ESTEVAN — Always friendly, knowledgeable and with a good joke to brighten a day, for the past seven years Vaila Lindenbach has been welcoming and assisting people coming in or calling the Estevan Mercury office.
She's also known to the community through her administrative work for several oil industry businesses. After an admin career of over 40 years, Lindenbach has announced she will be retiring later this year.
April 26 is the Administrative Professionals' Day, and as a part of our special promotion the Mercury is celebrating Lindenbach's work and the upcoming conclusion of her long and successful career.
Lindenbach was born and raised at a farm by Moosomin, and she moved to Regina after graduation.
Her path to the administrative field started in the distribution department at the Plains Health Centre in Regina, from where she then moved into the admin role in the records department. After about 10 years in health care, she decided to take time off to care for her family.
Lindenbach got back into an admin role in the late ’80s, and after doing some temporary jobs she started working for SaskOil, which was the beginning of what turned out to be a long journey in the oil and gas industry. She took some in-house courses, but most things she learned on the job.
After a few more years working in Regina, Lindenbach transferred to Estevan in 1993.
"I worked in operations and safety admin for a number of years and all through different changes when different companies bought them out," Lindenbach said. "And then eventually I got into [working] with PennWest, where I flipped over into accounts payable and I really enjoyed that; it was a different learning curve."
Her admin career dates back to 1981 and saw her doing and mastering many different tasks and jobs. When the last oil and gas company she worked for sold to another one out of Weyburn, after a brief break, Lindenbach changed fields but not the profession. She worked for some time for Stream-Flo and then in 2016 she joined the Mercury team.
"What I did for work and the support I provided to people was the same, but it was a different industry [from oil and gas]," Lindenbach shared. "I didn't change the field because I do like helping others, my colleagues within the industry, and that satisfaction from being a good helper and supporter kept me going."
At the Mercury, Lindenbach also took over the management of the team of carriers, which currently counts 24 people that deliver the paper to our readers every week.
A lot of things have changed throughout Lindenbach's career, especially in technology and the computer side of work, but for her, it wasn't hard to adapt, she said. When she just started, she would work on a computer terminal, which gradually transitioned into a PC, and the programs were changing and developing as well. Filing changed and developed towards going paperless, but she noted that if you have a good knowledge of the system, it doesn't matter how you do it.
People changed a bit as well, and the approach to work is reshaping. Her work week was switched to 3 1/2 days in recent years, and she had to readjust how she does things, but she noted the same is happening in many other fields.
"I think people are learning to do the job that they normally did in a 9-5 or 8-4:30 days faster. You get better at doing it. Maybe it is the accessibility of the computers and being able to bring that all in and get it done, I'm not certain," Lindenbach shared her thoughts. "Even from when I started in 2016, what we do today, it's changed, we've adapted to be more efficient."
After retiring, Lindenbach and her husband Lloyd plan to move back to Regina to be closer to family, and she already has a potential plan to make her transition to retirement a bit easier.
"My daughter does bookkeeping for companies, so she said, 'Mom, maybe you will be able to do that,'" Lindenbach shared with a laugh. "I don't know yet, I'll probably be too busy unpacking boxes."
She said that while she is looking forward to retirement, she enjoyed her work and there will be things that she will miss.
"What I'm going to miss is the people that I've worked with. And it's been a lot," Lindenbach said, noting that throughout her career she's met, worked with and helped hundreds and probably over a thousand people.
She also noted that her work was something that kept her going through difficult times when she was battling serious diseases.
"The stress can be there, but if you can get up and go, make sure you're doing something every day. It helps," Lindenbach said. "If you give up on it, then you are done. But if you keep going, work through the struggles, then you come out better. I mean, you're probably going to have days where you don't want to get up and go to work, but [it keeps your spirit up] … And all the careers in the industries that I've been in, we've had a lot of fun. You have to get serious, but you have to have fun, too."
