Christmas Horror Stories

One more, this from the late, great Dallas Times Herald, during the first holiday season after William Dean Singleton bought the paper ...

About two weeks before Christmas, employees found envelopes in their mailboxes. A few people actually thought at first that they might be receiving bonuses. Enclosed was a cassette tape (remember those?) of the Herald's new jingle.

 

My last christmas working in television, we had one microwave truck which was a rusted out bucket of trash. I was old and it looked old. My assignment that day was to cover a dinner at a homeless shelter. As I'm sitting in the truck waiting for a live shot, one homeless guy comes up to me and tells me the livetruck looks like crap and needs to be replaced. Yep, catching crap from a homeless guy. Happy Holidays to me, indeed.

 

Years ago we would get a gift certificate for a turkey. The only problem was, the supermarket chain it was from did not have a store in our city so we all had to drive at least 20 miles to get our bird.

Same paper years later, the publisher arranged for the turkeys to be delivered to the office and we all picked one off the back of the truck. Much better.

 

Worked a Christmas Day murder of a Salvation Army captain/major/colonel who was out collecting the kettle money and was robbed and shot in front of his kids.

That was a helluva day.

As for office horror stories, just the usual, no bonuses, gift cards or acknowledgement for that year's hard work. Twenty years in, I've gotten cash bonuses two or three times, with the occasional smattering of gift cards or some item of clothing. I'd wager for at least half that time, nothing was received. It is particularly unpleasant to know that a former publisher received bonus money to distribute to employees with instructions to handout as he saw fit. He chose to disperse the cash to himself as those elaborate vacations and that lake house don't pay for themselves.

We always had office parties and sort of food though. Mostly because the office people took care of it/

 

I got a Christmas bonus the other day. An honest to God, substantial cash money (one week's pay) Christmas bonus. First one in about seven years (although it's only the second Christmas with our current owners).
I'd make a joke about it being a Festivus miracle, but frankly I'm too gobsmacked to think of one.

 

That's awesome Batman. If only the rest of us could be so lucky. We have our Christmas party later this week. I'll let you know what I got. I can guarantee it won't be worth more than a $25 giftcard.

 

Have not worked Christmas in almost a decade. The horror.

 

At the first job, back when papers actually had writers to spare, we would have one writer in the office every night in case something big broke. That happened about twice a month. We'd usually spend most of the shift proofing pages, manning the fax machine and occasionally editing copy. I hated those shifts, but it was a very good way to learn about the newsroom. All of the writers were supposed to take a turn, but it never worked out that way. I would say about three of us did about 90 percent of them. It wasn't a seniority thing because one of the three had been on staff 30+ years. All three of us had GA-type jobs where we didn't travel as much, so they used us a lot.

So, I'm in there on Christmas. The slot told me there would be nothing for me to do, and I could go home if I wanted. They had eight of the 10 pages already done and were just waiting for a couple basketball boxes on the agate page and the cover. We only had one edition that night. We basically were holding for the late game and then we could all go home.

Unbeknownst to anyone, the agate girl sent her page early and left. To leave early, the slot or the night editor had to excuse you. There was no night editor that night and she left without saying anything to the slot. My knowledge of agate coding was limited to the prep and college boxes that I sometimes had to enter on my own. I ended up copying the coding on the runback boxes and we got the last NBA box in.

After that was fixed, the slot discovered that the agate girl had forgotten to run back the NFL box of the local team that had played a late game the previous day and we only had the box in the final edition. He tried to chase and the main editor said, "Chasing on Christmas are you out of your fucking mind?" so that didn't happen.

The way we did things at this paper was two people had to sign off on each page, so there was accountability if something got in that shouldn't have gotten in. The slot and I were the ones who signed off on the agate page.

Apparently, the next morning, the managing editor was in a city where they only got the first edition of the paper, so he had never seen the box score of the NFL team and was just outraged when it wasn't in the Dec. 26 edition. He called up the SE, who was on vacation and tore him a new asshole. The SE called the office to find out who had signed off on the page and was told that it was me and the slot.

So, I got a phone call. Chewed out wouldn't even begin to describe it. I barely got a word in. I did not tell the SE what had happened with the agate girl, who was a nightmare of an employee, but management just always gave her a pass on everything. I just told the SE to call the slot and have him explain what happened.

Well, the slot had left for vacation the next morning, which I didn't know about because it was my last "writing shift" as we called it of the week. So the only person who could explain what had happened was me, and someone who was gone for a week. The SE called me back and said that I better give him an explanation. I finally did and he was mad that I didn't tell him that the first time he called, and I said, "Well, you were too busy yelling at me and I assumed the slot could explain what happened."

This was such a big deal that they called the slot who was on vacation. This was long before everyone had cell phones and it was two days before the slot called him back. They scheduled a time when I had to come in so the slot could explain what happened to the SE.

I knew I had done nothing wrong, but everybody in the office was so scared to point the finger at the incompetent agate clerk that I was worried that the slot might do the same.

So, I go into the office on my day off and the slot called in. Thankfully, his story was word-for-word what I had told the SE.

SE: So what did RJ do?
Slot: Uh, he completely took over the agate page after she left and was able to figure out the coding, which none of the rest of us could do. We would have blown deadline without him and I was so grateful he was in because I had told him as soon as he arrived that night that we didn't need him and that he could go home.
SE (to me): Why didn't you go home?
Me: Because I was being paid for the shift and didn't feel right about leaving.
SE: You can go.

They did nothing to the agate clerk. I don't think they even asked her about it.

 

Good grief, what a clusterf---. That agate editor must have been drinking too much eggnog or something. I'd be interested to know why she was never called out for her incompetence. Did she possess incriminating photos of someone in management?

 

Black female who cried racism more than once.

 

It's crazy that a missing 3-inch piece of agate could raise such a shitstorm. (Yeah, I know, dumbshit editors is redundant).
At my (former) place, on the other hand, we had a REAL problem. The caterers delivered the Christmas dinner to the breakroom, set everything down and bailed before most people even knew it was there. Some staffers ventured over and started unwrapping the serving trays. Someone pulled the foil off a big turkey that looked great. Then they started looking around for serving utensils and NONE were left. There was no knife to carve the turkey. It took a serious search of the whole office building to find something that would work. The person who finally found a suitable knife was nominated for Associate of the Day.

 

Wow, all that over an NFL boxscore. If that happened at my shop today, the editors would laugh and say "Oh well, we'll run it tomorrow." ... Of course, back in the day, we might have caught at least a little bit of hell for such a slip up. Just not now. I guess it shows you how attitudes and priorities have changed the past 15 years.