It’s rare to find an individual who has been at the same job for nearly two decades. It’s even rarer to find someone who has been at their job for that long and still loves it—but that is the story of Michelle Guthrie.
“I've been here for 18 years,” she says. As a production planner for all four of Fire-Dex’s facilities, Michelle ensures that they have the materials they need to continue manufacturing steadily. “I joined in 2007,” says Michelle, “just because I needed insurance to be honest with you. I didn't think I would be here this long, but I literally fell in love with the company.”
Michelle was originally going to be a sewing associate at Fire-Dex. With a laugh, she says, “I was in the training team at the time and realized sewing is not for me.” She says she just so happened to look over at the finishing department (where turnouts are inspected and final details are added on) and began to get excited. “They had all these cool machines like snap machines and rivet machines.” Michelle asked if she could try, and it turned out to be the perfect fit.
“I was there for a while,” Michelle says. “And then I moved into the team lead. I was a team lead for finishing, for liners, for cutting, for sewing, and then the warehouse, and then I moved into the warehouse supervisor position and then that brought me to production planning.”
There are a lot of reasons that Michelle loves her job, but one of them is that she gets to stay in contact with lots of people. “I love it because you get to talk to everybody and still stay in touch with everything and then make sure everybody has their work.” Michelle makes sure everyone has what they need to run a successful production line, and she finds the process very rewarding.
Michelle has found so much joy in her time with Fire-Dex, saying, “The journey is cool and I want more people to experience that.” Michelle says passionately that she believes every person at Fire-Dex is of equal worth and importance—from the janitor to the president. Still, she wants potential Fire-Dex employees to know about the satisfaction she has found in her growth with the company, and the many ways that it has changed her life.
To future Fire-Dex employees, she says, “The biggest thing is really take it to heart. What we do here. That's probably the biggest thing that I can tell people: this isn't just a job. You might start off that way. There’s nothing wrong with that because people need jobs. You need money to live. But this is more than just a job. And you need to constantly keep that in mind with everything that we do and any changes we make. It's not just, oh, we want a better design for this. It's literally to help the firefighters do their job.” When asked to sum up her experience with Fire-Dex in one word, she says: “Rewarding.”
“It’s not an easy journey,” she says. “You have to put the work in.” But, as the sparkle in Michelle’s eyes would tell, it is all worth it.