Nail in the coffin

Then again it was a brief, which are often either riddled with cliches or mind-numbingly repetitive (I, for one, prefer the latter).

 

I had a guy call me up earlier tonight and ask for some help with some "final four" information. He then, I shit you not, asked me to read him all 64 teams in the NCAA tournament so he could fill in what apparently was a print out of the brackets without the first round pairings.

Uh, no.

I slammed the phone, collected my cool and then answered the phone again.

"This is Coach Doe over at Bumblefuck High. Got some track results for ya."

 

He hit that one from downtown.

 

Wow, your coaches call in their results? I'm jealous.
There's a little irony and a little truth in that, actually. A lot of our coaches neglect to call in their games. This causes parents to call and complain that we didn't put their kids in the paper, at which point I get chewed out by my bosses for not calling all of the coaches myself and asking for their game information.
Oh, have I mentioned that my shop is a little backwards?

 

The boxes aren't in the paper the next morning because the coach didn't call them in. So when pissed off parents call you to complain, tell them you'd be happy to print the box scores, if only the coach would call them in.

Try it.

 

Doesn't work. Their main complaint is often that we didn't actually staff the game. My answers rarely satisfy them. That's when they go above my head and the aforementioned situation plays out.

 

Could you be a little more specific about your paper. Weekly? Daily? What's the circulation and how many high schools are you dealing with?

 

Daily; 16-20k; 5 high schools and one private school; 3 full-time in sports (including me) and no part-timers or stringers.

 

Perhaps you might consider finding one parent for each sport at your five schools. Surely you could find somebody that would be willing to work with you. Both sides win. They get their boxes in the paper. You get your bosses off your back, and a better product for your market.

 

Look, if you're going to approach this logically, then my whining will be completely wasted.

 

Wouldn't ending a graf by saying "Period." be a cliche in and of itself?

Just sayin' ...

 

Your whining is completely wasted.
If you can't track down results from 6 schools, somebody ain't doing the job.