Dear dimwit on the phone

Give me a 30-minute head start, and I'll win almost most any 5K in the world.

 

One big difference, though. Your predecessor didn't have to do your job in addition to his.

At least your paper has somewhat attempted to compensate you for making you do two jobs, even though the cynical person in me figures that those bonuses sure don't equal the extra salary that you should be making for doing two jobs.

 

You figure right, Baron. And the company didn't want to set a precedent for compensating me for the unused vacation time. I'm almost certain the publisher paid me that out of her own pocket.

 

Dear Mr. Mayor of a small town about 35 minutes from the city,

Yes, I received your letter addressed "To Whom It May Concern." I am sorry budget constraints have made you consider dropping the school's subscription to the newspaper. But that won't make me up the amount of coverage your volleyball and girls track program gets this coming school year.

We covered your school pretty well last year, especially considering we have only 223 subscribers in your town. Your school got more coverage than the town that has 451 subscribers (mainly because none of their teams posted a winning record last year).

By the way, what does it say about your priorities if you're thinking about dropping out of the NIE program due to sports coverage?

Thanks,
Inky

 

We once had an editor change how the police report went into the paper because the arrested party was a friend and former co-worker back in town visiting, and she told him the police report was wrong and he trusted her.

 

Dear Technophobe who doesn't know the difference between an e-mail address and a URL:

When I told you last Friday to send us your youth league registration announcement and gave you the address, I assumed you understood that you weren't supposed to type it into your browser with "www" in front of it. So when you called me this morning and said, "I need somebody to walk me through this, because it's not working," you provided our newsroom with a nice little much-needed laugh for a Monday morning.

Since you've apparently been under a rock for the last 15 years, if it has an "@" symbol in it, open your favorite e-mail application or go to www.web-based-email-for-dimwits-on-the-phone.com and send it to me from there.

With my sincere hopes that you learn how to navigate the Internet, because it's probably not going away ...

TheHacker

 

Yes, there are thousands of dimwits we have to deal with and coaches who don't help us out by calling in.

But I once had a wise old editor who reminded me, quite forcefully, "It's not our job to get them to call in. It's our job to get the information into the paper no matter what it takes."

Bottom line is he's right. It sucks, but we have to put up with it and call the coaches who don't call us because our job is to report.

 

guy probably just bought a new computer with e-mail stamps and an any key ...

 

FWIW, some of the most popular Google searches are for things like: www.aol.com or www.nfl.com, etc.

 

The cops used to do that for us. Business owners, prominent family members - they were all redacted from the police reports before we got them. I started holding them up to the light, and I could usually read what was underneath the black marker.

 

My SE hasn't figured this out yet, actually.

 

This is a great way to look at it.