"I'm canceling my subscription ... "

My favorite has come from the same old-timer about four times.

CALLER: Where are the TV listings? I don't know what I want to watch today unless I know what's on.

ME: Sir, they are right on the cover of the sports section in the index box.

CALLER: Why is it there? I look for it on that page with all the numbers and stuff.

ME: The A.M. Report Page (our agate page)?

CALLER: Yeah the one that has the Red Sox box score.

ME: Well sir, we run that on the cover now. It's right there on the bottom left of the front page.

CALLER: Well I prefer to read it on that other page. Change it back or I'll cancel.

ME: Thanks for the call sir, I appreciate you taking the time to call and voice your concern.

Same thing for four straight weeks. Then he stopped calling.

 

Some things never change.

 

We had a grizzled veteran on our desk who would answer the threat thusly:

Caller: "I'm canceling my subscription!"

Desk guy: "Okay, but no fair buying off the rack."

 

For us, it's always the private schools. The public schools never complain. When we can't get around to covering them, they understand. When we do cover them, they always say thank you.

But the private schools -- exact opposite. Constantly complain that we don't cover them enough, and when we do, we never hear anything.

 

We have three major private schools in our area, that I would guess eat up 40-percent of our preps coverage (out of a hundred schools) and we still get complaints we don't cover them enough.

 

Yeah, this school in particular won the state title in football at least every other year and also had the best team by far in girls' hoops, volleyball and soccer. This was a pretty major paper and we probably had spent a third of our preps resources (An editor, two full-timers and two stringers that might as well been full-time) on this school and one other that was a fairly distant second, but still several miles ahead of whatever school was third.

Same prep staff almost 15 years later is one editor and two part-time stringers.

 

CALLER: "I'm a big fan of Local High and I'm gonna cancel my subscription because you didn't have a story on their football game in Saturday's paper."
ME: "If you were a really a big fan, you would have known that Local played on Thursday and it was the featured prep story in our Friday section."

 

We started tracking how many times we cover each team from each school in our paper.
Nothing more satisfying than when a parent calls to complain about coverage and we tell them "well, according to our numbers we've covered that team more than any team in the area."
Had a high school kid e-mail about his school's lack of coverage. He wasn't on any teams, was just spouting off about his friends on the teams and how they're not in the newspaper enough.
It was during the playoff season and I didn't have the heart to tell him the reason his friends weren't getting in the paper was because they weren't good enough to make the postseason.

 

My favorite complaint call I ever took was about a story a fellow sports reporter wrote, and the caller opens the conversation by saying, "Is John Smith (the writer) a complete idiot or what?"

I asked him what the problem was, and he told me about this basic fact in a game story that the writer allegedly left out. I opened the paper and asked him if what he was talking about was what the writer had on Page X. There was silence, and the guy then tried to play it off, saying, "Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about. I didn't see it in there."

He was going to hang up, but I was having a pissy day and wasn't going to let it go, so I said, "Wait. You asked me a question when I picked up the phone. Did you get your question answered about someone being a complete idiot?"

I thought he'd just hang up or get mad, but he said, "I apologize. I was completely wrong to call you like this."

My customer service skills on that call probably don't belong in a textbook, but man did that feel good.

 

I had an idiot parent e-mail after fall sports were over about not covering Lilywhite High enough. We covered nine football games(out of 10), about 15 volleyball games including all of the playoffs and covered more of their soccer games than any other school. I neatly pointed this out to her and mentioned that with our short staff (4 at the time with two stringers) that it was more than ample coverage for a school that isn't in the same city our paper is located in (which had two high schools) and I wasn't going to apologize.
She proceeded to tell me how we'd only been to one basketball game out of three so far and that those boys were going to have a good year. (Ended up 5-15)
Sometimes you just have to enjoy winning your argument in other ways.

 

My first paper, we had a situation similar to this. Wrestling parents hated us, would berate paper employees at meets, pretty bad stuff. New season starts, and they have three dual meets to start the season. Inevitably, I get the voicemail of "We don't cover the meets enough," so my publisher sets a meeting with said parent. I go in, they complain about the lack of meet coverage, so I walk in and show them stories and photos of every meet they had so far that year. Her reply: "That's not good enough." I threw the stack on the desk, looked at my publisher, walked out, and I probably covered one more meet the rest of the season.

I tell younger writers this, especially ones at college or starting out stringing - some people, all they want to do is hate the paper. You can't do anything about it.

 

Private schools = rich assholes — or worse, rich assholes' wives who don't have jobs — that are used to being catered to.