When Gitte Christiansen walked through the doors of LEMAN for the first time on 1 August 1978, she was 19 years old and a new freight forwarding apprentice at the Kastrup office. Forty-eight years later, it is difficult to imagine LEMAN without her.
On 29 September, Gitte will have her last working day before retiring. For generations of colleagues, customers, drivers and visitors, she has been one of the people they simply associate with LEMAN.
And if you ask Gitte herself what has made her stay with the same company for almost half a century, the answer is actually quite simple.
“I have always genuinely, genuinely enjoyed going to work. I have been offered other jobs over the years, even with higher salaries, but the grass isn’t always greener on the other side,” she says.
From freight forwarder to the face of LEMAN
Gitte qualified as a freight forwarder at LEMAN in 1980 and worked with import and export across air freight, sea freight and road transport. But after around three years with LEMAN, her working life took a different direction.
Whenever the receptionist in Kastrup was ill or on holiday, Gitte was often asked to cover for her. And she loved it.
“I loved sitting out there. I have always enjoyed talking to people,” she recalls.
What started as a temporary arrangement became permanent, and reception remained Gitte’s workplace for four decades.
Things looked rather different back then. Cheques were typed on typewriters, telex and fax machines were part of everyday work, and Gitte could handle around 100 phone calls in a single day, connecting customers and business partners with the right people across the organisation. Alongside her reception duties, she also worked with major customers and was responsible for invoicing Novo for a number of years.
Since then, typewriters and telex machines have given way to email, Teams and digital systems. Over the years, Gitte has taken on many different responsibilities, including weekly invoicing and consolidated invoices for freight forwarders and major customers. In fact, for many years she was affectionately known as “Miss Consolidated Invoice”.
The role of reception also changed over time, and in recent years Gitte has worked with meeting bookings, onboarding new colleagues and handling enquiries to LEMAN.
But one thing has remained more or less constant: Gitte herself.
“I’m just Gitte”
Job titles have never meant much to her.
When asked what her current title actually is, her answer quickly turns to something else entirely:
“It has never been particularly important to me what titles people have. What matters more is how we treat each other and how we behave towards one another. My motto has always been that you are what you give.”
The same picture emerges when colleagues are asked to describe her.
One colleague even calls her “Mother LEMAN” in Greve. The person who always had time to ask about your family, could find a painkiller if someone was feeling unwell, kept a little something sweet nearby and stepped in when someone had forgotten to arrange lunch for a meeting.
The same colleague also describes her as “the glue that holds our social events together”.
Another colleague describes Gitte as “a true LEMAN girl”, highlighting how she has not only been a central figure in reception for many years but has also been actively involved in the staff association and LEMAN Cup.
A third colleague points to her role as the face of LEMAN – often the first person customers, suppliers, visitors and new colleagues would meet, whether in person or over the phone.
“Always with a smile. Always ready to help. And always with a genuine interest in people,” is how the colleague describes her.
Even a customer who started a conversation in a bad mood would often be feeling better by the time Gitte transferred the call to someone else in the organisation.
“You don’t work for LEMAN – you are LEMAN”
Spending 48 years with the same company naturally means building an extraordinary network of relationships.
Gitte is still in touch with former colleagues and even a few customers from years gone by. Many of the people she has worked with over the decades have become personal friends.
And over the years, she has heard the same remark from former colleagues time and again:
“They say to me: Gitte, you don’t work for LEMAN. You are LEMAN.”
For Gitte herself, it is the people she will miss most.
“I will miss going to work and spending time with my really lovely colleagues. And I will miss the outward-facing part of the job – talking to customers and people.”
New days – still with people at the heart of them
Retirement does not mean an empty calendar.
Gitte would like to travel and spend more time with her large circle of friends. But she has already decided that some of her newfound freedom will also be dedicated to helping others.
She plans to volunteer with the Danish Heart Foundation, visiting people who have undergone heart surgery a couple of days a week.
In doing so, she will draw on something she has perhaps practised more than anything else over the past 48 years: the ability to talk to people and listen to them.
Her motivation is personal. Gitte has experienced first-hand how much a conversation with a volunteer can mean after surgery, and now she would like to give some of that support back.
In that sense, perhaps retirement will not be such a dramatic change after all.
Her calendar will simply look a little different. But people will still be at the heart of it.
Thank you for 48 years, Gitte
When an entire working life has unfolded in one place over almost five decades, saying goodbye also marks the end of an era.
Gitte has kept cards and memories from anniversaries and other special moments over the years. Precisely because her entire working life is connected, those small reminders of the people she has met along the way mean something special.
29 September will be another day to remember.
Thank you for 48 years of dedication, helpfulness, customer service, conversations, good humour – and for simply being Gitte.
And all the best for your next chapter. It may be a chapter without a LEMAN reception desk. But it certainly will not be without people.
