Tonight's Stupid Phone Call

Uhhhh, at least I don't suck that bad. Do I, Dye boy.

 

Woman calls in wanting to know in which edition we published photos of the middle school football championship game, my coworker tells her that it was a couple of weeks ago on the front page. Apparently, the woman is insisting that he's wrong.

He says, "If it wasn't that game, then I don't know what you're talking about."

I hear her scream at him over the line "You guys never do." Other writer just hangs up the phone.

She calls back, while my coworker asks, "Would you like to talk to me like a human being?"

Woman gets really pissed at this, screams some more. He hangs up again. Then my line rings, and it has to be here. So I just let it ring. Check the voicemail, sure enough, it's her, screaming about how rude he was, blah blah. I press '4' for delete.

This is what happens when your ME mandates that youth football anchor A1, even once. Beware.

 

This actually scares me. We had youth football as our centerpiece over the weekend. But it was for a state title, so hopefully that's considered special circumstances?

Maybe I'm in trouble.

 

It was some kind of Kiwanis/Elks whatever the fuck it's called these days championship (in the loosest sense of that word).

Find out community boards on which your ME and/or publisher serve and pay attention to your paper's coverage. You might be surprised.

 

I guarantee that you will get calls about putting stuff from other youth sports in the paper and when you point out that the reason you did this is because it was a state championship game, you will be told:


Wait for it...

"well these kids work JUST AS HARD as those kids, why can't they be on the front page?"

You know it will happen.

 

Relative to what?

 

Relative to you. Figured that was pretty obvious.

 

Yet another lame attempt by Alley to advance some mysterious cause.

 

This is some of the best advice I've seen on this site. Your ME or publisher belongs to some community do-gooder, you'll be doing stories. Your choice. Do the stories or don't have a job. Good luck!

 

I process a lot of feedback e-mail for writers, and some of it is unbelieveable. Most repeated "they don't get it" is "you're a columnist, you're supposed to be objective and give fact, not opinion."

 

Stupid call of the night:

Woman and her brother are arguing, so they call us and listen in on two extensions ... she insists the Dallas-Washington game went to overtime because "the clock had expired before the last kick. So what do you call that? Isn't that overtime?"

He laughs, I patiently explain ... several times ... that the game can't end on a penalty.

 

Actually, when people ask about this one: gasp, I tell them the truth. Not many are surprised. After all, who doesn't have some middle-management boss who greases some kind of skid somewhere every once in a while? And I'm talking any kind of business.

Also, I'm convinced no one person outside of the business has a fucking clue the purpose served by a column/columnist.