‘Sneaky’ pre-school staff planned a party to celebrate their manager’s 20th year, and kept it a secret for four months.
Kathy Crouch finished her 20th year as manager of Abbey 345 Pre-school in Crowland and her staff refused to let it go by unnoticed.
A surprise party was planned, complete with a ‘wise owl’ wood carving, ‘massive’ cake and over a dozen bouquets of flowers.
Kathy, manager, said: “I am absolutely overwhelmed and can’t believe they’ve all been so sneaky. Seeing 20 years of one’s life in photos, complete with all the hair dos is not a good feeling.
“It’s lovely that everybody thinks so much of me that they would do this.
“It’s very flattering, and I just feel very lucky. I love this job and the families and my staff and I do think of us as a big family.
“Today’s just been lovely, but a bit of a shock. I can’t believe there’s a massive cake and the owl carving and as for the flowers. I love flowers but I’m really going to struggle to find space for them all.”
Jane Harris, deputy manager, said: “Being part of Kathy’s team is often like stepping into a parallel universe.
“Abbey 345 is a family. The staff feel it, and our families feel it.
“At times it may resemble a slightly disfunctional family, particularly if you happen to walk into the office and see Kathy demonstrating her downward facing dog moves, or witness one of our famous staff training sessions, where the staff, and Kathy, are testing out the children’s new giant spinning top.
“In her usual style Kathy had made virtually no mention of this upcoming anniversary, but we were not prepared to let such an occasion go unnoticed.”
But it was not just Kathy’s staff who knew about the surprise.,
Her husband took the day off work to be at the event, but left as usual in the morning wearing his work clothes, prompting worry when Kathy later called his office to discover he was on annual leave.
Kathy added: “My husband was in on it and hadn’t said anything about it.
“Today I wanted to talk to him about a surprise I was doing for one of the other girls, just a little jokey surprise.
“He didn’t respond to my texts so I rang him at work and his colleague said he was on annual leave.
“He had his suit on and everything when he left this morning so I didn’t know where he was. So then I was worried about it. The girls all knew he had the day off to be here.
“I can’t believe he was in the know and they’ve all been planning it since March.”