Should I quit my job?

That was my thinking, too. I had maybe three or four good managers in my 30 years in newsrooms, but those three or four were really good and energized me every day I came to work.

The rest, though, were horrible. Silly, stupid, envious assholes who got pissed when you did great work on deadline. What a fucking clown show that was: You pull off something stupendous on deadline, and your boss hates you for that.

I miss the newsrooms, but I don't miss the mid-level managers at all. Too many of them were chickenshit bean-counters.

 

This is not now and never has been true.

 

Unless they give eleventy bazillion bonus points for military service, which KOs me from federal jobs.

 

His dad can't hit a 1-iron.

 

A part-time rural route for USPS is probably $20 an hour at the most, so doubt it's 33 percent higher than even an
editing spot at the Podunk Press.

 

Around $18 an hour around here, which is (sadly) more than I ever made as a reporter in Rhode Island, except for a brief stint with Patch. That's not counting that you get plenty of overtime at 1.5x, if you want it. (But, sometimes even if you don't want it.) And, once you make career from RCA or CCA, you get a much more standard schedule, paid holidays, and so on. You work your ass off at USPS (and as far as I know, FedEx and UPS too), but you're pretty much always compensated for it, which is not the same as journalism, at least in my experience.

 

In NJ it was 17 something an hour like 10 years ago. Know someone who is a rural carrier. They estimate
how long the route should be and you get paid for that. Usually when you get to know the route you always
finish early, so you'd be done in about 6 1/2 hours and get paid for 8.

 

Focus on the happiness.

 

This is mostly true, but the exceptions can be Monday (double mail volume usually) and December (just brutal almost the whole month). Still though, not a bad gig, especially since the only hard requirements around here are a high school diploma, a clean driving and criminal record, and passing the exam.

 

After everything has fallen into place, I'm quite happy to be in the state government.

But if I had known at 25 what I know now, I definitely would have gone for my master's, then worked my way up the sports information field. I could have been content doing that, and not even necessarily at a D-I school.

That said, the financial rewards would have been far less at every step along the way. Including the hefty pension sum I got upon leaving newspapers.

 

The last week has been OK. Getting more comfortable with the 12-passenger vans, but still not crazy about driving them. I'm no fan of Jeep Wranglers, either, at least while they're in transport mode. The inside lights don't work and it makes it tough to read the VIN to the lead driver.

While we're in the shuttle, going to a location to pick up cars or back from a location after dropping them off, the lead driver sometimes has on comedy, like Eddie Murphy or Chris Fox. The other night, he had on some Youtube show. I'm not sure if it was real or scripted. It was a couple having relationship issues. They were fighting about the guy watching porn. He claimed he was watching it to learn Spanish. You can't watch that stuff in the newsroom, I guess.

Sometime in the fall, when it slows down there, they plan on eliminating the overnight shift and putting us on 3-11. I want to leave before then because when that happens I'll be making $2 an hour less and with those hours, I couldn't do much stringing, which would cut off another source of income.

 

Happy to read things are getting better, SP.