Skip to content

Out on a LIMSThe Blog for People Who Risk Life and LIMS on a Daily Basis

Work Anniversary

Volume IIEntry 14 of 90 in 20152 min read2 comments ↓

Written by Gloria Metrick on . Published as written. It may not reflect how these systems work today.

My work anniversary is this month - 19 years with GeoMetrick Enterprises. A number of people have wished me well and I appreciate all who took the time to send me their good wishes.

For those who wonder if I will retire next year with 20 years it's unlikely. I'd have to find another career to span the rest of my work life and there's not only quite a lot of working years still ahead of me but I'm not sure what else to do with myself if I didn't work with LIMS and ELN. With that said, I'm not opposed to doing something else, but not sure what it would be. Basically, I'm just too young to have enough retirement funds built-up to be able to think about retirement.

My final day with FINA (Fisons Instruments North America) was Friday, March 1st, 1996. On Monday, March 4th, I didn't quite rush right out to register my business, still thinking I'd find a W-2 position, but when in the coming weeks a few customers approached me to take them on as my customers, I realized I could eat and pay the rent - it seemed like a good idea. 19 years later, here I am still doing it.

My earliest customers were 3M (aka, Minnesota, Mining and Manufacturing), TCCC (aka The Coca-Cola Company), Biogen, Inc. (before they became Biogen Idec) and LabWare Ltd. My longest-running customer was Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis/Pfizer.  Over the years, I've worked with quite a few interesting projects filled with interesting and hard-working people. While we tend to focus mainly on the project failures, I've been fortunate to work with some successful projects that have left lasting memories for me.

Meanwhile, I hope for many more interesting and fulfilling projects. To all those customers who made the effort to work directly with my company, over the years, thank you for your business and for keeping me in business. Without all of you, I wouldn't be willing here writing anything.

Happy St. Patrick's Day and thank you to all read this!

Gloria Metrick
GeoMetrick Enterprises
http://www.GeoMetrick.com/

The conversation

2 comments from 1 person on March 17, 2015. Gloria replied once.

  1. LiMS Journal (@LIMSjournal)

    Mine is this month as well. I am like you in that if I were to so called retire, what would I do? I personally do not like the concept of retirement. The word is associated with death in my mind and dying is the last thing I ever want to do ;-).

    The LI biz is a lot of fun. It hardly seems like work to me. I say we LIMS folks just keep going and having fun and see what we can do to make a difference in our industry. Go outside your comfort zone and see where it takes you.

    1. Gloria MetrickAuthor

      I shouldn't have made it sound as if I were so tied to what I'm doing to pay the mortgage that I wouldn't be willing to stop and go do something that doesn't bring in billable hours. What I really meant is that I'm not close-enough to retirement age to actually be able to consider doing that. I changed the post to try to clarify that.

      Meanwhile, while I do like working in this industry, if someone offered me a huge amount of money to go do something else, I would give it some thought. I'm still open to being a judge on Iron Chef America if they're ever going to do more episodes and looking for a "civilian" judge. ;-)

Comments are closed. This conversation is from 2015. Ask us to remove a comment

Working on the same problem in your lab?

Talk to a laboratory informatics scientist