Do you subscribe?

I subscribe at the employee discount. Sometimes I read it, other times I don't.

I feel like it's something I should do. And it's nice to get it on days you don't work or work later in the day.

 

It's a symbolic gesture. It's hard for me to make the case that other people should subscribe to my paper when it isn't worth a dollar a week for me. And if I can't make the case that other people should subscribe to my paper ... then what's the damn point? We deserve to go out of business.

And if money really is that big an issue ... I guaran-damn-tee you save more than $1 a week on the Sunday coupons. In fact, I probably save, on average, $20 bucks a month with them.

That's $240 a year ... which means my paper basically pays me $190 to take the paper. The money argument doesn't hold.

 

Good for you. I'm the same way. They act as if it's important employees subscribe to help the circulation numbers. Screw that. That's your problem. Nobody in circulation is helping out anybody in sports. The minute somebody in another department helps somebody in sports I may change my tune.

 

Agreed.

 

I just don't buy the symbolic gesture thing. Not when there have been so many examples of management making it tougher for people in sports to simply do their jobs. I can't in good faith donate that much money back to the company for a newspaper I can read WHILE I'M DOING MY JOB.

 

Good lord. I would never hire you.

 

If you want to not subscribe in "protest," I guess I can respect that. Most people, however, are just being "cheap."

As a protest, in a small way, it smacks of cutting of your nose to spite your face.

 

I agree that employers should not make it mandatory ... I think that would probably be illegal, anyway. However, I do recall being called into the editor's office early in my tenure and gently urged that, hey (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), it might be a good idea to subscribe, for most of the reasons mentioned above.

 

Why wouldn't you hire him? If an employee is required to have knowledge of events in order to do their work, shouldn't the company provide the tools for that knowledge?

To me, it would be like a hospital making its nurses purchase their own bedpans for the patients.

 

Probably because I've worked with people like he describes. Always bitching about what the paper owes you and doing things or not doing things out of principal or protest. I've worked for small salaries for papers and managers I've absolutely detested but I've always subscribed, even though I can read it online or take a paper at work.

The principle is what Someguy described. If you're producing a product that you won't pay for, then why are you there? What can you do to make it better? If you're not thinking like that then you probably need to get out.

 

should reporters also pay for their pens and notebooks?