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[ S T. L O U I S S TA N D A R D S ]
On the Job With 53 years under her belt, Donna Hollie is Lion’s Choice’s longest-serving employee Written by
CHERYL BAEHR
I
t was 1968, and a twenty-yearold Donna Hollie needed a job. After graduating from high school a few years prior, Hollie had been babysitting to make some money, but she was desperate to get a more consistent form of employment. The reason it was so difficult to find a job was one of logistics: She needed work somewhere she could walk to, and back then, her options were limited. After all, Manchester Road was a far cry from the buzzing thoroughfare it is today, comprising only a handful of businesses along its two-lane stretch of pavement. “There wasn’t hardly anything out here,” Hollie recalls. “Both my mom and dad worked, and they needed our two cars, so I had to walk to someplace. My mom saw an ad in the paper that said Lion’s Choice needed help, so I said OK and went to the interview. That’s when I met Clint Tobias. He asked me my grade average and what I liked to do in my spare time. I told him that I babysat right now but was on the hunt for a job and that I liked cleaning and was dependable. I promised him that I would work for him for a long time.” When Hollie made that promise to Tobias 53 years ago, she had no idea she’d still be working for the roast beef brand today. The chain’s longest-serving employee by a long shot, Hollie has the distinction of being with Lion’s Choice since it was just a single outlet that had been in business for only a year. Over her tenure, she’s watched the chain grow, expand and undergo ownership changes, making her the Lion’s Choice historian in residence, a role she embraces with pride. When she walked through those doors of the original Ballwin Lion’s Choice on September
Donna Hollie has worked at the original Lion’s Choice location in Ballwin for 53 years. | ANDY PAULISSEN
Hollie is not ready to pass the torch. The way she sees it, as long as she can still run the meat slicer during a hectic lunch rush, she should be good. Hollie says things can get hectic, but she will keep working as long as she can. | ANDY PAULISSEN 18, 1968, Hollie had no plans to make it a career. She had no plans not to, either, and she credits her lengthy tenure with the restaurant to the simple passage of time and the fact that she was treated well, especially financially. “I started out at $1.50 an hour, and they kept giving me raises,” Hollie says. “My mom worked for McGraw Hill, and she was comparing her wages to mine. She told me I was doing better than her — that my raises were comparable, but I got them way sooner. What she had
to wait for in a year, I was getting in three months. I said, ‘Well, I’m not going anywhere for sure.’” Those first couple of years turned into five, then ten, then twenty. Though she thought about leaving on one occasion early on in her tenure, she realized that she was only considering a move because she felt that she should, not because she actually wanted to. So she stayed put, making Lion’s Choice the only job she’s ever held. Hollie says that she sticks around because of the people. Whether it’s
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the roast beef regulars or the kids from the subdivision behind the restaurant dropping in for a nickel cone, she relishes that she is a part of her customers’ lives and feels thankful that they are willing to share a part of their day with her. The customer focus of the job has not changed one bit over the years, even as the brand expanded. The other thing that has remained consistent, according to Hollie, is the food. As the Ballwin location’s resident meat slicer of over five decades, she’d know if the roast beef changed — and insists that it hasn’t.
JUNE 9-15, 2021
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