Rosauers’ store manager will ring up end of career

When Bob Fah, 62, started working at Rosauers in Browne’s Addition, employees still used grease pencils to mark prices in the produce department and hairspray to remove the ink and change prices. “We’d go through a couple of cans of hairspray to do a price change,” he recalled.

It was 1961, and it was the beginning of a long career with the grocery store chain – a career that will be coming to an end on Friday.

He started out working for the chain while he was going to college to study business.

The store promoted him before he finished school, and he never did get that degree. He still thinks about going back, however.

His years working for Rosauers have taken him to many different stores – he estimates he’s worked for 11 or 12 of them – but the store that means the most to him has been the Rosauers on 14th and Lincoln. He’s been there for 32 years, and he said that’s very unusual for store managers.

He had many opportunities to change stores, but the neighborhood around the store on 14th became special to him.

“People think it’s their store,” he said.

Fah said when he began at the store one of the vice presidents of the company told him, “Your goal is to learn every customer that comes through the door by name.”

He thinks he succeeded.

Once a resident of Newman Lake, he’s lived in the neighborhood of his favorite Rosauers since 1993.

Fah said he always let students or organizations collect donations for food drives at the front door.

He visited third-grade classes of the elementary schools in the area, such as Roosevelt, Wilson and Cataldo, with his “Fish Class.”

That entailed bringing in raw octopus, shark, urchins and other seafood items and telling the students about where they came, and even cooking some of it up for the kids so they could try new things.

The students always drew pictures for the store as a thank-you and the employees always hung the pictures on the walls.

He’s also proud of the Tree of Sharing, which the store sponsored every year in partnership with the three schools in the area.

He’s hired employees who are the children of his former employees. He has even known of families with eight kids who have all worked with him.

“It’s the best beginning job for a high school kid,” he said.

Fah knows that many parents in the neighborhood are very hardworking, and they want to share that with their children.

“It’s the work ethic they want their kids to learn,” he said.

Fah may be retiring, but he will still be involved with the company; he will be organizing the Rosauers Open, a charitable golf tournament that benefits the Vanessa Behan Crisis Nursery.

Rosauers will set up an office for him at the main business office. He said he’s glad he’ll be able to keep in touch with the people and the company he has known for so long.

John Tschirgi, an employee of Rosauers for 31 years, will replace Fah as the store manager.

Fah is looking forward to spending time fishing, hunting, golfing and working in the woodshop in his basement.

His wife, Nora, is a nurse at Deaconess Medical Center, and Fah said she plans to retire in about a year and a half.

When he wasn’t working, Fah was a Scoutmaster for 16 years. He has a son, a stepson, a stepdaughter and grandchildren.

Now that his days as a store manager are numbered, he reflects on the people he has known in the business. “Mr. Rosauer was a terrific guy,” Fah said, recalling that the company founder used to shop in his store.

“He was a great guy to work for,” he said.

But old bosses aren’t the only ones Fah remembers.

“The customers make this store,” he said.