No hard feelings from Labor Day’s laborers

MAT-SU — Dan Bentti was supposed to spend Labor Day helping out at the Elk’s Club Rat Race booth on the last day of the Alaska State Fair on Monday.

But a saying printed on a metal bowl found at the fair’s souvenir booths sums up Bentti’s holiday plans: “Want to make the Almighty laugh? Tell him your future plans.” Pipe problems — and the resulting flood — inside the Seward Meridian branch of the Matanuska Valley Federal Credit Union in Wasilla put the building maintenance specialist back to work on the day reserved for celebrating the nation’s workers. He wasn’t bitter, and he wasn’t alone. Across the Mat-Su Valley people were working on a busy holiday weekend that heralds the end of summer and also the end of the traditional tourist season.

There are 17,896 people who work within the Mat-Su Borough, according to a recent Alaska Economic Trends report. During any month, on average 620 of them work at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center in Palmer — the second largest employer here behind the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District with 1,884 workers.

Anyone stopping by for a bite to eat at the Birch Leaf Cafe on Labor Day found culinary arts employees Sherri Seagriff and Jeanna Lemon keeping things going for a sparse but steady crowd of diners. The hospital is a 24-hour operation, and the cafe stays open 21 of those 24 hours to serve families, patients and hospital staff.

“Unfortunately, people get sick every day,” Lemon said of the hospital’s clientele, so there are always people who need sustenance, whether they are caregivers or patients’ families and friends.

Lemon called the cafe a local secret — where else, she asked, can one get a grilled Angus beef burger or a halibut entree until 3 a.m.?

“Three-sixty-five, we’re always open,” Lemon said. “We have regulars because the food is so good.”

One might expect a hospital’s cafe to be open on Labor Day, and for a volunteer like Gary Dorsey to work the hospital’s espresso stand even though the main lobby was a ghost town. Some folks were simply at work.

A walk down a hospital corridor found Medical Staff Coordinator Jayna Ahlf, office door ajar, concentrating on her computer screen but still pleasantly calling out to ask someone who looked lost if assistance was needed. There were last-minute changes to medical staff schedules, and Ahlf said they simply had to be made and sent off to the staff. The holiday didn’t enter into the equation of what she treats as more of a work in progress than a 9-to-5 job.

There were plenty of assistant managers at work in the retail trade Monday. At the Wasilla Carr’s supermarket assistant manager Dan Schwartz was too busy to talk to anyone except a long line of customers at the service desk and whomever called on the telephone. Down one checker and some clerks, the place was nonetheless hopping, and checkers and courtesy clerks helped customers as fast as they could.

Advertised specials included lots of things to throw on the grill or drink along with a barbecue dinner. “It’s been like this all day,” was all Schwartz had time to say.

Next door things were more sedate in Borders Books. Assistant manager Linda Maurer fielded questions and urged one man to make a chocolate purchase as other customers — some with kids in tow, scanned the aisles.

“We’re laboring,” she said of her staff, which now works in a brighter and more publicly accessible environment than it had in the old Cottonwood Creek Mall.

Most shops in the Wasilla Carr’s center were dark; even the Señor Taco restaurant took the day off. Not so in a corner of Carrs, where among the whiffs of freshly mixed wasabi from the sushi chef’s ice-packed seafood counter and the occasional clash of shopping carts the quiet business of commerce was in full swing.

Kaylee Smith helped Denali Alaska Credit Union customers at the teller window along with Branch Manager Shawna Hurst. Hurst said she and many other Alaska branch managers were hard at work on Labor Day and trying to attract new customers. By about 12:30 p.m. the pair had served between 20 and 30 credit union members and still hoped to gain some new ones.

“We popped some popcorn to lure people in,” Hurst said