I work here too

Exactly, Ace, as we are hounded for local news as everyone is right now. I just want everything we can get into the paper into the paper, and if someone refuses to give us the info until SE returns then it will be old news already covered and rehashed by everyone else in the state before we even get it in the first time.

 

You should tell them that. People don't understand how papers work. Explain it to them.

 

That is good advice.

 

I've worked at my present location for a decade. We have this freelancer who calls in and always asks for a guy I work with she knows, when all she wants to do is confirm if her story made it through e-mail. When he's not there and I say he's away from his desk there's a long pause on the other end of the phone, followed by her saying she will call back. All she has to do is ask me if her story has arrived and I would politely tell her, but she has never asked once in about 10 years. The awkward silence has become part of a fun game I play. I just want her to ask first and she never has.

 

Informed SE, he is pissed guy didn't give info. Said he would lay into the guy the next time he talked to him.

 

No need for SE to be pissed off or "lay into the guy."
He just has to tell him "if you want it in the paper, give the info to whoever answers the phone."

 

Nobody did. He's just a snarky asshole, as Sam Mills already pointed out.

 

Nah, you're the asshole, Double J.

The OP's problem isn't really much of a problem. There's only two ways to solve it. One, if the SE is telling everyone who calls in to talk to him and only him, which I doubt, then you tell the SE not to do that. Two, it that's not the case, then you just be cheerful to the people who call in and say you'll help them out with that. I doubt they call up, ask for the SE, and hang up when they are told he's not in.

 

Enough of the assholery, please.

 

If you had come up with that response first, nobody would have gotten on your case about your attitude.

And, yeah, I absolutely can be an asshole. Thanks for noticing.

 

You run around calling people assholes. I have the attitude.

Got it.