Shay Barnett: 25 Years at SAV-ON (When Not Traveling Around the World)

After 25 years of working in just about every position at SAV-ON Insurance, Shay Barnett is still hard at it, now with the title Agency Executive Manager. She takes multitasking to an entirely new level, with responsibilities that include payroll, scheduling, accounting, human resources, event planning, marketing consultant and just about anything else that goes on at SAV-ON.

But when it’s time for a get-away, she makes the most of it. She and Gary, her husband of 38 years, have become world travelers, circumnavigating the globe to different destinations for almost four decades!

Born in San Diego, Shay moved with her mother to Burien in 1977. She attended high school in Burien, where she met and married Gary. She has one sister and her mom who live in the area, and one sister, one brother, and her father living in the San Diego area.

Her First Jobs

Shay’s first job was tutoring Native American children in Math and English while still in high school. After high school, she began working as a cook in a local Italian restaurant for a couple of years and then worked for more than 10 years in different Seattle restaurants. When the opportunity to own a small business came their way, they decided to try that by opening up a tanning salon. They both continued to work their full-time jobs, on opposite shifts, while operating the tanning business which was located in the same building as SAV-ON Insurance.  

It wasn’t until early 1994 that Shay found her way into the insurance field. Gary had gotten to know Phil Devitte, a co-owner of the SAV-ON Insurance Agencies. Phil mentioned to Gary he had an opening for a file clerk position in the Des Moines office. When Shay found out she thought it sounded interesting. She liked working with numbers and wanted to try something new. She was hired and started part-time at SAV-ON, while still running the tanning salon in her spare time.

Later that year they decided to close the salon and she started working full-time at SAV-ON, then took the challenging Property & Casualty Insurance exam, to become a licensed insurance agent. Many people have to take this exam several times before passing it, but in her typically determined fashion, she passed it the first time!

Creating the Data Entry Department

By now it was evident that she was going places in the company. She went from file clerk to data entry to computer specialist at SAV-ON. In 1995, she undertook the daunting task of inputting all the client insurance records into the SAV-ON computers, so they could be electronically stored. That meant boxes and boxes from all the SAV-ON offices had to be manually entered into the main database. It was a mountain of information, but Shay tackled it with her typical zeal, and it was completed in about a year! The result of her efforts became what today is the SAV-ON Data Entry department.

Not long after that, she was put in charge of the accounting department, including payroll, employee benefits, and scheduling. SAV-ON also holds a banquet and dinners to honor top-selling agents, not to mention their annual Christmas party. Yup, Shay is the woman who gets those organized, too.

Her expertise is called on regularly. Recently, even though it’s been almost 25 years ago since she engineered the original database setup, she discovered that the data entry employees were having difficulty running reports and couldn’t get them to print out. She investigated and found the solution, and now things are going smoothly again. Shay to the rescue!

A few years ago, with the retirement of the Human Resources person, Shay stepped in and added that responsibility to her busy day. She is now involved in not only hiring, firing and performance reviews, but still tackles the payroll, scheduling, employee benefits, accounting, and upper management meeting responsibilities! With her typical “let’s get it done” attitude, she is a big part of keeping SAV-ON running smoothly.

A World Traveler

Shay’s hobbies are movies, plays, cooking, needlepoint, cross-stitch, and reading, but her biggest passion is travel! She loves to travel to destinations around the world and immerse herself in other cultures. So, when it’s time for a vacation she and Gary select a new place in the country or the world to visit. Not only have they visited all 50 states (two-thirds of them more than once) but have also journeyed to many different countries. Places like India, China, Israel, Greece, Jordan, Turkey, Laos, Myanmar, Morocco, Scotland and Ireland, to name a few. In fact, Shay and Gary have visited 50 countries, including many of the Caribbean nations and islands.

“Every place we go has something special,” Shay emphasizes. “My favorite beaches are in Mexico and the Caribbean. Thailand has beautiful and nice people, and in Italy, it’s the food. New Zealand, Canada, and Switzerland have the best mountains, and I love the castles of Scotland, Germany, and Spain. I also have enjoyed traveling by elephant in India and Thailand, as well as by camel in Egypt and Jordan.”

While most of their adventures go smoothly, a recent trip to New Zealand provided an unplanned adventure. On their way to Fiji for the first leg of the trip, the plane suffered a sensor malfunction and was forced to land on the tiny island nation of Kiribati.

“It was nerve-wracking to try to land on an island so remote that it only had one small runway,” she recalls. “Stranded for hours, when night came we suffered a power outage, so the barefoot airport employees had to turn their car headlights so we could see. Our plane wasn’t going anywhere until it was repaired.”

Since the customs agent had already gone home and couldn’t be located (because no other flights were expected that night), the airport employees decided to disregard a customs inspection.

“We were loaded onto flatbed trucks and taken to the only hotel on the island. The next morning, we were driven back to the runway and took off for Fiji. Needless to say, we missed our connecting flight to New Zealand and had to spend the next night in Fiji. That meant another hotel and boarding a boat for the ride there. It turned out to be a beautiful authentic Fijian-style hotel, with a horizon pool, a waterfall flowing into it, and a rock hot tub. We would’ve paid extra to stay there and plan to go back someday!”

Another one of her stories is being in a gondola with Gary in Venice, Italy late at night, trying to get to their room. The gondola driver was a little tipsy and seemed to be lost as they wandered up and down several different canals. He was whistling and calling out to someone in the dark, and they were worried that they were going to get mugged. Fortunately, the story had a happy ending, as they finally arrived without incident. It turned out that he had been calling out to strangers for directions!

Planning Future Trips

There are lots of travel plans in their future, too. Trips to Iceland, Lebanon, and Australia are next on their list.

In contrast to the way she loves to wander around the world, she’s content to stay put at SAV-ON Insurance. She’s found a rewarding career, and she’s proven to be very good at it. She thrives on making sure everything runs smoothly. Her duties include mediating internal issues and being a “sounding board” for both the employees and the ownership group.

“They’re really good people,” she says of the owners. “It’s like one big family, and they make me feel like a member of the family.”

Shay enjoys working with people and making a difference. Her efforts have resulted in Peer Recognition and “Busy Bee” awards in recent years. Voted on by SAV-ON employees, it honors the employee who has gone out of their way to make a special impact on others. It was an honor that Shay feels especially gratified to have received since she prides herself on making a difference in peoples’ lives.

When asked to describe herself in a word or two, she replies, “Kind and patient.” Her patience serves her well, as her job is constantly presenting complex challenges. “I always look at the situation from different angles before I come up with an opinion,” Shay says.

SAV-ON is lucky to have such a multi-talented, dedicated employee in Shay Barnett. Now, if they ever open an office in Fiji…

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