Dear dimwit on the phone

I'll play rhodys game, too.

Couple years ago at the state tennis tournament, a local doubles team is getting creamed. Frustrated one of the players throws his racket after a point, and it comes skidding right at me, hitting my camera bag. No harm really, but at the changeover the coach gave them both an earful. After the match, he instructed them to find me and apologize.

That coach has always been a classy guy...this is just the most stark example.

 

In the spirit of Rhody and the season:

Thanks, promotions manager, for helping me deal with the total idiot of a parent who came into our office and demanded we rerun a whole story on all-league football because your son was accidentally omitted. I'm sorry he disturbed your concentration in your office 20 feet from the lobby, where I was trying to deal with it. I'm sorry you didn't have any better luck than I did with this horse's ass, who people in the office were still asking me about three days later. Oh, and thank you too, local football coach, for letting us know you tried to calm the guy down too before he came down, and saying you saw we made the fix in the online story and were happy we were running a correction the next day. You've always been a class act in my book.

 

Sounds more like a case of they lost to every halfway-decent team they played.

 

With some minor tweaks -- such as removing the adjectives and insults, of course -- this is probably worth sending along to the AD. That acknowledgement of his professional courtesy might be beneficial to you sometime down the line.

 

Actual e-mail from today: "YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING ME, 775 TO MAKE THE BOWLING HONOR ROLL, DO YOU THINK WE ARE PROS OR WHAT? THAT'S 258 A GAME AVERAGE, BUT YET YOU CAN PUT GOLF SCORES IN THERE WITH NOT ONE PERSON FROM THE LOCAL AREA. YOU JUST MIGHT LOOSE SOME MORE CUSTOMER'S, AND I'M ONE OF THEM, OH I FORGOT, YOU CAN COPY AND PASTE THE GOLF SCORE'S, BUT YOU MIGHT HAVE TO TYPE BOWLING SCORE'S AND GOD FORBID THAT. IT'S WAS BAD ENOUGH THAT WE HAD TO BOWL 750, BUT NOW 775, GIVE US A BREAK." *bold added*

Those golf scores "with not one person from the local area"? That's called the PGA and LPGA. They get paid and people care to see those. In your flawed logic, we should only run local high school football agate and no NFL standings.
Yeah, and "God Forbid" that we bust our ass with limited staff to get something meaningless done. Let's forget getting the front page layed out. By God! Get the bowling scores in!!!
It's called technology sir. Have your precious bowling commish type the scorers out on a computer program (not scrawled on paper and faxed like it's 1990) and print it out to hang at the alley...because no one else gives a shit.

Also, there is no " 's" needed in the word scores. Dimwit!

 

But you might loose customers!!!

 

The one positive to our bowling alley family fun center shutting down: no more league bowling reports.

 

Sidebar to "the dimwits": If someone has a 300 game in your area, do you write a small story or run it as a brief (a la a hole-in-one)? Just curious who does and doesn't.

 

Speaking of 300 games, I did a story earlier this summer about two players who bowled 300 games on the same night at the same place about 30 minutes apart. And, yes, I asked if they noticed anything unusual about the way the lanes were oiled that night, and they both said they didn't feel any different than normal. BTW, one was a 17-year-old girl who was tuning up to play in the national junior tournament in Las Vegas. The other was a guy in his early 20s and it was his second 300 game. So it was no fluke.

 

Do people get 300 games on a fluke? I don't even get a 150 game on a fluke.

 

I got laid on a fluke...but never a 300 game.

 

Well, first the bowling alley and/or golf course managers would have to call or email to let us know such a feat occurred ...