If you were to poll the entire CRATE staff, you’d be hard-pressed to find a single person who doesn’t admire, appreciate and adore CRATE employee #1, Carrie Rager. To show our appreciation, we surprised Carrie with a week-long trip for her and her husband to Kauai. Take a look at the heartwarming video of the presentation!

Join us in thanking Carrie for 10 fantastic years of service!

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Okay, we got one more thing, but this is an important thing. It’s something you don’t want to miss. This is a first-time in Crate history thing, okay? It’s only taken us 10 plus years to get here. So, we have one anniversary that is coming up in September. It was not on the list because technically, it hasn’t quite happened yet. But we would be remiss in not honoring this person in front of everybody. So, I’m going to ask Carrie to come up because she loves being in front. So, come here.

Okay. So, I’m going to walk through a few things here for you. So, Carrie’s first day was on September 29, 2011. It doesn’t seem like that long ago, but it is a long time ago. Let me give you some context. All right, who was our president? I just heard the name of someone. No, not Clinton. Obama. Yes, Barack Obama was the president. Do you remember that? Okay. The top song on the Billboards was “Moves Like Jagger” by Maroon 5, which we saw some moves like that just a minute ago, didn’t we? Absolutely. Our very own Brienne Jones had just turned 17 years old. Right. Of all the things that give us the most context, right? I did not have a beard nor a clue how to run a company. All right. So that was another thing.

In the last 10 years, Carrie, who agreed to join me for a few months until she started the nursing program, Carrie helped me set up payroll, learn how to bid commercial projects. When we started, we did commercial projects. Get my truck back from my very first business partner before Jared Aller, my first business partner, stole a truck. So, she helped me get it back, right? Figure out how to temporarily wrap this SAM storage container with this temporary wrap that said “Kitchen Box” on it. It is in the shop; it will be making its appearance soon, maybe on this wall here. Figure out how… Oh, I already said that. Move into our new office on Kansas. Figure out how to insure the company, do all those types of things. You helped me with that. Learn how to onboard our first employees, do accounts payable, accounts receivable, right? Move into our 9th Street office, navigate workers’ comp, and all the various things that has to offer. Buy out my second business partner. You were part of that process of helping me do that. I’m not very good at having business partners. I figure somewhere between 40 and 50 vehicles over the years. That’s kind of my guess on that. Learn how to order materials for projects and create the system for that process, deliveries. Train April, who was one of the first people that came in and took a few things off of Carrie’s plate, trained Brienne, who then came after that, trained me. Help me figure out how to do all this stuff. Start a Sacramento office and then move into a new facility in Salida. She is the one that was here during all of that, helping with all that. So let’s give Carrie Raeger a round of applause.

Carrie, I’ve known you for a long time, and I know that you have a favorite place, a type of place. What’s your favorite place to go on the weekend? On the beach, right? The beach. And so, for example, if we sent you to the coast for a night away with your husband, would that be cool? Would that be amazing, Stevie? Okay with that? No, you just get to ride the coattails, buddy. So what about a week on the coast? Would that work? Okay. Okay. So, we’ll do a little better than that. How about five nights and six days in Kauai? So here, hold that. There you go. Oh yeah. So here’s a little gift basket for you. This is from Koa K Resort, which is on the southern tip of Kauai. It’s a beautiful spot. So you and Steve, all expense paid. It’s already scheduled for December, but you can move it. You can move it to a time that works. And at the end of the day, all of this is to let you know how much we appreciate you. Thank you.

So, that’s it. All right. So, anyway, that’s it. Have a good rest of your day. Tell Carrie congratulations, and we’ll see you guys soon. You deserve it. Thank you.