by Sharon Powers, Executive Director for Dr. W. Baxter Perkinson.
As my 30-year work anniversary with Virginia Family Dentistry approaches, I reflect on relationships involving families: my home family and my work family. We don’t get to choose our home family, but we do get to choose our work family.
Nearly thirty years ago, I made a choice to join this family, and what a great choice it was. I’ve made life-long friends that are close enough to be actual family. We spend more waking hours with our work family than we do our home family. And with our company trips, it’s like taking a family vacation together. Lots of memories have been made on our office trips! We’ve all grown up together and shared so many experiences: courtships and marriages, births, the passing of loved ones. We became parents and grandparents, and shared those same experiences again with the next generations.
I feel very fortunate to watch the new employees come into this practice and serve as a role model to them. I’ve been where they are, and now I can help guide them, teach them, and make them feel valued and part of the family just as I have been. It’s a privilege and honor to say that I’ve been at my same job 30 years. What this practice has given me is job security, which is rare these days, and an extended family.
A job is more than a paycheck: its building relationships, family bonds, long-lasting friendships. I not only won the lottery when I got this job at Virginia Family Dentistry, I got another family.