From Laminating Bathtubs to a 50-year Career at WSECU

One employee’s journey fueled by a passion for helping members

Jan. 17, 2025 (Olympia, Wash.) – In 1975, 19-year-old Sheri Bickle saw a car she wanted to buy. She needed to get a job to help make the payment, so she found a job at WSECU. Now, 50 years later, she’s reflecting on her likely never-to-be-repeated employment tenure at the credit union.

“We were a new family and there wasn’t a lot of spare money running around,” Bickle said. “My husband at the time said if I could find a job to make the payments, I could buy the car.”

Previously, she’d worked laminating bathtubs and showers – adding a layer of shiny material as a finish to the fiberglass surround. At WSECU she worked running credit checks by hand as the first role in her now 50-year tenure with the credit union.

“I was the credit check girl at WSECU,” Bickle said. “I hand wrote out all the details and called the credit bureaus and waited on hold, then wrote out all the reports. I was so excited because I got my own desk at work. That was a very adult thing.”

On an average day, she ran one to five credit checks. Today, the credit union runs about 375 credit checks per working day just for loan applications. Changes in technology and the way members perceive the value of time has shifted the way interactions happen at the credit union, in branches, by phone and online.

“I’ll put it to you this way – it’s nothing like it used to be,” Bickle said. “It was all manual. Everything was manual. You got the check out and put it in the typewriter. It was simpler but it was a simpler time. Time was viewed differently back then. There was plenty of time for everything and it was no big deal if it didn’t get done today. There was always tomorrow.”

Today, Bickle says the business could never operate at the volume needed using those manual methods. With over 320,000 members the 68-year-old credit union has continued to evolve to meet the needs of its ever-growing member base. When Bickle first started, the credit union’s branch hours were catered around state office hours, opening 15 minutes before state employees went into work and closing 15 minutes after they clocked out.

Despite all the changes, there’s been one consistent thread through her career that hasn’t faltered from manual processing to digital banking – the team’s passion for helping members.

“Everybody here loves to help members,” Bickle said. “We deal with them when they’re babies, and then soon they’re toddling in, then the next thing you know they’re in school, then opening a checking account and talking about buying a car.”

As for that first car that caught her eye 50 years ago, Bickle says she was proud to bring home a regular paycheck and went out to buy it.

“So, I came here to buy a car. And then I bought another car. And then some property. And then a house came,” Bickle said. “I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d be here this long. We feel like family here. The comradery, the responsibility of taking care of other people’s money, which has always been very important to everyone, and everyone always wants to help.”

Her roles were varied across her tenure, from putting together the credit union’s first supply book to being the first trainer before the credit union had a department to handle training. Each time, she said it was like having a different job, but they were all kept under the same roof. That variety is a major component in what kept Bickle with the same company for 50 years. In 2005 Bickle took her 17th and ultimate position with WSECU as the manager of the Martin Way branch.

It's unlikely a career like Bickle’s will ever be repeated at WSECU, or many other workplaces for that matter. The U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in 2024 that the median number of years that wage and salary workers had been with their current employer was 3.9 years, down from 4.1 years in 2022. Of employees surveyed, only 27 percent of those aged 55 and older had at least 20 years of tenure with their current employer, according to the 2024 Bureau of Labor Statistics report.

“Working here at the credit union has made my life better,” Bickle said. “It’s supported me through the family things that everybody goes through – you know the passing of people, the shocks and surprises, the things we help everyone else get loans for. This has been the place I come to get rejuvenated and re-energized to help deal with my own stuff at home. I come here, do my thing, see what we’re doing for other people and that fills my bucket and gives me the energy to move on to my stuff. I would never have expected a job could do that for you.”