By John Chenier
Francine Bertrand lives in Gatineau. But she has spent a good part of her life in Lowertown. Since 1974, she has spent more than 40 hours per week in our community, working at the Desjardins Pharmacy. Francine, who goes by the name of Frankie to many of her regular customers, started work at what she calls her first real job on September 9, 1974. Forty-seven years later, she is still working there, although now on a reduced schedule of three days per week.
She still remembers her first day at work. She put on her clean white uniform and set to work cleaning and re-arranging things on the shelves while doing her best to avoid any contact with the customers.
“You wouldn’t believe it, but back then I was very shy and afraid to talk to people,” she says. The thought of having to work at the cash and deal with the customers frightened her. It took a couple of months on the job before she developed enough confidence to interact with customers.
When she started, the pharmacy had more than 10 employees: three pharmacists, staff for receiving and placing inventory, a cashier, secretaries in the office plus drivers doing deliveries. There were lots of jobs to do, stocking shelves, cleaning the store and, as time went on, receiving merchandise, counting pills, doing some lab work and even making deliveries. She had a good mentor, Helene, who taught her how to do the various jobs to the boss’s standards and how to interact with the people who came into the store.
“The ambiance at work was very good,” says Frankie, “We had Christmas parties and all the staff worked well together.”
During the interview it became clear that she had great respect for her first boss, Jean-Paul Desjardins, who was the first owner of the drugstore. “He was strict, but he was fair,” she says. At another time she described it as “Things were done his way or the highway.”
Frankie recalls one time when Jean-Paul was a little too stern and his scolding left her in tears. She left the store, went to a nearby bar to have a Grand Marnier to calm down and then went home, thinking she would never work there again.
When she did not appear for work the next day, Jean-Paul asked where she was, and was told that he had been too harsh in his criticism, and Frankie wasn’t likely to come back to work again. Jean-Paul called Frankie at home to apologize and asked her to come back to work, which she did.
Jean-Paul is 95 and in a long-term-care facility in Ottawa. Although it has been more than 30 years since they worked together, he still calls her regularly for a chat.
Frankie is working for her third owner now. The “kids” took over from Jean-Paul in 1991 and managed the store until 2o14 when they sold it to Shoppers Drug Mart. Her new boss, owner Jennifer Mulley, recognized what a valuable employee she had in Frankie, which is the reason behind this story — she suggested it.
You would imagine that after 47 years at the pharmacy Frankie has a few good stories to tell. She does but says she’s saving them for a book. However, when asked to reflect on how her job and the clients have changed over the years, there were some things she was willing to share.
“I learned how to talk to people,” she says. Over time she came to see that interacting with the customers who wanted to talk was an important and rewarding part of her job.
Some customers are funny and want to joke around a bit, while others are sincere and want to talk about family or important events. The odd customer would flirt with her and, on very few occasions, took things too far.
There were times when a person would come in drunk and she would have to ask them to leave. If ever there was trouble that she couldn’t handle in a polite way, she just went to the office and told M. Desjardins and he would take over.
She describes how Dalhousie Street has changed over the years. Most of the shops have been replaced by restaurants. Gone is the shoe store across the street where she bought her shoes. The caisse populaire has relocated, and the restaurant where she had breakfast almost every morning before work, Mellos, is gone as well. Also missing are the prostitutes on the corner who used to come in to buy condoms.
Today, she says the clientele is younger and there are fewer French-speaking people. Many people that she came to know over the years are no longer living. The occasional drunks have been replaced by people high on drugs or mentally ill. Petty theft, much of it blatant, is way up and staff have been warned by police not to risk confronting the shoplifters.
For Francine (Frankie) Bertrand, it has been a satisfying career. “I took care of my customers. I made a difference in their lives.” I am sure that Jean-Paul Desjardins believes he made a good decision when he hired her all those years ago.
When she finally decides to retire, there should be lots of candidates with the skills needed to do the work. But finding someone with the same commitment and the secret ingredient that made her so good at her job is going to be a tall order.