The most frightening words you can hear

You're going to go over 40 hours, just bank the extra hours until between seasons.

 

I always found it funny that editors demanded you wrote nothing but the truth and backed up every fact - except when you turn in your timecard at the end of the week.

 

Sorry, the most frightening words are, by a long shot, "We need to see you in HR."

 

I know a writer who told me he today covered a noon basketball game, then had to do a batch of highlight videos with the photo editor and a podcast about the game. He then was forced to cover a high school game tonight, because his paper recently cut a position. He got to the first game about 10:30 a.m. then worked til about 11 p.m. You do the math. Wink wink on the 40 hours for that person. "Bank the 40 hours, you'll make up for it in the summer," are the horror words to him.

 

This is a combo one:

1.) "Bank the extra hours you put in this week for the summer."

leading to ...

2.) "The paper is putting on a 7v7 football tournament this summer, and we're tasked with doing articles on each of the 32 teams."

leading to ...

3.) "The tournament will make the paper a healthy chunk of change. It's all hands on deck up until the tournament."

leading to ...

4.) "We won't get any bonuses this year for the tournament. Management hopes to do something next year."

 

Wow, they are really banking the hours. Writer got paid tonight for not working. I would put up more of a fuss about it if it was me. Another writer mentioned again tonight the legality of it (or lack thereof).

 

I know this thread title has leaned on worst things you can hear on the job, but I can't get it out of my head every time I see the thread that you or a loved one has cancer would probably be the worst for me. Despite all that we put up with in our jobs, life is more important than work. Balance.

 

"Close the door. Have a seat." Heard that.

"We're moving you to weekends." This once followed the first line.

"It is time to re-invent our product."

"We're going to switch up the news anchor teams for a week to just see how the chemistry is."

"Mandatory newsroom meeting tomorrow at 10 a.m."

"Recent research on our anchors shows that..."

"All employees will audit their hours and workload so we can get a sense of your workflow."

"With the new ownership, we don't expect any immediate changes."

"It's a new initiative from sales to help with new products."

 

Nine years ago (dang). Publisher, who was notorious for getting grand ideas that he'd forget about a month later, decided it was time to do a redesign. Granted, the paper needed it—its last whole redesign seemed to be from the late 80s, and the visual product looked stale. Designers actually did a good job livening things up when they could, but were still constricted.

So the redesign was on! As was this publisher's wont, he came up with the idea but didn't put a lick of research/planning into it. We were to do a redesign, so we...had to do a redesign. This happened, and by that I mean "happened," in stages:

1) The redesign group. Once a week, the ME, the head photog guy, the SE occasionally, the night news editor occasionally, and a couple people from the copy desk (myself included) would get together and mull over designs we liked from across the country. We talked about improving the product on the whole, not just livening up fonts. Everything was shut down with "not enough money."

2) The ME was told we needed tighter focus on the redesign. So he appoints a relatively inexperienced copy desker that he saw something in to helm the whole thing by herself. Gives her zero direction other than "come up with a new 1A in two months." So her job becomes to sit at her desk all day, look at fronts from across the country, and slooooooowly piece together a 1A design. She eventually comes up with one, but the publisher's too busy to meet on it. So her design is forgotten. (I eventually see the design; she's not a bad employee, but it's complete amateur hour and does nothing for the paper.)

3) Staff shakeup. It's determined that this employee is dead weight doing what she's doing (which is, essentially, damn near nothing), and that our lifestyle editor is terrible, so the lifestyle editor is bumped down to copydesk and the redesign head is moved to lifestyle editor. She's good there; more in line with her passions.

4) Meanwhile, I've since become copydesk chief and the ME comes to me to serve as redesign head. I tell him that I can come up with some designs but need some sort of infrastructure for the process to mean anything. He says he'll get back to me. So I shuffle around schedules so that my #2 heads the desk once a week while that night I focus on creating the new 1A and doing some final reads. I come up with a layout. It's not bad.

5) I give the ME this new layout and he says the print redesign is on hold because now the publisher wants us all to focus on the web redesign. Granted, a great idea—the website was the worst news site I had ever seen, frankly. But again, no infrastructure or staffing plan accompanies this. The web redesign is instead to be handled by me (zero experience outside of personal websites), our ME (zero experience at all), and our IT guy (a flake and a moron notorious for going to what seemed like 10 kids' softball games a week). None of us have a clue here. The IT guy manages to scrounge up some temporary layouts and I guess hires a freelance guy to help him set up a file uploading system. Lord knows he was too much of a hack to create it. Except—this system is garbage, the IT guy is always out of the office for help with it, and story uploads to the website are always a disaster. My copydesk staff is doing the best they can, but the system's trash. I'm having to meet with the ME and the company president on a nightly basis to go over how dumb my staff is, how dumb I am, why we don't care about the redesign enough, how mad the publisher is at us, etc., etc. I explain that the IT guy's system doesn't work, he's brought in, covers his ass for 30 minutes before finally admitting that, yeah, my staff did what they were told. Every night with this stuff.

6) At this time I was regularly searching for another job. Thankfully I find one in another field not too terribly long after this website nonsense kicks up. My last night ever at the paper, I'm sitting at my desk with my feet propped up, and the president comes into the office, frazzled. Begs me to try my best uploading stories to the website that evening. I've never felt that powerful in my life. I actually take over all story uploading duties for my last evening just to make sure it's done awesomely, because I believe in karma, I guess.

7) Anyway, it's now almost a decade after our publisher commanded us to do a redesign. Everyone on the initial redesign group has left the paper, as has the woman hired to do it solo, as has that frazzled company president. The publisher himself is no longer on this mortal coil. The website eventually was redone by an outside company, and it looks...vaguely shitty. The paper was never redesigned. Ta da!

 

Vaguely shitty. LOL.

 

king c, your account sounds like every newspaper "initiative" my shops have tried.

Cadillac dreams for a website, print redesign, etc., but on a Ford Escort budget of time and money.

 

Or walking into a meeting with no clue of the agenda and HR person is sitting there.