Freddie Battley, a warehouse worker at the MacDill BX, had considered retirement after a long run with the Exchange. Her pastor had other ideas.
“I said, ‘Pastor, I’m getting ready to retire’,” she said. “He said, ‘Ms. Freddie, you can’t retire.’ I said, ‘Why can’t I?’ And he said, ‘Because those people need you.’”
In April, Battley marked 50 years of connecting with teammates and shoppers at the Exchange, most of them at MacDill. Her service started in 1975, when her husband at the time was stationed at MacDill and she applied for a job.
She started as a part-time sales clerk, becoming full time the next year, when a big change happened.
“We got transferred to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, and I worked at the Vogelweh Exchange,” she said. “I like dealing with people. So when we transferred back to MacDill in 1980, a new store was opening, and I went to work there. And it just grew on me because I liked the people. That’s why I stayed.”
She continued working as a sales clerk until September 1996, when she moved to the warehouse as a receiver. But people still remember her from her floor work.
“One of our security men said to me, ‘Ms. Freddie, I remember when I was 13 or 14 and you were in the candy department’,” she said. “And I said, ‘Yeah, I remember you, too.’ And now he’s grown and got children of his own.”
She connected with other generations as well.
“When I was on the floor, I liked the mature—I don’t call them old—the mature people, because they needed someone to talk to,” she said. “It’s almost like being a counselor, because you’ll see the same customers, and they’ll tell you their child did this or that, and you take the time to listen them.”
Every now and then, someone will come into the warehouse and say someone in the store wants to see her—customers who remember her and want to introduce her to a spouse or a grandchild. Teammates will note that they were in high school—and occasionally not even born—when she started.
“It’s like that sometimes, because I’m 77 years old now,” she said. “But I enjoy my job. And I think it’s a wonderful company to work for. You have a lot of opportunities. AAFES is like my family now.”
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