You've got your problems, I've got mine.
Mary is leaving me.
Well, it's not just me she's leaving. She's leaving all of us here at the newspaper. Today is her last day. Tomorrow, we're on our own, left to go it alone, fend for ourselves.
She thinks she's got a good reason.
She's retiring.
For the past 27 years, Mary Thompson has provided an indispensable service to the Deseret News. Without her, the company would have slammed to a halt faster than you can say "bankruptcy."
She's been in charge of payroll.
Expense checks, payroll checks, per-diem checks, mileage checks, you name it, Mary has kept track of them and handed them out for so long that some people around the office call her the Paycheck Princess.
Either that or "Sir."
The way to the money has always been through Mary.
But it's not just that Mary's handled the money, it's the way she's handled the money.
For example, everyone knows that in your average business environment, the normal, accepted way to hand in an expense report to the accountant's desk is a two-step process.
One, throw the report in the basket.
Two, run.
But with Mary, it was different. With Mary, nobody ran. They stayed around awhile. She was somehow born with a bookkeeper's brain and a nurse's heart. A friendly accountant!
Sure, you probably messed up your expense report somehow — and sure, she'd definitely catch it — but her style was never to pry off your fingernails or, worse, refuse to process the check just because you inadvertently tried to slide that in-room movie through on your hotel bill.
She'd just never let you forget it.
It is a rare human being who can be a stickler for details and still keep a gentle human touch, not to mention a sense of humor. Mary always displayed that ability. She played both ways. She could handle the books and she could handle us. Amazing.
Maybe more amazing, when her four daughters were all teenagers she used to manage payroll and her kids.
The girls would call her at the office complaining about one kind of domestic injustice or another and Mary would tell them to write it down and when she got home she'd read their reports and decide who was right and who was wrong and what to do about it.
The thing is she knew they wouldn't get around to writing it down.
Kids. They're just like reporters with their expense reports.
"She'd referee by telephone," remembers her second-oldest daughter, Ann. "And she was pretty good at it."
Now she'll do the refereeing in person, although there isn't much left to referee. Those four kids have kids of their own.
Not that there isn't plenty for Mary to do. For starters, there are all those things she planned to do 27 years ago when she left her home to whip the D-News into shape.
There's tile to lay and crafts to make and genealogy to look up and places to see.
And she's only got until June to get it all done, because that's when her husband, John, will also retire.
Their short-range plan is to park their fifth wheel in Provo Canyon this July and stay right there until it starts getting cold or John's caught too many fish, whichever comes first.
Then John and Mary will set off to see the country.
Without me. Without us.
I hope we still get paid.
Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.