Who's your elephant in your newsroom?

Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves could make it into a movie ...

 

Any video of that?

 

1. The jerkoff columnist who shows up at 11, takes an hour-and-a-half for lunch, and is out of the building by 3:30. His '40-hour' workload consists of writing two 12-inch stories for a weekly entertainment pullout section and three bullshit columns. Bullshit meaning a tree falls in his backyard, so he grabs a photog to snap up a picture so he'll have art to accompany his take on how a tree fell in his backyard. Bullshit meaning how it's always one hell of a gas when he and his wife go out to dinner with the folks. Or what a pain in the neck it is to stand in line at the DMV. Or how it's exasperating to merge onto Busy Road at rush hour.
Shit of it is this asstard makes more money than any of the reporters who actually do work their 40 every week. On his timeslip he writes 11-7 Monday through Friday. I've worked their for several months, get in at 5 every day and I've seen the guy twice. His job is safe, though. Somewhere in town his face is on a billboard advertising our newspaper.

2. The other jerkoff columnist who insists on injecting race into just about every discussion. Who lately can't seem to make it through a day without calling one of his coworkers a bigot. Who can't have a conversation on the phone unless he's shouting, to the point where you want to take a sledgehammer to the side of the fool's skull. A know-it-all prick and pitiful excuse for a reporter since his best friend is the city's leading politician. And when he's not missing stories because it's too hard to fit into his 25-hour work week, he's usually out playing that everyman sport known as golf.

3. Perhaps she should be No. 1, but since she's such complete loser in life I'll cut her some slack. The Obit Lady. Universally despised for reasons too numerous to list, but I'll give it a try: Rude, overbearing, annoying, dumb (once asked someone how long it would take to cook filet mignon in the microwave), mean, greedy (waiting for her 90-something aunt to die so she can collect the inheritance), prejudiced, boastful, manipulative, disingenuous (always blathering on about so-and-so friend when everyone knows she has no friends), but most of all she's just downright pitiful. She works 12-hour days quite frequently because she's rather be around people who hate her than by herself. Sad.

4. The two-pack-a-day-smoking, get-in-by-noon-leave-by-six reporter who insists on filing half of her shit by email. And after three martinis, calls the paper from home to alert the night reporters of breaking news out in her neck of the woods.

5. The old guy on the desk who has absolutely no right to be employed with anything that involves reading and writing. Once handed him a photo to write a caption and he managed to misspell everyone of the girls from Desperate Housewives. Felicite Huffman, Eve Longoria, Terry Hatcher, Nicollete Sherdan and Marcica Cross.

And there's many, many, many, many more, mainly all the ones in charge who let this bullshit fly, but I'll stop right here. Thanks.

 

Dogturdo would rip it to shreds, though.

 

No elephants, but lots of jackasses.

 

damn...

 

This has to be the Detroit Freep, right?

 

The comment about the socializing raises a question. The reporter is BSing with sources? I don't see how you can have a problem with that as long as he gets his work done. Keeping up those relationships is part of the job.

I think some of the problems we run into with certain co-workers is our perceptions. Take a reporter who can't make it on time for an "office shift" to save their lives, yet they are usually late after spending 2 hours at home working and they stay late. I know a few like that. Would you rather work with that person or the idiot who is always early or on time but still doesn't get the job done?

 

1. There are double standards at my paper. Someone gets a slap on the wrist, another person gets shitcanned. I understand the game. Doesn't mean I agree with it.
2. Everyone I work with and know is amazed and wonders how this individual is still employed. May be one of the great unanswered questions of our lifetime.

 

At some places they would fire a good performer over some relatively minor issue so that they could fire a bad performer for the same type of offense issue and have their asses covered.

So be careful what you wish for.

 

I can name one....

 

Fortunately, at least so far, I haven't seen any clues in here that somebody here might think it's me.