25 years of ‘Tetris:’ Nelly Yep celebrates a milestone at CNH

Nov 8, 2022 | Staff Highlights

Collingwood Neighbourhood House (CNH) proudly recognizes its long-serving staff members. At this year’s Annual General Meeting (AGM), CNH staff and contractors who have reached the milestones of 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 years of service to the neighbourhood house were thanked by the Board of Directors.

This year, we recognize and celebrate Nelly Yep for 25 years of service. Here’s what Jenny Eng-Chan, Reception Manager, had to say about Nelly:

“Nelly is our internal booking clerk who keeps CNH’s Main House and Annex running smoothly by scheduling programs and events in their correct timeslot. It is similar to playing Tetris on the computer. What a fun job you would think but this wasn’t always the case as the internal booking process has come a long way over the last 25 years. Back in the ‘old’ days, booking was comprised of a stack of photocopied pages bound together by metal prongs and protected by a plastic blue cover page. Hence, we named it the blue book or our CNH bible. It felt like Nelly was book-binding every six months. Nelly would enter the bookings manually into each day; on each page and sometimes this required a lot of cutting and pasting. Fast forward to today and thank goodness for technology, the blue book has retired.

“Over the years, Reception has gone through changes. Our furniture has been replaced and the blue book is gone but there is always one constant: Nelly’s attitude toward her work and her co-workers. She has continued to be a helpful and kind person who will always greet you by name. As I haven’t seen her grumpy or negative, I often wondered what the underlying secret to her being so happy and pleasant is. So, I decided to do some detective work and look for clues in her daily rituals. The first thing that I noticed was that she doesn’t eat breakfast and that she loves her veggies but I didn’t think this was ‘the secret.’ There must be something that she does that other people don’t! Then the ‘aha’ moment struck. It must be the two shots of concentrated lemon juice that she always requests at the tea shop when she orders her drink (and she requests this with no sugar). The saying ‘you are what you eat’ doesn’t apply here because Nelly definitely does not exhibit sourness. Rather, she has a sweet and bright disposition.

“So that’s her secret I suppose? If that is the case, the morning coffee may have to switch out for Nelly’s lemon elixir. Congratulations, Nelly, on your 25th anniversary of playing room-booking Tetris at CNH!”

For information about careers at CNH, visit www.cnh.bc.ca/about/careers.

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Top image: Nelly Yep at CNH’s AGM on Sept. 28, 2022.

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