Mandy Evans – 21 years at Millers Oils!

How long have you been at Millers Oils?

I started working at Millers Oils on Monday 19^th November 2001 and I retire on Thursday 30^th March 2023– so just over 21 years!

What is your role at Millers Oils? 

My main role has always been Credit Controller which involves opening and monitoring new accounts and ensuring that they and all of our customers pay us in a timely manner.  I do the daily banking, BACS, Cards, Visas, Direct Debit payments etc.  as well as chasing payments by phone, email, and letter.

I am also proud to be the company historian. Millers Oils has been trading under the same family for 136 years this year!  We have scrapbooks with original newspaper clippings dating back to 1860 which tell the story of our founder John Watson Miller, his father and siblings right up until 1953! There are some wonderful stories in those books!

Any new employee at Millers is given the presentation as part of their induction explaining from when we were first founded right up to our current board of Directors and includes pictures and stories from the beginning up until the current day.  This is a pleasure to present and I showcase all our old ledgers dated from 02/01/1887.  This is probably my favourite part.

I have also done presentations to visiting customers, particularly to our International distributors who love our family history.  Hopefully, someone will want to take on this mantle and will enjoy it as much as I have.

What are your biggest achievements at Millers Oils?

When I first came across all our history in the scrapbooks, old ledgers, pictures etc, I found this so very interesting that I thought that this is something that should be shared with all staff, past, present and future.  So, I actually taught myself power point, gathered my pictures, put the storybook together, learned my script and threw myself totally out of my comfort zone by presenting our history to everyone from the MD, Directors, other department Managers and staff both from the offices and warehouse and (very nervously) made my initial presentations! It was terrifying but it went down very well!

One other large achievement for me was gaining CMI Level 5 Award in Management and Leadership in 2016 which I found quite difficult at the time.

Do you have any wise words of wisdom to share?

It is important that you actually enjoy your job and that you like the people that you work with.  If you don’t, then do something about it or you will just be really unhappy and your standard of work will suffer.

Either find something somewhere else or make the job work for you. You are a long time working so make sure that you are doing something that makes you happy as you will be much more productive and your mental health won’t suffer.

As soon as you are able, pay as much as you can into your pension pot!

Have you got any plans for when you retire?

My husband and I have a touring caravan and are already booked in touring sites in the UK nearly all summer! We plan to go to France/Spain in our caravan for a few weeks next year, we will be at Silverstone for the MotoGP in August, and have a couple of music festivals booked that month also.

We love going to gigs and have quite a few booked over the next few months.

I have plans to keep my husband busy over the winter months redecorating the entire house from top to bottom (hope he doesn’t read this!)

Find current roles available here – Join The Team – Millers Oils