Dear dimwit on the phone

Some guy called once asking for a basketball score that wasn't in the paper, and when I told him we didn't have it because they didn't call it in, he was incredulous that was how we took prep results. I guess because all newspapers have the resources to staff every single prep sporting event six nights a week for nine months out of the year even if it's just to get a score.

 

Don't know if it was a combination of bad teams, new coaches or off-campus coaches, but we got so few calls/emails on soccer last winter we decided it wasn't worth the time and effort to pick an all-county team. Still picked boys and girls MVPs, though. Only got one email about it. First time we heard from that coach all year, and it was hard not to answer with "where you been all season?"

And, yes, I'm proud I cost all those kids scholarships!

 

Dear Dimwit who stopped by,

While I appreciate you taking the time out of your retired schedule of golfing to come by the office and tell me about your daughter who is about to depart for another country for an international competition, I do wish you would have come by sooner. It's going to be awfully hard for me to contact her as she is leaving in the very early morning hours for a flight halfway around the world. I'm sure your daughter wants to stop and talk to me on the phone as she races around trying to get ready to leave. Thankfully she has graduated college already and I cannot cost her a scholarship. Also, thanks for saying it was my idea about covering her when you were the one who stopped me at the golf tournament in September to inform me about her accomplishments and to say you would keep me posted.

 

I worked at a grocery store during college and then after for a few months while I was looking for my first job in the business. I worked in customer service and saw a lot of amazing things. But I will never forget one day, some guy brought in coupons that had expired in 1994 -- so, 17 or 18 years prior. I told him I was sorry, but since they had expired almost two decades ago, I could not honor them.

He looked at me for a second, stone-faced. He then said, 'You know, coupons never really expire. Trust me,' finished paying and walked out.

 

If you wanna give everybody a little plastic laminated card and a string lanyard, fine. But when a guy from a newspaper, who didn't know for good reasons, shows up, smooth it out, and move forward.

What the hell else is the state association person there for otherwise? To approve of the match's fucking fair play?

 

Got a teenage son of some friends of ours who works at Wal-Mart, and the stories he tells about people trying to get free stuff are unbelievable.

Said one of them they've seen lately is people making coupons on their computer and bringing them in, expecting them to be honored. And not like 10 cents off a can of soup coupons. But more like a coupon where if you buy 2 xBox 360 games, you get an xBox 360 console for free. Or buy a 42-inch flat screen TV at 50 percent off, and get a surround-sound system thrown in for free.

Said they go to a lot of effort to make the coupons look real, but it takes 3 seconds to tell it's a fake (even beyond the ridiculous particulars of the coupons). And he says they get way pissed off when the coupons are not accepted, with some even threatening to call the cops. By then there's a manager involved, who says, "Sounds good. Let's go to a private room and call the police. You stay with us, and we'll let them sort it all out."

Sounds like that typically gets these people itching to leave the store in a hurry.

 

I can only speak for my company's system, but if the computer doesn't recognized the bar code when scanned, we don't take it. Now, since we do price matching of circulars or online prices, I could see someone trying to fake that.

 

Dear deer hunter's mother,

Listen, it's great that your daughter shot her first deer over the weekend. And I'm impressed it's a 10-pointer - I've not seen anything that big while I've been in my treestand this year.

But we don't run dead deer (or duck or bear or squirrel or elk) photos in the paper. No, we don't run "write-ups" about kids who kill their first deer either.

No, not even when the hunter is 5-years-old.

Sincerely,
Inky, a fellow hunter who thinks your story is bullshit because there's no way that little kid could handle a rifle taller than her and/or deal with the recoil from it.

 

Yeah, I've seen those on forums and yes...there are some dumb ones like that...but a few coupons posted there end up being either workable or at least useable. Most of it is for junk food and other junk...but let's just say I got a good deal on a Mach5 razor once...

 

Maybe you should run them. We do (and have for decades) and it's one of our most popular features. Between November and February we'll probably get around 100 pictures submitted, and we try to run at least two or three every Friday. People love it, it takes little effort on our part, and if it gets them to buy a newspaper or three I have no problem with it.

 

Same here, though probably not as many pics get turned in.

We run them every Thursday on our youth page.

 

If hunting and the outdoors is big in your area, you should at least consider it. You don't need to make a big deal out of it, nor are you going to put it on your main page, but if you have extra space, go ahead.

At the last paper I worked at, we did this (and for those who caught trophy-sized fish), but such people only came by once in a while.