We caught up with Gary Perillo during one of his last shifts for ServiceTec, following 22 years of loyal service as a Support Technician at JFK. Gary retired on Sun 18th July.
Gary, you joined the ServiceTec family back in 15th of August 2000 and I understand at that point you’d already worked via an agency for almost a year! Can you remember much about your job interview?
My first day was in September 1999, and I was working with a company named ManPower. Yeh, my job interview – Julius was in charge and at that time we had Terminal 1 and Terminal 4, two sites. And when I got here Julius wasn’t here – he was at Terminal 4 and I was at Terminal 1, where they told me to go. So one of the guys here took me around and showed me some of what they do, and I found it funny because the guy was really cursing as he talked to me, and not in anger, that was just his New York way of talking you know – “we look after all this crap” and that. I didn’t think they would hire me. I’d only spoken to Julius for like a half hour and then they called me after just 2 hours and said to come on in, and I was making jokes to my friend about it being just a little bit too soon – it can’t be good news!
What’s your favourite ServiceTec memory?
I guess the best memories are when the ‘higher ups’ came and we went out to dinner, that was always nice. We’ve done that a lot of times in Garden City, which is a really nice area nearby – and we went four or five years in a row to the Garden City Hotel. But it was nice, because they always made us feel like we were going out with our friends. I remember once we were supposed to be going to a restaurant outside Terminal 4, but the restaurant had had a flood, so we had to take about 5 cabs to an area about 20 minutes away and we had our dinner there. We had Andy Anderson come down to Garden City and always with Lynne of course. Those were nice memories, the Christmas dinners and seeing everybody, and being made to feel like we were out with our friends.
You’ve been a loyal member of the ServiceTec family for such a long time, so you know what ServiceTec is about better than most! What do you think makes ServiceTec unique?
So I think for us at Terminal 1, one of the really good things is the way we help and enable each other with like the unwritten laws. I think in my career, in the 22 years, I think I have had about 8 sick days, and that’s the way a lot of the people here are . You think to yourself “I don’t want this guy to have to do a double shift” and so if you can, you’d come in (before the pandemic of course!)
What are you going to do next? How will you spend your time?
I’m going to take some time doing whatever. I want to wake up and I work out every day, so I want to work out and I love food shopping and then I’ll see what I want to do. What is scary when you get older is how fast the time goes. So it’ll be nice for a while to just do whatever, I want to fix up my house and I don’t know, maybe down the line I might get a little part time job if I get bored, but I think I will enjoy being off – I’m ok that way. We’ll see in the future but I just want to take some time to relax.
We wish you all the very best and hope you enjoy a very happy retirement. I know Lynne has of course been in touch with you herself but she’s also asked me to pass on a huge thank you for your loyal service and all of your hard work over the last 22 years. The team is going to miss you. So thank you.
Alright, thank you. That’s very sweet. You know, words like that really do mean something to me. When I hear people saying they appreciate what we do and stuff like that it’s so nice. So, thank you.
