Phone calls on deadline

That was quality.

 

I'm gonna disagree here. You can't expect people to understand that you are too busy to talk to them at 2:30 in the afternoon.

If they called at midnight on a daily -- sure.

So I think it's important when you are on deadline and you pick up the phone and can't deal with the caller to ask for their number and tell them you will call them back in a few minutes.

Why put it all on them to call at a time that is convenient for you?

 

I'm not accustomed to reading your posts on the second page of a thread.
The sun will set in the East.

 

We all get our share of bar-bet phone calls, seemingly always at the worst possible time.

<i>Caller #1: Hey who won the first Ali-Frazier fight?
Me: Frazier.
Caller #1: That's what I said. Tell that to my friend.
Me: OK, put him on.
Caller #1: So what's the answer?
Me: Ali.
(Click.)
</i>

Always figured it was a sure way to drum up business for our cops reporter. You gotta figure there's going to be a bar fight, complete with broken furniture, shortly.

 

One night, about 10 minutes to deadline, my cell phone rings.
I check the number. It's one of my friends from high school, likely out drinking. I let it go to voice mail.
Maybe 10 seconds later, the phone at my desk rings. I pick it up without thinking.
"Sports, Walter Burns."
It's my friend.
"Who sings 'Renegade?'"
"Styx, now leave me alone, I'm on deadline!"
Click.

 

I am being treated for Thread Attention Deficit Disorder. Seems to be working.

 

At the small paper I worked at, had a call at midnight right before I sent my pages. Funeral home guy wants to put an obit in the paper for the next paper. I told him the pages were already done, and were being sent to press.

Guy keeps asking me: "But are the presses rolling yet?" (this guy knew our deadlines, he had submitted obits to us before). I told him no, the guy kept saying he didn't understand why we couldn't get his obit in if the press wasn't actually running.

I kept trying to explain to him that it wasn't that simple, that he had to first fax it to us (pre-email days), the obit had to be typed up, put on the page, have something else get cut from the page and then sent, and that the amount of time spent on these tasks would put us past deadline.

Then the guy asked if I could stop the presses, you know, like they do in the movies, to get in his obit. I told him that wasn't how newspapers worked.

I'm still amazed that I didn't call the guy an f'ing douche right there on the phone.

 

He probably promised the family it would be in and forgot and was trying to save his ass.

 

Hell, I'd have let the first call roll over into voicemail if it was five minutes before deadline.

 

I think something happened along those lines. The paper was a five day p.m. with a Sat a.m. edition. No Sunday paper. I think the funeral was Monday, and the guy was calling late Friday for the Sat a.m. paper, so if it didn't get in, the funeral would have happened before the obit.

Thing is, if the guy had called earlier in the night, we could have allocated some space, and given him a deadline a little later than normal to get the obit to us. Instead, he decides to wait until 2 minutes before the paper is sent to press to notify us.

 

If you had played your cards right, I bet you could have come away with a free burial plot. Or at least a steady supply of slightly used floral arrangements.

 

I noticed a spot open here: