Everyone was welcomed to the event by equity partners Victoria Sampson, Joseph Oates, Tom Lumsden and Jonathan Rowe, with Tom remembering 1981 as the year Charles and Diana got married and Trivia Pursuit was launched!
Six team members were then invited to share memories of their very first day at CooperBurnett:
Paula Armstrong was CooperBurnett’s first employee, fresh out of college in 1981. She remembers being very nervous that day and using more than her fair share of Tipp-Ex! However, she soon settled in and ‘loved the work and the people’.
Hazel Thompson joined in June 1987 and remembers getting her first pay cheque – which really was a cheque back then. She used part of that to buy the team fresh cream cakes on her 16th birthday, just a few weeks later.
Kate O’Connor is a relative ‘newbie’ at TeamCB, having joined our accounts team two years ago. She described herself as a ‘toddler’ in the firm but hoped to go to eventually be an ‘OAP’ with us. She said any first day is nerve-wracking, but everyone was ‘so welcoming and fun’.
Jonathan Rowe joined us on 16 June 2008 and still has a copy of his induction – which he read a few extracts from! He remembered that his first day included a lunch at Sankey’s, which wasn’t a bad start.
Victoria Sampson, who is celebrating 30 years with TeamCB, said her first day was a blur but she remembers feeling terrified when presented with a dictation machine and realising that she’d have to ‘speak out loud’ in front of her colleagues.
Jennifer Irving has had two ‘first days’ (as she left for a while, before returning). Her first official day was on 21 July 1986, when she was impressed to discover she had a telephone on her desk with buttons on it. On that day, she shared an office with Hazel Thompson and, 40 years later, they still work together!
TeamCB enjoyed a delicious lunch, followed by a slice of a stunning 45th birthday cake created by Sugar & Slice Cakes and, as with any good birthday party, guests left with a ‘goodie bag’ containing a personalised gift to mark the day.
