Leaving: Donna Coven Made Paychecks Happen

Most employees at Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc., didn’t know Donna Coven. She wasn’t a featured columnist. She wasn’t a swashbuckling photographer. She wasn’t even the person who pushed the Big Button that started the presses rolling.
But her job was important to all of those folks.

Donna Coven was the payroll supervisor

Donna, who started at The Post in 1977, was the person who saw to it that every employee got a love letter from the publisher on Thursday. As far as I know, we never missed a payday when Donna was driving the payroll bus.

Her life was a living math word problem

As a manager, I hated dealing with time cards, particularly during weeks with holidays in them. In the early days, I’d try to figure out how to calculate how someone who worked 12 hours on a holiday should be paid. OK, they get 8 hours of regular pay; 8 hours of time-and-a-half holiday pay; they only get regular overtime for the extra 4 hours, but that’s if the relative humidity is 83% and the winds are from the north and the two trains meet in St. Louis.

That’s when I would go see Donna, who would calmly and patiently point out that the trains were really going to meet in Cleveland.

An auditor questioned her access level

John Occhipinti, the former Data Processing manager, who was celebrating his one-year anniversary of retirement from The Post, said that Donna “was meticulous about her numbers and worked tirelessly to confirm their accuracy.”

She was given a level of access to the company’s mainframe computer that was normally reserved for programmers. “A security auditor gave me a black eye one year for allowing a non-programmer to have that access,” John said. “In my written response, I said that it was more important that PBNI employees get paid correctly every week than to try to limit Donna’s functionality.”

Donna’s retirement party was December 30

The official company policy these days is not to have retirement parties, but the folks in Accounting are such rebels that they held an unofficial one for Donna.

It gave an opportunity for some of us who had left in 2008 and earlier to see old friends. Former Accounting Boss Larry Siedlik, the former VP and Treasurer, was on hand sporting a new wedding ring.

Donna’s husband, former Tech Services Assistant Manager, Ray Coven,  was part of the first wave of buyouts in the summer of 2008.

A new payroll system is in place and employees are paid every two weeks instead of every Thursday. I haven’t checked with any of my former coworkers to see if the trains are still meeting in Cleveland like they’re supposed to.

Gallery of photos

Here is a gallery of photos taken at Donna’s retirement party. Click on any picture to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the images.