Dear dimwit on the phone

Dear dimwit higher ups,
I'm all for going to DEF-CON 3 for a gas tanker crash that shuts down a freeway, but before you scramble the reporters to respond, maybe we might want to get confirmation that thousands of homes were evacuated from someone other than a drunken frat boy named I.P. Freely. Schools being closed, local shops being mobbed by people being diverted, cats and dogs living together all sound good, but we may have wanted to make two phone calls to find out what was really going on before having an all hands on deck call.

I can say this, the reporters actually did their jobs and gathered facts before posting the horrifically wrong facts online.

 

Well it's that time again where people keep calling in asking for high school playoff scores, only this time one caller did it four hours before the game even started.

 

Did you give 0-0?

 

We got one right on deadline last night and I give our scoreboard guy credit for not going postal on the caller.

 

We used to get them constantly, to the point where, if we only had one or two games remaining, in the pre-internet updating era, we'd set up a phone hotline for them to call. We'd post the phone number in the paper with the preview stories.

We'd still get people calling us instead of the hotline number. Besides the obviousness of are these people actually capable of reading a few numbers, it was annoying as hell. One person said they didn't want to hear a machine, another said they thought it was rude for us to set up the number because they had questions about the game and couldn't ask the machine for it.

I guess the idea that, hey, 100 people may call and if we'd spend a minute with each of them, that we could lose an extra hour and 40 minutes of work time to answer the phone to give them information that they could have received by buying the paper the next day or, if they really gave a shit, to actually go to the game, didn't dawn on them.

 

Back in that day, I'd transfer them to the score line. It actually worked so well, the newsies decided to try it on election night, until they realized they didn't know how to record on the machine. And it was my day off ...

 

Does anyone ever get calls about event starting times? Like a network broadcast promo will say "Penguins vs. Blackhawks, tonight at 8 pm Eastern". Well, if you happen to live in a different time zone, you have to recognize the difference.

Of course, it gets confusing because NBC "adjusts" its Olympic programming so it airs at both 8 pm ET AND 8 pm PT. But other events seem to get aired live in all time zones, so 8 pm ET is actually 6 pm Mountain and 5 pm Pacific. And the listing in the paper reflects local time and the on-air promo reflects Eastern time, so that apparently confuses some people.

 

Dear dimwit volunteer working the pass gate:

Of course you're out of media passes. You wouldn't be if you didn't hand them out to every parent, grandparent, uncle, cousin, and girlfriend with a camera at this damn tournament, instead of real, working press like me. I'm still going on the floor because I don't get paid if I don't work.

Suck it,
Bradley

 

Also comes up with boxing on Showtime or HBO. Some outlets get the ET feed, others the PT.

 

There is actually an association that just hands out the media passes at the gate? Wow, what a fine display of professionalism.

 

It was state wrestling this weekend, so the state athletics association was in charge and it likes to have us sign in and use its media pass rather than just acknowledging anyone's company-issued pass. But the volunteers in charge of handing out passes let every helicopter parent who wants one have one.

Other than the free-for-all for media passes to access the floor and locker rooms, the tournament is exceptionally well run. Just one of those small things that don't mean shit to anyone else but annoyed some of us who had a hard time getting access so we could work. I got my work done, which is all that really matters. Guess I'm just in a bitchy mood.

 

We get them too.

Also, when ESPN is scheduled to show State U., but the game before it runs long or goes to OT we get "Why isn't ESPN showing our game yet!?! What's the score!?!"