Arriving to an empty building

I did that once.
Grabbed a couple of Big Macs for lunch, then went home to take a nap before covering a high school soccer game. Woke up about an hour before, and it felt like someone was reaching into my stomach, grabbing it and twisting. Figured I'd go and tough it out, but the pain got worse closer to game time.
About 15 minutes in, I'm sitting in the pressbox and realize I've passed the point of no return. I grab the nearest garbage can and puke my guts up. Luckily, there was a bag in it, which I tied up and took down to deposit in a can by the field. Otherwise, it might have sat in that pressbox for a year.
Called my editor to tell him, and I'm not sure he believed me (he didn't like me much at the time), but I really had no choice but to go home. I ended up throwing up about a dozen times that night. One of two times I've genuinely feared for my life because of an illness.

 

Sort of track of the thread, but I got the stomach flu on my day off during my first job. Back when my wife and I had only been dating a few weeks and was visiting. I kept saying I had things to do on Monday but was making use of the toilet - one way or another.

She took my phone during one of my trips to the bathroom and called my editor. Now my editor, who was around my age, didn't know what was harder to believe - 1) his sports reporter who wrote 15 stories a week was calling in sick or 2) his sports writer had a girlfriend.

 

1 - Twitter
2 - List of AD cellphones
3 - List of coach cellphones

 

Once my car broke down and I didn't make it to the game I was covering at all. Did a phoner instead.

 

Dang, quoting myself here ... also, our state association provides websites for each district and schools are "supposed" to keep schedules up to date there. I put that in quotes because of our primary leagues, schools in one league are religious in posting updates, schools in a second do a pretty good job and schools in the third league don't bother (except for one school).

 

Obviously easier to do at smaller papers, but individual text messages to coaches works best for me. They're usually the ones who get together and decide whether to postpone a game, and then pass it on to the AD for mass distribution.
Our local school district usually makes the call around lunchtime because of bus scheduling, so if you don't hear anything by 2 or 3 it's safe to assume they're playing.

 

Obviously, contacting the coach is ideal, but I always found once those guys got out on the field, either getting it ready or conducting practice, their phones were off or away from their person. That's why I usually went with the AD.

 

Last spring, local rivals were scheduled on the same day and about the same time in baseball and softball. I took baseball, and got to the field to see a few members of the home team's softball team in the stands. Huh? So, not seeing the AD or an administrator around, asked a friend who has a business recording games what was up. The softball was changed to a night game, unbeknownst to both of us. Called the office to let the other writer and the shooter know, but still ...

 

Go back to the office. Write up the game you already took in the afternoon big -- track down the coach, get some player quotes, flesh it out.

The softball game now changed to night? Have the shooter get a few pics and split. Make sure you get a phone call and write a 3-4 graf capsule add.

Teach 'em a lesson.

 

Yeah, and do a disservice to your employer, yourself and your reader. People like you don't deserve to be in this business.

If you don't like your job, then find another. But passing out shitty advice like this isn't good for anything or anyone.

 

You bet it is. People who reschedule games at whim without taking even cursory efforts to notify media outlets (which they beg incessantly for coverage) need to learn that these decisions have consequences; you and your staff, however big it is, do not have all night to sit around and wait to see when and if games are going to be rescheduled out of the blue. You all have other shit to do.

They need to learn that if they decide on a whim to reschedule a softball game and don't notify anybody, they are going to get only bare minimum coverage.

If nothing else the head coach should learn that if and when he/she is notified of a game rescheduling, he needs to zip off a phone call or email to your office ASAP. If he can't spend 45 seconds to do that, fuck 'im.

 

There's a difference between liking one's job, and having to reschedule your life because someone either forgot or was too lazy to notify you that they were changing their schedule. Why should the writer have to give up their evening just because someone couldn't be bothered to send a quick message?

I told this story once before. My first job, at a weekly, I was voluntold to write a feature on this volleyball tournament that a local bar was putting on for charity on a Saturday. Of course, I wasn't going to get paid OT for it, but it was "a part of the job" as the publisher loved to say.

First I write a quick preview, get all the details from the bar owner, and told that the event was starting at 11 a.m. and would run to about 3 or so. They were emphatic that they wanted a picture of the winning team with the trophy, and such.

So I get there around 2:30, figuring I'll shoot some action shots, get the trophy shot, grab a couple of quotes from drunken people and that'll be it. I arrive at the bar, only to see a couple of people on the stools, the volleyball net just getting put up and nobody else around. I find the owner, who tells me that they decided to move the event to 4 p.m., and would wrap up around 8. I tell her that nobody contacted me or anyone else, and she gives the old, "Well, everybody knew about it!" Really? Who's everybody?

So I tell her that I have other plans for the night (which I did, my girlfriend was visiting), and that since she hadn't bothered to tell me about the time change, that I was unavailable at night. She looked pissed, and I walked out.

Monday, publisher calls me, asks me what happened, and asks that I go over and apologize. I refused, pointed out that it was her fault for not telling me about the time change, and that since he wasn't paying me overtime, that I didn't have all day to sit around for this story. He grumbled somewhat, and agreed that I didn't have to apologize, but he wanted me to go back over and shoot a pic of the owner with the check for the charity. Which I did, with the owner posing with the charity rep with a sullen look on her face.