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Shameless AssKissers/Backstabers

scalper

Member
Joined
Nov 4, 2004
Messages
107
Can't stand these guys. There's usually one worse than the rest at every place you work. The one guy that I always think of, always finds out what's of interest to people in the glass offices and uses that to suck up to them. Also is good at finding various people of lower rank to latch onto that will help move him forward.

And he is never above planting an idea for discussion that inevitably bounces back to some earlier triumph he had, thus making himself look good but not having to say anything overt.

The guy is truly disgusting. And not above twisting the knife when he senses an opportunity to strike and not wind up with blood on his hands. So anybody else know creeps (and that's not the real word I'm thinking of) like this?
 
Probably tougher to be a backstabber these days, the knife is coming often enough from the publisher's office.
 
You're gonna get stabbed in the back in this biz, that's for sure. You just move on. But you can't say it doesn't hurt when it happens.

So it was 2003, and I was a writer/layout/everything guy under a SE who for health reasons was unable to do his job. This started in May and stretched to September and the start of HS football season. During this stretch, the normally two-man sports team was one man. This included a 56-page football tab, about half of which was my copy, that I was laying out in addition to the daily edition (which was mostly wire, but hey, they can either have that and a tab or local in the daily and no tab and a bunch of pissed off advertisers). Well, five weeks into football season we get a new SE. This guy has a J-school degree and all that, unlike me. Well, apparently at his J-school they must have put it in his head that when you're a SE at a podunk daily with one other guy in the department, that you can basically sit around and not cover anything and do "administrative duty." Basically, just telling me what to do when I had been running the thing better without his interference before. He keeps me around until there's only one football team around, then he decides he doesn't need me anymore. I get in from the football game, file my story and then I got informed that he was "taking sports in a new direction." One without me.

Stab. Twist.

Karma can really suck, though. So I'm out of work, right? And the sports section that I used to run is now filled with AP copy. The next article of local origin appeared five days after I was canned. I even started mysteriously seeing *Backstabber's* byline on game stories for games I was stringing and was the only member of the media in the house. :o Oh, and the football team I was covering happened to go to state and win. *Backstabber's* car broke down halfway to San Antonio and missed it. One of our news reporters also went there on her own (as an alum of the school winning state) and helpfully provided a sidebar. No gamer, no anything else. The "New Direction" rather sucked.

And so job ads go out for what was my job. They want someone with a journalism degree for a job they were paying $7/hr for. I was making $8.50 when I got sent out. And guess what? Five months later they haven't found a new writer. New ME comes in who cares about sports. *Backstabber* is himself out of work in a month. New SE comes in, and gives me a call. A few weeks later we're both at the Little League park beginning the work of getting the local sports community back involved with a paper that essentially abandoned it.

The entire paper got killed six months later.
 
All the time, they lookin' for your lady,
A few of these fellas, they sure look shady...
 

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