As a single mother, Mona Shafer needed a job with good pay and benefits. With a background in bookkeeping, she applied for a job with the Metropolitan Transit Commission’s Revenue Department tallying passenger counts turned in by bus operators. That job led to a 40-year career that also included time as a revenue balancer and janitor.

After starting in the Revenue Department, Mona moved to Payroll where she calculated drivers’ payroll records. During her 12 years in Finance, she continued to hold a part-time job as a janitor with another company. When an opportunity to become a janitor arose at MTC, she stopped working her other job. (“That would have been too much cleaning,” she said.) As a janitor, Shafer began as a floater, filling in for co-workers at nearly every support facility. The last five years of her career were spent at the Green Line’s Operations & Maintenance Facility in St. Paul.

Reflecting shortly before her retirement, Shafer said she took pride in her work and would miss some of the people she’d gotten to know through work. While four decades seems like a long time, she also said that the years went by quickly. “I remember watching other people retire, and in my mind thinking, ‘I have so much time to go,’” Shafer said. “But the 40 years flew by, it really did.”

At the time of her retirement, Shafer was the third-highest seniority janitor at Metro Transit. In retirement, Shafer planned to spend time traveling, gardening and enjoying the last chapter of life.