Dear dimwit on the phone

Sure 'nuff. MY TEAM WON should trump everything, even if I was physically somewhere else and the softball coach NEVER calls that night. He always waits to e-mail a link to some sort of online site the next morning. And as a bonus that I didn't know until later, he went to a funeral the next day so he actually wasn't going to send the link until TWO days after. Fortunately a parent, who's also a principal at a middle school in a neighboring town, has started keeping track of games with an iPad app and sent in his stuff, which was better than what coach sends in.

 

I think I've told this story before, but it worth repeating. Local school grabs the last spot in the football playoffs and draws Big Catholic in the first round, about 60 or so miles away. This was in the early 90s and we were still shooting film, so didn't even think of sending a shooter. I was at a juco basketball game and one of the timekeepers was a teacher at the school and was listening to the game on a headset and feeding me scores as the locals were upsettig Big Catholic. When I get back to the office, I let the editor know what was going on and we remake the page on the fly to move the game to the top of the page.

Couple of days later, I come in and someone's on the phone with the sports editor, and I can tell he's not happy. Finally he hangs up and tells me it was a fan from local school wondering why we didn't have any pictures of the big win. So he explained how it would have been impossible to get photos and make deadline, and the caller's brilliant answer? "You should have changed your deadline." That's when he hung up.

 

Email to one of our writers from a swimming mom pleading for more coverage: "The chlorine destroys their hair, skin and lungs. It even eats their eyebrows off their face. You can't ask for any more dedication than that."

Guess I know what story we are doing next: "Parents Throw Children into Pool of Dangerous Chemicals."

 

Our business manager sent an email (Whups, this is the "phone" thread ... oh, well) to the managing editor today. She wants to quibble over how I use my vacation time, particularly around Christmas. I've been working for this company since they took over five years ago. They want to start asking questions today.

"You can't take more than one week because it might impair the normal functions of the company," she wrote.

My reply: "Taking off 10 days at Christmas time, when there is absolutely nothing local going on, impairs the newsroom less than taking three different weeks off in June, July and August when I might have to miss swim meets and Legion baseball."

She writes back, "All your PDOs have to be approved in advance." I write back: "1) The Supreme HR person at the Mother Ship told us when we were purchased that we can use PDOs any way we want.* 2) Clearly, my supervisor has approved these PDOs. If she hadn't, you wouldn't be writing these emails because I wouldn't have gotten that time off."

My managing editor and i agreed that somewhere, something's come up that's been perceived as a problem when it really isn't and someone felt like they needed to play Vacation Cop.

* - That statement contradicts the policy as written in the handbook, but if the person who had some say in writing it told you something to your face, wouldn't you believe it?

 

Apeman, the one year I worked sports full-time, yeah, everyone else got a stick up their ass when my two weeks of vacation were 1) during Christmas and 2) during high school graduation. Some news people are so out of the loop when it comes to what the busy times of the year are though.

 

Well, I like the feisty tone of your replies.

 

I'm a one-man sports department and my desk is dead center in the newsroom. The newsroom gets it but all our local-level management is in the office 25 miles away. I've only met the business manager once. I've met the head of the company itself more than that.

Anyway, the ME and I have agreed to keep doing what I've been doing. Week in June, week in July, a few other days as needed, 10 at Christmas. We looked up the policy. There's no punishment listed for violating it.

Haven't heard back from business manager. She'll probably complain some more tomorrow.

 

Love when idiots demand to fix something that ain't broke. So silly. Stick to your guns Apeman.

 

I ran into a woman last night at an event.

She had something she wanted in the paper and said, "I suppose it's too late for this week's paper."

I said "Yes. Please send it to me tomorrow for next week's paper."

What I was thinking was, "Well, we have been on the newsstands for 24 hours at this point, so yeah, it's too late."

 

I love when this happens.

Had someone email me a letter to the editor recently on a Wednesday afternoon. My paper's deadline is Wednesday afternoon and, in the paper itself, it says our deadline for LTEs are Tuesday at noon.

Best part of the email was the line "I would really appreciate it if you could get this in this week's paper given the time sensitive nature of the event". Yeah, lady, well I would appreciate it if you would follow our very simple submission guidelines. Until then, it ain't going in.

 

Thank you.

Good to know it's not just us.

 

We at the paper are so wrapped up in every little nuance that we just assume that the rest of the public knows all the deadlines.
Yes, people are dumb for the most part...but I don't think Joe Q. Public should be expected to know it.
I agree, I complain about the same thing, but yeah, it's not actually a big deal.