News from Riverside, Calif.

Does anybody else wonder what happened to caring about the quality of your product?

 

I interviewed for a job with Garrett back in the mid-80s. He took me to lunch, this Italian buffet place. We were sitting in a booth and I was concentrating on his questions and making sure I had eye contact with him while I answered. It felt weird because he wouldn't look me in the eye, kept looking over my shoulder. So finally I turned around to see what he was looking at and there were a pair of luscious breasts almost poking my eyes out. There was a lingerie show going on for the businessman's lunch.
The much-less interesting part of this story is that he offered me the job, covering the Raiders and Lakers, but management required that I move to Riverside County. At that time, I lived 10 minutes away from where both teams trained. He apologized to me, saying he didn't care where I lived, but the EE and ME required it. I turned down the job.

 

Minor threadjack: I have turned town two jobs in the last three years, one of them twice, with companies to write for the Web because of a requirement to move.

My arguments about being able to write from anywhere fell on deaf ears. "Management decision," I was told.

Both have been filled, one with a fulltime guy who lives 15 hours away from the "home site" and the other with a freelancer who by all intents is full time and lives about 20 hours away.

Back to the thread.

 

that went out the door in an effort to save ourselves from a sure demise.

kinda humorous if you think about it.

 

Figures the then-douchenozzle ME -- who represented the epitome of the Peter Principle meets shit floats -- would request that.

The funny thing was their former UCLA writer, Lisa Saxon, lived in West LA for years without any repercussions.

 

Yeah, Lisa lived in Pacific Palisades, down the street from Riviera CC. And they canned her for nothing, as I remember. She went to the office, was walking down the hall with the ME and passed her ASE in the hall. The ASE said, "When you get a minute, let's talk and we'll figure out our coverage plans for the next few weeks." The ASE didn't even know she was about to be canned.
The ME who demanded the move, I can't remember his name, but he was a middle-aged bald guy long before the bald look was cool. I thought Garrett was a good guy (except that damn pipe he smoked in press boxes). He told me, "They want you to have the pulse of Riverside. I don't know how Riverside's pulse on the Raiders would be any different than the pulse of the people where you live, but that's what they want."

 

Interviewed with Patricia Mays once. She seemed like a nice person and I had the feeling she was a hard worker.

Good Luck to her in the future.

 

Just heard that of the 30 layoffs, as many as 10 could be from the newsroom. Yikes.