :)

My records say in October 2005 I was promoted to Administrative Assistant IV but was still doing the same work. I got to be a very good note-taker, which meant learning to distill information succinctly. When I first started that job, I took notes by hand (yikes!) but eventually laptops became a thing that was available to me. Toward the end of my time as Board Clerk, I could even get the meeting minutes nearly finalized during the meeting. In addition to taking minutes, my job was to assemble the meeting materials including the agenda, meeting notes from the Board's subcommittees, presentations and Board items that the Board would review each month, and then get those in the mail in a timely way (sometimes even making personal deliveries of the materials if things got really bad, but that only happened a few times in my nine years as Clerk to the Board. I'd set up the meeting rooms, order cookies and drinks for the meeting, and other logistics like sign language interpreters for our Board member who was deaf.

Over this time, I took on some new roles in the office that weren't exactly related to my job. We finally had a website, but the only person in the office who knew anything about HTML was Laura Schmitt, who'd also come over to work at the CSB office in Pennino. She did the work for a while, but it was even less of a fit for her role than me, so she taught me how to use the Dreamweaver software so I could help out with posting our Board meeting materials. The office also needed someone to help with things like our annual report and other publications, since there was no staff person dedicated to that kind of work. I had always enjoyed that kind of thing and had somewhat of a knack for design, so I jumped in with that as well.

Final time taking notes at a CSB Board meeting

So by October 2007, they created a Communications Specialist I position which I was hired into. Now my work was solely related to our public website, our intranet site, and our agency publications – no more Board meetings. It was a brand new position and yet another two-person team – they hired as Public Information Officer a guy named Hans Peterson who didn't last too long, then hired the wonderful Belinda Buescher, from whom I learned so much. Belinda was teeny tiny and full of happy energy. I became a better editor by learning from her how to really cut out all the extra words that you don't mean. I also learned from her about writing more clearly, in ways that were understandable to most folks – the CSB's language tends to have a lot of jargon and 50 cent words - not ideal for communicating with the public. While CSB had always had a Public Information Officer (my friend Ruth Gerbec filled the role for many years before Hans was hired), they had never had a real communications plan or structure to it. Belinda was the one to professionalize our communications. Belinda reported to my good friend Laura Yager and the three of us made a great team, filling in each other's weaknesses.

In July 2015, Laura saw to it that my position was upgraded to a Communications Specialist II and I was fortunate to be promoted. Fortunate because I know I didn't do well in the interview – it's really hard to explain that you do great work to people who you know already know you do great work! – the interview panel was Laura Yager and Lisa Potter, who of course had known me for years and years. CSB also created a second CS II position for our team, further professionalizing and properly resourcing the workload, which had really taken off. Unfortunately, Belinda worked way too hard, though, and worked herself right into disabling back pain. Ultimately she decided to take a demotion into the open CS II position, and scale back on her workload and hours.

Did I mention that all this time I was still sitting in the same exact chair in the same cubicle? Well I was! I liked my spot because it was what I called a double-wide (bigger than many other cubicles on our floor), was next to my pal Tracey Bland, was close to the printer room – which then became an office – and close to the copy room, as well as the hallway exit. Over time, the area across from mine and Tracey's cubicle, where we had a bunch of file cabinets, became known as "the party windows" as there were so many meetings that we often couldn't find a conference room to use for our celebrations of birthdays, holidays and new staff. We had a LOT of office parties, maybe even too many at some points. We had multi-day Christmas celebrations, monthly birthday celebrations, and amazing breakfast spreads to welcome new people. We did Secret Santa and for a couple years even did the "BOO" thing where you leave secret treats for Halloween. It helped build camaraderie among our co-workers, who many times worked on different teams whose work didn't always intersect. We had karaoke, we did contests to see who could identify folks' baby pictures, we played party games...we had a lot of fun in those years. 

Working from home became an option for me back in August 2010 when Amy went off to kindergarten – before then, it didn't make much sense to telework when child care was where my office was. I worked from home on Fridays, which was awesome. I think it was in 2013 that I was fortunate enough to get permission to work from home two days a week - Wednesdays and Fridays, and eventually I figured out that I could make even better use of my time by doing laundry on Wednesdays while I was home working. What a time saver.

 

The old cubicle is all emptied out.

Anyway, on my days in the office, I was still in the exact same cubicle until February 2019, they needed to cram a bunch more people in our office - I even got to work from home for a few weeks (yay!) while they did construction which felt like such an amazing privilege (little did I know what 2020/2021 would have in store for us!). I went back to a smaller-ized cubicle in the same spot (boo!). Later that year, in November, I decided to basically demand to be moved to the cubicle my colleague Amanda had vacated, which was on the next floor down (I'd been on the 8th floor, it was on the 7th) and was a glorious corner cubicle with windows. It also happened to be the cubicle that cousin Debbie used to work in, and had retired from! There was no one else seated down there for a while, just me, so it was so peaceful. The space on the 8th floor was now so crammed with people, it was pretty noisy. So I was happy with the change of scenery, which didn't last long because the pandemic hit.

Laura Yager, Belinda Buescher and me at
Belinda's retirement.

In March 2018, Belinda retired and my new boss was Lucy Caldwell, who'd come to CSB from the Police Department. I didn't hit it off with Lucy too immediately but ultimately we came to work together pretty well. She hired a replacement for Belinda, named Amanda Rogers, who was great and from whom I learned a lot – the year or so that Amanda worked with me was the only time in my entire county career where I had a teammate who did the same work I did and it was so amazing to have someone to bounce ideas off and look to for advice working out technical problems. But then in August 2020, Lucy took a job with the school system, Amanda took a promotion to another agency, and it was down to just me for a few months.

My final boss, Lisa Flowers, arrived in December 2019 and we hadn't even really gotten much of a chance to know each other before the pandemic hit. On March 17, 2020, I started working from home full time. It was a bit of an adjustment but ultimately it was pretty seamless – the only parts of my work that I'd never been able to do from home were things like printing copies or gathering giveaway items to send out for staff to use at events, and for quite some time during the pandemic there was no need for any of that. Eventually there were times that I needed help with getting things printed, but our administrative staff who were in the office were happy to help. Lisa's style was tough for me. She was all about planning and making processes, where our team had always been more about doing the things. There were also times where although her words said she valued my experience and opinion, her behavior didn't match up with that. Due to the pandemic, they'd also decided not to fill Amanda's position after she left, so I was left to try to do the work of two jobs. I'd also been doing the same thing for so long, I think I just got burned out on it. I'd always been leaning toward leaving as soon as I hit 50 and became eligible to retire, but then when I was diagnosed with stage zero breast cancer in December 2020, that just solidified for me that I didn't really want to keep doing a job that didn't make me happy anymore. Life is too short. So in January 2021 I gave my notice that I'd be leaving on April 23, 2021. I tried to give them plenty of notice (13 weeks!) so they would be able to hire my replacement and maybe even have some overlap between us. Instead, the advertisement for the job didn't even go out until after I'd left. Oh well, I tried. And that is just one more data point on why the organization wasn't making me happy anymore.

I didn't want a zoom farewell party – everyone was online all day, with so many video calls, that just sounded awful to me. In hindsight I probably should have done that, to give my colleagues a chance to say goodbye in that setting. Oh well. In the end, cousin Debbie decided to organize a party outside of work, with mostly my friends who'd already retired from the county, as well as my family. It was a great party and I'm glad we did it!

What a great group of people!

The next day I went to the office for my final day of work. It was only my second full day in the office for more than 12 months – the first being the day before. The office was still mostly a ghost town, with the majority of people continuing to work from home. I got to enjoy the awesome cubicle for a little while longer. Walking out of the building for the last time, past the Employee Child Care Center, I thought about all the days of arriving at work with the kids in the morning, and picking them up after work. How lucky I was to have an amazing child care center in the building so the kids were so close. The time went by in a blink, it's really hard to believe I worked for the county for 31 years. Never thought I'd stay that long, but I'm sure glad I did. I have a terrific pension and we've saved well for retirement, so the next chapter is up to me.

So far, just about two months in, the adjustment to retired life has been pretty seamless. I think having worked at home for more than a year definitely contributed to that. I really have not looked back and I don't miss my job at all – I miss supporting a few people/teams, but I'm glad to have moved on. I was lucky to work with so many amazing public servants, who were also tremendous people. 

My days are now entirely my own, and I feel so fortunate!