Virge-kai Lindaja: Friend and Colleague
Virge Kai's memorial service was held at the Estonian's community centre on March 23rd, 2011. the service was led by an Estonian pastor. An Estonian choir sang hymns and songs. Her sister, father and friends gave speeches. Here's the transcript of what I offered up as a view into Virge-Kai's life at work:
“ I'm Mikael Sandblom, a colleague of Virge-Kai's at Space Database. Julius asked me to say a few works about Virge's work life.
At Space Database, we were first introduced to Virge in 2005. Virge came highly recommended from Elizabeth, our marketing and strategy consultant. Virge was a 'star student' in Elizabeth's design office management course.
We're a small company and Virge had a big impact on us. Let me give you a couple of examples of how much energy she put into her work.
Virge brought a great deal of creativity to her job. A couple of years ago we had a big office and a small 'annex' office across the hall that we shared with an interior designer. It's an old brick building with wide window ledges. Pigeons would often perch just outside. One night someone forgot to close a window, and a couple of pigeons discovered a great new extension of their regular ledge. The next day we had birds flying around in the ceiling and pooping on our desks! The management office came in with sticks and nets but they could not catch the birds. The birds were high up and the window opening was low, so we could not herd them outside. The next day was a Saturday and we had to leave the birds in there.
On Saturday, Virge and Julius came up with a great idea. They went and bought a pair of brightly coloured helium balloons - giant parrots actually. Their strategy was to get above the pigeons and scare them outside that way. Brilliant idea! They took the floating scare-crows into the office, but by that time the birds had hopped down and left on their own accord - the idea never got a chance to be tested! Later on Virge and Julius came by our place and gave the balloons to our girls - they were thrilled - and the balloons lasted for weeks.
Virge-Kai put far more effort into her job than we would ever have asked. Once, when we moved out office, I thought I put in a long weekend - but it was nothing like what Virge-Kai did. Both Virge AND her husband Julius were there early in the morning and stayed late into the night on both Saturday and Sunday. Both of them worked far harder than any of us or our hired movers. No one asked them, they just did it.
The last couple of months of her life demonstrated Virge's incredible strength of character and perseverance. In November, Virge had her appendix out suddenly. She missed a couple of days of work. It was in the middle of the month at the same time rhat we normally do our ticketing and update invoicing. This is a huge job that usually takes two days and it was work that Virge-Kai typically did. Rather than share the burden with the rest of us, Virge-Kai and Julius came in over a weekend and did the whole job. On Monday morning, not only was all the invoicing work done but all sorts of little jobs around the office had been done. Bulletin boards had been hung and papers had been sorted. Julius had kept himself busy as he kept Virge company.
Later on when Virge knew she was ill and she had started her chemo, she did not want to stop working. She did not want people to know she was ill. Other than a few days when she was really exhausted, she came to the office. Given what she probably knew about her prognosis at the time, it's truly remarkable that she could keep going and not collapse under the stress and depression. I doubt I could ever be as tough as she was.
In addition to her strength, energy and perseverance, Virge-Kai was also a kind and friendly person that got along well with all types of people. Her personality made everyone around her feel a little bit better. Her interaction and relationship with clients was a great boost to our company's reputation.
Virge-Kai has left an indelible mark on Space Database because she participated in shaping the company that we have today. She was a unique individual and we won't be able to replace her, but we'll have to learn to adapt without her.
On a personal level, we all feel a great loss. Virge was nearly always at the office. Her desk was in the middle, close to the door. Every day when we come to work now, we feel the empty space that she used to fill with her energy and good humour. ”
Here are some other notes on Virge-Kai - some details that didn't make it into the speech, but which I still want to share:
We had been in business for around ten years and we were getting to a scale where we needed to run some proper management processes. We had just implemented our ISO management system the year before and we needed some help controlling processes and projects. So with that vague mandate, Virge-Kai came on board.
As her job had not existed before, we did not have a rigorous job description or a defined list of tasks. Fortunately for us, Virge-Kai was the perfect individual to deal with such an ambiguous situation
She was the type of person who did not need to turn to a job description to know what needed to be done. She jumped right in and tried to learn as much as she could about our somewhat unique business. She then applied herself to addressing the question "how can I make this company better?"
Virge-Kai saw a need for improving our clients' experience. Over a few short years we had gone from zero online users to several hundred. From an outsiders point of view, she realized that these users needed much more help and support than we realized. Perhaps the software was not quite as simple and intuitive as the creators imagined!
Virge created a training script and became far more proficient at explaining our software and services than anyone else. Being the main contact for training, she was soon heavily involved in setting up new user profiles and configuring security and access. Realizing how difficult it was to track which users were authorized to have access to what information and recording who had authorized the access, Virge-Kai drove the development of our user management records system. Her work became part of our ISO management system - and it impressed our auditors!
During the time that Virge-Kai was with us at Space Database, she became more and more deeply involved with our ISO management system. Designed as a method to preserve consistency and boost quality, it is in itself not a static thing. As needs changed, as technology changed and as we figured out ways to do things just a little bit better, the management system had to evolve. The system appealed to Virge-Kai and she became deeply enmeshed in it's evolution. She would take complaints and problems as the inspiration for new steps and processes. She became adept at editing flow charts and updating forms. During our audit reviews, her work played a key role in ensuring our continual, faultless recertification track-record.
So you would think training users, managing their profiles and access, as well as maintaining an ISO management system would be more than enough work for anyone. But not for Virge-Kai. At any given time you might find her testing a recent software upgrade, consulting with clients about how to apply the BOMA measurement standard, keeping the supply cabinet stocked, maintaining all sorts of paperwork. She never had an idle moment, but she always had time for her colleagues and friendly chats.