Around the nation
N.Y. woman retires after 58 years on same job.
JOHNSON CITY – Mona Zipay was there almost from the beginning when her boss decided to become an independent insurance adjuster.
Fifty-eight years later, she decided it was time to retire from Dorner Adjustment Co.
“I love what I did,” said Zipay, 83, of Whitney Point, N.Y., who retired Dec. 29. “I still do. But it’s time to stay home now.”
The secretary has helped customers through natural disasters and fires, outlived boss John Dorner and remembers when women were not allowed to wear pants to work.
Not only has she used manual typewriters, electric typewriters and computers, but she’s also adapted to a wave of technology so she could transcribe reports sent to insurers:
❚ Notes taken by hand in shorthand, which she learned in high school.
❚ Dictaphone machines with wax cylinders that could be reused after she shaved the cylinders in another machine.
❚ A Philips tape recorder plus a large-format Polaroid camera to photograph damage.
“When I stop and think of it, I don’t know how we did it,” Zipay said of the old technology. “In that span of time you can really see things, how they have progressed.”
But what has served her well through the years has been her typing and customer-service skills, said MaryAnn Dorner, daughter-in-law of John Dorner.
“She’s a phenomenal typist,” MaryAnn Dorner said. “She’s accurate, and she’s fast.”
She can transcribe as many as
30 dictations in one day. She’s professional on the phones, keeping an even temper when dealing with irate customers, said Patrick Dorner, who along with his brother Mike now heads the company that’s located about
150 miles northwest of New York City near the New York-Pennsylvania border.
“When the companies call, they don’t want to listen to an answering machine,” Patrick Dorner said. “But when they call, they get Mona and they always said how good it is.”
Zipay has consoled many customers over the phone, a key quality when helping others recover from disasters such as theft or fire.
“They think insurance adjusters are going to cheat them, and you have to assure them that we are not and go the extra mile with them,” Zipay said. “A few kind words do a lot.”