Dear dimwit on the phone

Sounds sort of like fans who get sideways about a reporter using a coach's first name instead of Coach.

 

Dear dimwit running the station's website. What?

Former metro Atlanta high school basketball standoff diagnosed with cancer

 

Fixed it for you. Where were the fuckin' editors?

 

Friday was the regular-season finale of football season here in Ohio.
Around 9:50 p.m., we got an email from with an area school's name in the subject line. Figured it was the football box score they always send us.
Opened it, but it was a sectional final volleyball match from Thursday, sent 24 hours late. It was one of those emails from MaxPreps that teams send along after a match. Don't know if someone forgot to hit the send button Thursday or just up and forgot until Friday.
But with just two of us in the office — sports editor, who covered a game, and myself handling the roundups and helping proof the freelancer stories — the volleyball email was promptly trashed. Could have done something with it for our Briefs section had it been sent in a few hours earlier, but we had no time for something sent in that late on a football Friday with deadline nearing.

 

Had a doozy tonight.
Coworker took a call from someone who wanted to let us know the Sudoku solution in today's paper didn't match the puzzle.
Though the caller was smart enough to figure that out, he wasn't smart enough to understand — after it was explained to him — that we have nothing to do with the Sudoku other than receive it from the company we pay to get it from and then drop it on the page.

 

I used to have the problem of having to adjust the solution to account dot the fact we published on a Saturday but didn’t publish again until Tuesday. The puzzle (Sodoku and crossword) solutions were for the day before so I had to cut out the solution that was supposed to print on Sunday and replace the one that was the Monday solution. I messed it up a couple of times and got phone calls.

 

People take their sudokus seriously, I've learned

 

We've gotten calls demanding to talk to the Associated Press reporter of a certain story.

 

Game goes long so it's still airing when a reader turns on the TV to watch the following game. Calls to complain and blames us.

 

When I worked in Lake Havasu City, the news desk was responsible for laying out the comics page every day, which included horoscopes, crossword puzzle and "On this day" feature. The rule was, you got one of those wrong, all the complaining calls were sent to your desk.

 

Not newspapers but ...
I work for a park district and we show free movies in the park at many of our facilities. They start at dusk and it's shocking how many people don't know what "dusk" is. They badger us on the phone and social media for a start time of the movies. We tell them dusk, they ask what that is, we tell them when it gets dark and they still want a time.
We can't give you a time. Look at your damn phone, see when sundown is and figure it's about that time.

 

That's sort of the same issue with July 4 fireworks and our local paper. People bitch about knowing the exact time. Well, get online and figure out the local sunset and go from there, or just park your car in the lot after dinner and come up with things to do until something happens. They aren't going to start until it's dark enough to see them, which is at least 9 p.m. and probably closer to 9:30.

However, Rocky Mount's tradition was July THIRD fireworks (because everybody goes to the beach on the fourth, according to the explanation I got from the locals).