Best working-on-a-holiday stories

That's absurd, unless you prefer it that way. I can't imagine missing out on nearly three decades worth of those holidays and family gatherings.

 

Since this isn't on the journalism board, i can tell this one. About 113 years ago, I worked at a pet shop. Grace and I spent a Fourth of July trying to catch up and clean cages. We were the only two working.

TMI, but in the process of cleaning rat cages in a place that breeds its own critters, part of the process is ... uh ... thinning out the herd. So we were dumping old mice and rats into various snake cages.

Well, after putting a couple of rats into the cages with the big Burmese pythons, I noticed that both pythons -- a breeding pair, about five feet and six feet -- had chomped on the same rat. And neither was budging. They were slowly moving closer to each other, both poised to swallow the other.

I had to call the reptile guy in to separate them. He truly thought it was a prank call. He had to come in and pull them apart, which was really gross.

Later, I took a look into the pythons' cage and noticed one was at an extremely odd angle. Upon further inspection, I realized that one, its appetite whetted by the rat, had swallowed the heating pad, which was still plugged in. It was continuing to swallow the cord and its body was at this weird angle.

Had to call Stan again and explain it, although at the time I called I don't think I realized any more than the snake was at an odd angle. (I was about 16 at the time)

He had to return, and we wound up having to unplug the heating pad, wrap the cord around a pillar for leverage and slowly pull it out of the snake's body. It was really hard and absolutely disgusting.

 

New Year's Eve 2000. Our other sports writer's car broke down on Dec. 30, so I was called into action to replace him on our coverage of the Independence Bowl between Mississippi State and Texas A&M.
Drove out there fine. Took a little over two hours. Then, just before kickoff, it started to snow. About 3 inches fell during the game, which made for a fun and memorable football game but a really shitty drive home. That two-hour trip out took almost nine coming back. The interstate wasn't plowed, so I never risked going more than about 20 mph. Any time I did, the car got squirrelly on me.
Must've seen 50 cars in the ditch on the way home, including one that slid in right behind me. I stopped and gave the guy, who was about 20 miles from home, a ride to his apartment. Every 50 miles or so I had to stop and pound accumulated snow and ice out of my wheel wells.
After a while, it became like a quest. At one point, two tractor trailers were stuck at the top of a hill, side by side. I got a running start and drove around them on the shoulder. Closest I came to wiping out was turning into my apartment complex, when I hit the brakes a little too hard and almost went into somebody's front yard. I pulled into a parking spot and let out a shout at a job well done.

After the fact, my editor pissed me off. First, he tells me they've decided to go with the AP story. Maybe they moved deadline up to beat the storm, I don't know. He never explained it. Tells me to write a second day story instead on one of the equipment guys who was a local.
Then, he tells me it's OK to get a hotel for the night. All fine and dandy, but by the time I was ready to hit the road around midnight, there wasn't a hotel to be found. I stopped at two or three on my way out of town and all were either booked solid or the offices closed. He actually laughed at me because, apparently, there was a hotel with rooms a few miles in the opposite direction from which I was traveling -- which in those conditions still could have taken me 30 minutes to an hour to get there, and that's if I knew where it was.
So, in his words, my dangerous drive home was "your own fault. I told you to get a hotel."
Never mind the fact he sent me into an oncoming snowstorm for no good reason, and with no solid plan to hunker down. It was my own fault.

 

I gave this business my youth, but I am very relieved I didn't give it holiday time with family that cannot ever be replaced or remunerated.

 

I've told this one before, but it was more than three years ago, so here it is again...

My worst

I was covering a NFL game across the country. There was no reason for me to be at the game. We had a columnist, two beat writers, and I was one of two guys sent to write sidebars. We had to fly out early on the 23rd because we didn't want to worry about weather on the 24th so we fly out and couldn't even spend Christmas Eve at home.

Our flight is delayed and we don't get there at 11 p.m. and the columnist (a big-time partier) drives us straight to where the nightlife was. It was freezing and the other four of us all wanted to go to our hotel. We figured, we'd get there, call a cab and have it take us back to the hotel. We couldn't really let the columnist know that we were about to ditch him. We left our suitcases in his car and only brought our computer bags.

Well, the weather got worse and we couldn't get a cab. We didn't have a cell phone and the cab places we called told us it would be an hour.

Our columnist ran off and we had no idea where he went. Only one of the four of us had a jacket and the rest of us were freezing our asses off. We end up hanging out until the bars closed at 2 with the hope that then we could either find the columnist or a cab back to our hotel, which was on the other side of town. At about 2:30 we went to the car and just stood there. At 3, our drunken columnist shows up.

We get to the hotel at 4. Columnist checks in and goes to his room. It turns out our columnist had called to make sure they held his room for him since he knew he would be getting in late. The rest of us did not and they gave our rooms away. To be fair, if we had gone there straight from the airport, this probably would have been the case anyway.

They had one room available, with one bed, and all four of us go there. I slept on the floor while the other three fought over the bed. It came very close to coming to blows since we were all so tired and pissed. Our beat writer then announces that he's going to go stay with the columnist.

As soon as he left, we locked it from the inside so there was no way he was getting back in. Since I hadn't been involved in the scuffle over the bed, I figured I would not be blamed if he came back and couldn't get in, so I went to sleep as did the other two, who were sharing the bed.

The beat writer comes back and starts pounding on the door. One of the guys in the bed said, "The phone is already unplugged. If you answer that door, I will fucking kill you."

The pounding goes on for about a half hour. The beat writer comes back with hotel security and finally the door is opened. I'm on the floor while the two beat writers nearly kill each other.

At this point, it's light out and I've slept about 10 minutes and the only clothes I have with me are the sweats I wore on the flight.

The front desk tells us our rooms will be ready at noon. so I went to get breakfast to kill time until my room is ready. After sitting in the restaurant by myself for 90 minutes the waiter tells me I have to go. Nevermind that I've eaten and paid for my breakfast and that nobody is waiting for a table.


I buy a paper and a magazine and read both while I'm waiting. My room that was supposed to be ready at noon, is ready at 1:30. I go there and pass out.

I wake up at 8 p.m. and call our columnist so I can get my clothes out of the car. He's gone. Nobody has talked to him and nobody knows where he is.

At 3 a.m. the phone in my room rings. "If you want your stuff, you have to get it now."

I go and get it and we decide to meet in the lobby at 10 to go to the game. We cover the game which is a blowout.

We have a flight out that night. We get on the plane without incident. At this point, I'm figuring that I'll get home late, sleep all day on the 26th, and then fly out on the 27th to cover a bowl game.

Because of weather, our flight has to land at a small airport about 100 miles from our final destination and they would bus us the rest of the way.

By the time we get back, it's daylight on the 26th. I walked into my apartment and passed out. I slept 16 hours straight and woke up three hours before my next flight. I threw clothes in a bag and headed back to the airport.

Merry Christmas.

 

If you don't live near family - working in a newsroom on a holiday with your friends is never a bad way to spend the day.

 

True...but it's the assholes you don't like and have to share the day with that sucks.

 

Just pretend they're that one relative everyone has...

 

I covered the Hawaii Bowl on year. It gets to about 35-0 at halftime. Only three of us covered the game for our beat, and this is a BCS/major program. I turned to my friend and said, "The only people in America who are still watching this game are in Aloha Stadium."

Flew through the middle of the night. Joined the family Christmas celebration about 3/4 of the way through. Announced my wife's pregnancy. (Our first.)

 

In the final game of their first season (1995), the Carolina Panthers played at Washington on Christmas Eve, and I was covering the beat for the Spartanburg (S.C.) Herald-Journal. I had a 3-year-old and a seven-month-old and I wanted to be there when they woke up to find Santa had come.

So I got together with another guy covering the Panthers beat and we rented a car, left as soon as we got done writing and drove all night -- it's about an eight-hour drive -- to get home. I made it at about 5:30 a.m., enough time to get a few minutes of sleep before the 3-year-old woke us up to see what Santa had brought.

That's the good side of the story. The other side: I had checked with the sports editor about my deadline since the paper was going out early because of the holiday, and he told me, "You're the deadline." My stuff was going to be the last copy coming in for the night (it was the 4 p.m. game), so they I was told they would wait for me to finish up, whatever time that was.

Knowing that, I didn't rush (well, some because I wanted to hit the road). I sent at about 9 p.m., called to confirm and was told I had missed deadline and they plugged in a wire story and shipped it without me.

 

I had a double-shooting, one died a week later and one critically injured, in our quiet little corner of the world a a day before Christmas, ruining my planned Christmas shopping trip to the big city with my hubby. We managed to do a quick, very crunched shopping excursion locally once I was done with the breaking news.
The next day, Christmas Eve, I was in court for the arraignment, feeling extremely out of place wearing my happy, cheery Christmas sweater. Had I known they were doing the arraignment that day, I wouldn't have worn it. Nothing like a murder to really put you in the Christmas mood. [/major sarcasm.]
That was last year, and to be honest, I really didn't feel like we had Christmas last year. Hard enough covering this stuff in a small town, but on Christmas? Yeah.

 

I'd say KJIM wins. Geesh!

What a story.