When you visit the GMC/Chrysler Autosaver Group dealership in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, you’ll be greeted by an employee who may just lick your hand. It’s Charley, a 9-month-old Corgi with dazzling blue eyes.
“She’s a girl. We gave her a really confusing name,” said mom Kate Toll, who works in marketing for the Autosaver Group. “We call her Charles, which doesn’t help the situation.”
“We’ve always been a really pet friendly group of dealerships, so the dogs would either be in the office, or sometimes they would be roaming about. When I got Charley, it just made sense that she would come in to work with us, and I travelled to all 14 stores. So, Charley knows everybody and people are always looking for her on Facebook or social media when she’s going to be at which store so they can come say hi.”
Charley appears on the company’s TikTok and Instagram, often with her co-worker Nina, or mom Kate.
“We started her on there just occasionally when she was a tiny puppy, and now she’ll occasionally do some videos with us,” said Toll. “She thinks it’s fun. She gets a lot of attention that way.”
Toll said Charley’s only official duty is to run around and be cute.
“Corgis have such expressive faces, she normally just sits there and smiles,” said Toll. “And if people are OK with dogs she’s always wanting to sit at the tables with them when they do paperwork.”
Toll said many customers bring their dogs, so Charley keeps the other dogs or kids entertained.
Toll has used a fun method of keeping track of Charley when she’s out and about around the dealership.
“The first time she came into the dealership, she was so tiny and we were like, we’re going to lose her,” said Toll. “She was probably three months old and we put this little balloon on her, and she was just sleeping on the ground with this balloon. It just kind of became this funny thing that people love to see the little Corgi running around with the balloon.“
Toll said she was surprised Charley was OK with the balloon because there had been balloons on the cars and she would bark at them a little.
“But she thought it was so fun. She likes to look at it and then run around so it moves quickly,” said Toll.
Then somebody on social media suggested getting Charley a Corgi balloon. Toll found one that has weighted feet so it stands on the ground.
“I don’t know if she thought it was a real dog or if she was just not happy because it wouldn’t play with her, but she does not like that Corgi balloon,” said Toll. “She will come up behind it and bark at it. I don’t know how she can tell the difference between that and a ball or a regular balloon, but something about that Corgi balloon just is not her friend. So, the Corgi balloon now stays in the office and Charley roams free.”
Toll said Charley has many fans, and people who come in regularly will ask, “Where’s your general manager?”
“And we’ll be like, ‘Oh, he’s right in his office and they’re like, no, we mean the Corgi. So we’ll go to Charley, and she will come. And it’s kind of this running joke now that everybody calls her the general manager.”