Part-timer horror stories

Damn, what took me so long in finding this thread?

I botched a few things during my 7 years as a PT'er, thankfully I always had a get out of jail free card because I was the PT'er that could do some bailing out at the last minute to make up for whatever shortcoming I might have done (nothing cataclysmic, but boneheaded oversights).

Training there, though, makes me never want to go back to the desk.

 

I feel fortunate to have had a great SE in my 3 years as a part-timer. Of course, we had a small staff (2 full time, 2 part time), so he was able to spend a lot of time with me to make sure I didn't make to many flubs.

 

Two Hall of Fame moments from a paper I worked at in the late 80s and early-mid 90s: One guy, who actually did an OK job, but was suffering under a ball-busting SE (who since went on to become an APSE president), called up said SE one day. Says "I don't I think I can come in -- ever again." SE says, "Well, wait, you gotta give me some notice." Kid says "THIS IS YOUR NOTICE!"

Other part-timer, same place, his first night there, takes a couple of scores on the phone. Walks back out of the room toward the library. Half-hour goes by, we start to wonder where he went. Go over to his desk, on it there's a note that says "I can't take it any more." Never saw or heard from him again.

 

I'll throw out some of my more "boneheaded" moments as a part-timer.

I first started at this paper when I had just turned 17, going into my senior year in high school. We had this "community" page section that required the lackey that was putting in local bowling scores and such to re-type off faxes and such. We were on the C-Text system and had no "outside" email at the time (1996) and my first night doing it, it took me like 12 hours to do it all. Little did I know, I didn't have to put the bowling scores in chronological order!?

Then one day, I left out 91 bowlers in such page, one of the guys actually worked in the desk. Jig was up when he didn't see his name. I guess they didn't want me botching that anymore, so they took me off of it, but they didn't get rid of me then, because I had a few other things I was excelling at.

Other bonehead mistakes I made.
Annika Sorenstam's "Colonial" tournament. I left the scores out of our agate page, assuming they would run in tandem with the story. That's been the theory with majors and the Michelob, but apparently wasn't the case with the Colonial, since it was more focused on Annika than the actual tournament. Got reamed for that one, showed up on my review 11 months later.

Once had to re-send a page SIX TIMES for first edition because of a variety of goofs. That's probably the worst night I'd had on the desk, but when you have part-timers paginating, that could happen. I eventually mastered Quark (as a PT'er) and eventually went full-time, but after two months, I realized I didn't want to be a desker the rest of my life.

We've had some really good PT'ers come through that came in, and then found something else related to sports, but not on the desk. For the most part, I always enjoyed those I worked with at said paper, the good, the bad and the ugly, it's an interesting life experience ... for most of my 20's.

 

Ooh, I just remembered one. I was doing pages in my last summer at my hometown paper, and we had a Little League story on the front. I misplaced the "s" in "hits" in the cutline. Unfortunately, I wasn't very fast with my pages, so everyone else was gone when I left, and no one proofed the page before it went to press.
Funny thing, though. Whoever updated the Web site, just copied and pasted from the page, so the typo got posted on the Web as well.
Interestingly enough, we never got any complaints on that one. But it was clearly not my shining moment.

 

We had some douche who would sit on AIM for the three hours on his shift, not pay any attention to what he was doing when the Yankees were playing and then left in the middle of a shift when my editor called him on it. He sent an email the next day to say that he quit.

 

... So where did you misplace the 's' to, the front of the word? Because if that's not it then I'm lost as to what else it could have been, and if that is it, that's quite a typo.

 

Woman PT is sent to cover a rivalry basketball game that ultimately ended with a last-second basket. She is totally overcome by the emotion of the event that she decides that she has to write it in chronological order from the moment she arrived in the parking lot. Thus, the final score was in the last sentence.

Had a PT who came to the office with a college textbook he bought that day. He xeroxed the entire book and sold it back to the bookstore the next day. The company then put a monitor on the xerox that needed a code number and counted the number of copies everybody made.

A PT who was in a pre-law program, was sent from Torrance to a beach volleyball tournament in Pacific Palisades, about 30 miles away. He called the office to say he couldn't find it. When asked where he was, he said, "Carpinteria." That's closes to 100 miles north of where he was supposed to be. The guy is now a lawyer.

Sent a PT to a faraway high school football game. We told him to just call in the stats because there wasn't enough time for him to drive back and make deadline. He calls in and says he has all the stats from the game. I said, "OK, what was the final score?" He said, "I don't know, I just have the stats."

 

one of our part-timers pitched a story in midsummer about a former local in the army who was starting a touch rugby team in afghanistan to promote cameraderie between US, allied and afghan forces.

the local rugby club, of which said part-timer is a member (that's how he got the idea), was going to be collecting donated rugby jerseys and equiment to send along to the guy at a tournament scheduled for early september.

the SE took him off the story — maybe because of the conflict of interest, maybe because he'd badly botched a few other enterprise assignments — and gave it to me.

because the jersey and equipment collection wasn't for another month and a half, i got some other pressing things out of the way first. while i was doing that, he went behind everyone's back and reported and wrote the story. then turned it in.

flabbergasted, the SE told him it wouldn't run. then worried he would pitch it to the alt weekly or some other paper. i'll just say they wouldn't have wanted it either.

but i had to jump right on it, dreading the possibility of having to explain to sources why a different reporter from the same newspaper was calling for an interview.

luckily, nobody wondered aloud about it to me.

 

at a newspaper i used to work for, one of the part-timers (a former publisher's son, who never spent 1 minute in j-school and had little business in a newsroom) did not have a car and the prep reporter had to drop him off and pick him up from assignments.

that was before i came on staff. by the time i was hired, he was full time and had a motorcycle. his stories for the most part were still horrific. the editor told him he was an incompetent writer and forced him to handle the majority of the pagination (really small six-day-a-week paper).

he left unexpectedly. one day, i had to cover his shift when he went to visit his sick grandma ERR had a job interview out of town. he never even informed the SE when he gave his two weeks.

though i badmouthed him, we missed him dearly and i had to pick up four of his five pagination shifts and still report my beat for six months uninterrupted while his job was frozen or something.

 

Oh yeah, it was in front of the "h".

 

Was his name John D. Villarreal?