Calls about circulation issues

No kidding. I work for the damn paper and half the time they forget to bring me my paper.

 

I've told this before — a former circulation director bitched up a storm when we were late a bunch of times during basketball season, blaming his poor delivery on us. I told him he didn't want us to be on time, because he would lose his excuse.

Basketball ended, we started hitting deadline, and they kept having delivery problems. He lost his excuse.

 

Part of the reason I just cancelled mine.

 

When our place decided to give us all individual phone numbers, I must have been blessed with a number that led to advertising (in addition to the random circ calls). It got to the point that my voice mail is now: "You've reached Hustle in the Daily Blab SPORTS DEPARTMENT. I'm sorry I can't take your call, but please leave a name, number and the time you called and I'll get back to you as soon as you can. If you are calling in reference to classified or display advertising, please hang up and dial [main number]; if you are calling with a circulation problem, please hang up and dial [circ number]."

The problem is non-existent anymore for me, but I'm still hesitant to change the voice mail.

 

i certainly hope he was soon an ex-part timer.

 

That's because they are talking about jail. I swear, it is the favorite topic among pressroom people. How many times they've been to jail. Who they met in jail. What they did in jail. When they're going back to jail. And it's amazing how any new hires back there can jump right into the conversation.

 

Of course. They've all been in jail together.

 

He became an ex-part-timer for a lot of reasons.

 

The wonderful thing we seem to get is people who think the editor, not the publisher, is in charge of everything. I don't know how many calls either my editor or myself have taken for circulation, only to explain we have nothing to do with any of that.

 

Paper I worked at long ago had a fire one Friday during its weekday afternoon edition and about two-thirds of the run never left the building.

We were in that night for the Saturday morning paper and were told of the situation. We were assured that a circulation person would stay all night to answer the calls.

Yep, you know how that worked out. At 7 p.m., when the circulation person normally left, the circulation person left. The phone, of course, kept ringing.

We were telling the callers quite quickly that there was a fire and that their Friday paper would be delivered with their Saturday paper. Callers would quickly back off their complaints and ask if everything and everybody was OK. We got off the phone quicker to answer the next call.

The ME, who regularly walked around with a pouty lip and in total fear for his job (for good reason), heard someone mention the fire and quickly ordered that the fire wasn't to be mentioned. The calls immediately started taking two or three times longer.

After about 30 minutes of that, the publisher came in the newsroom and was hit with a flood of our complaints about all the calls. "Tell them we had a fire," he replied. We went back to that technique and the ME shut up. I think we made deadline.

 

Several years ago, we had a brutal New Year's Day snowstorm that pretty much shut down the area.

I came in the day after the storm (a Sunday) to get some work done (you could get around town, but you couldn't travel out on the highways) and our circulation people were just getting swamped with calls from people who didn't get their paper. I told them I'd help them with calls for a while.

Most of the people were pretty understanding except for this one ass who just started yelling at me as soon as I answered the phone. I explained that our carriers were having problems getting around on the country roads, but he just kept bitching about poor customer service, etc. Then he says, "I'd just drive into town to buy one, but I can't get out of my house." I said, "Well if you can't get out of your house, how do you expect the carrier to get your paper delivered?" There was silence for a couple of seconds, then he said, "Yeah, I guess you're right," and hung up.

 

In my experience, people often call in the morning to complain about the sports section, and at night to complain about the circulation department. And, yes, for some reason most delivery complaints find their way to the sports department. I don't know why any of that is, but I've come to accept it.