South Bend Busy Work

Years ago the US changed tax laws on write-offs for car usage by the self-employed. But you had to keep a record of when and where you drove, and how it was business-related. My Dad took to taping his accounting on a voice recorder, providing unintentional hilarity years before podcasts.

Not long after that the law was changed.

 

I'm sure these will be used to justify laying people off that don't "do enough" during their 40 hours.

What would you say you do here?

 

I feel bad for the editor who had to issue that edict. You KNOW that's not coming from any newsroom management.

 

I knew Fenian would pay tribute to Lee Scott at some point...

 

We had to do this at our TV station for awhile when we were developing manuals so they could teach monkeys how to produce. I literally wrote down "5 a.m.: Come in, turn on computer" and my boss called me a smart-ass.

 

I worked for an athletic director who had all his underlings do this for a while. Shortly after I left that place, a couple of people just stopped doing them and nothing was ever said about them again.

 

One thing I forgot to mention: The AD had no idea how to check e-mail, so we had to print out our daily logs and put them in his mailbox.

 

Hopefully some people do this......

4 p.m. to 5 p.m. --- Made sure my daily log was complete and detail-oriented and then typed it up, edited it, corrected it and turned it in.

This is a fucking joke, particularly in a business where the phrase "we don't have space for it" is becoming more and more normal.

 

"Pow-wowed with Dave about year-end crime stories - I get homicides!"

Proof of the stupidity of it all in one phrase.

You bet, it's so they can decide who's not efficient enough for the next round of firings.

The one saving grace is, if they don't like paying for overtime, they'll have to anyways. Now there's an official log.

What I'd really like to see is for every employee to tell the editor to take his timelog and put them where the sun don't shine.

 

This is actually a wonderful point, and a side effect I don't think management has fully realized. If I had to do this during my season, most days would begin around 10 a.m. and wouldn't end until around 1 or 2 a.m. I would love to see some spunky employee there sue for back overtime, using these logs as evidence. Fucking excellent.

 

Pretty funnny stuff. I've run into this kind of BS before. Managers getting on me because I didn't keep an up-to-date "10-plan." It was typically because I was busy tracking down breaking news or chasing a some hair up some editor's ass because another reporter's expected story didn't come through so I had to go hunt something down (that had art) and bring it back for a center piece.
Why aren't you keeping your 10-plan up to date, we don't know what you're up to. Uh, try reading the paper.
What a fantastic use of resources.

 

Were I a newspaper manager, and one of my alleged writers turned in a memo in which he used "pow-wow" as a verb, I'd fire him before lunch.
I did not get into this business to work in a widget factory.