She kept it simple with no false airs. She was our rock and now she’s gone.
The Estevan Mercury family lost one of their most cherished members last week with the passing of Kim Schoff.
It was Kim, not Kimberley. That tells you how she liked to keep it straight and simple in her approach to life and work, and she was entirely non-judgemental. The perfect person to serve as the corporate rock.
Nothing much phased her. She handled growth and learned new skills over nearly 35 years of playing this newspaper game. But not only did her on job talents increase, so too did her people skills. She accepted them all with a shrug and an infectious laugh that would often ring throughout the office.
She loved people and knew how to handle them, from the tough and gruff, meek and mild, co-operative and unco-operative, she read them all correctly and directed traffic accordingly from her front desk near the reception counter where she could apply her trade with aplomb and cheerful, Kim-styled dignity.
We will miss our happy team player as much as her real family will feel the void. We will struggle with the question of why? ... knowing not to expect an answer.
Weekend fishing excursions or outings with grandkids would be related with relish around the coffee corner and, as one would expect, Kim was always the one who made the first pot of coffee, seeing as how she regularly showed up for work at 6 a.m., two hours before the official door-opening time at the office. That’s just the way she was.
She was there to make our day go smoothly, and if that meant coming in early to ensure the pieces were in place before we got there, then that’s how it was going to be. Someone else will have to turn the lights on at the Mercury now. Someone else will have to make that first pot of coffee, sweep the snow off the sidewalk, and sort through the action plan now. Kim is gone.
We will fill the void somehow, but once kingpins like her disappear, things can never be the same again, and that is what we also lament.
How can we forget the gal with the simple gags, the first in line for office morale-boosting promotions, the first to volunteer a dish for a late night potluck supper at the office when work took precedence over family, or even when it didn’t and we just wanted a team-bonding event to wrap ourselves around.
Well, most often, we wrapped ourselves around our rock, our team building advocate, although she would never have described herself as such, that is what she was. A unique and ultimately talented personality who never took herself too seriously and was able to laugh at life no matter what was handed to her.
Every larger office may have their own version of Kim. We certainly loved our version because she was original. She kept track of things nobody else paid attention to, who cared about toilet paper, facial tissues, pens, staples, and who was borrowing whose monitor and for how long and where electrical cords went and which monitors worked and those that didn’t and who was off on Friday and who was on Wednesday.
She taught all newcomers the simple wrinkles
of our office procedures because she was the only one who had them intact in her soul because she embodied the Mercury.
It’s time now to say goodbye to our dear friend, business partner and matriarch of our newspaper.
We must now lock in our positive memories of this remarkable woman and keep her spirit spinning in the office as we move forward. She would expect that of us.
