Author: Kaijah Bey
Date: 29 August 2018
Here at Haight Bey and Associates, we greatly value interpersonal relationships between our employees and customers – we consider them all family. With this in mind, as the social media guru for Haight Bey, the task I will be focusing on for the next few weeks is introducing each employee in a series of detailed blog posts. So, from now until I run out of employees you can expect to get to know one of the HB&A team members on a more personal level every week. The first to be featured in this series will be our wonderful help desk manager, Connie Gibson-Michell.
Connie Gibson-Michell has been using her knack for effective communication to help Haight Bey succeed since its establishment in 2015, but Connie and Alli worked together as employees under the same company from 2010 to 2014. During the brief interview between the two of us, Connie cleverly described herself as the “voice of the help desk,” which perfectly explains her job title as she is most notably in charge of communicating with customers and making sure their needs are met. Along with running the help desk Connie takes care of the company accounting affairs, such as keeping up with bookkeeping and accounts both payable and receivable.
The second question I asked Connie focused on what she enjoys the most about working for Haight Bey; her immediate response was our customers. The customers of a small defense contracting company such as HB&A attracts are a stark difference compared to the customers that were attracted to the commercial business where she was priorly employed. “The military guys (we support)are all very nice (at HB&A).” She gives an example of one customer saying, ‘Yes ma’am, I’ll run out and get you that serial number in the rain’kinda thing,” she gushed to me.
On top of finding joy in her job through helping her customers, Connie also loves to pull easy but hilarious practical jokes on her fellow office dwellers; not even her boss is safe from her prank-pulling tendencies. Her favorite form of practical joke is to hide lifelike plastic bugs in frequently visited areas; inside cabinets (especially Alli Bey’s snack cabinet), inside cleaning supplies, in plain sight on the floor, etc.
Later in the interview, Connie further emphasized how much she loves the customer-service side of Haight Bey; and upon being asked about how being an employee for HB&A differs from being an employee of previous companies, she explained that she is now able to more efficiently tend to customers, thanks to the relaxed environment that allows for complete focus, as well as a small customer base that enables her to spend as much time with a customer as needed. While she loves to help people, during her time working previous jobs, Connie would worry about being yelled at for situations and problems she could not control or had no responsibility in. “Pretty soon I dreaded hearing the phone ring,” she confessed.
For my fourth and final question I asked Connie about her hobbies outside of work. The answer she gave me detailed a range of activities, most of them being outdoor activities. Connie is a nature lover to the core. She owns a modest farm where she keeps a handful of horses that she rides on occasion along with her own herd of adorable Angora goats. She also enjoys spending time fishing at Flaming Gorge with her husband. The hobby she is most known to do is knit and crochet; in fact, she uses the wool grown by her goats to spin into yarn to then knit into items such as socks and hats – perfect for the inevitable frigid Utah winter.
