Previously on...

This week in a Small Town Newsroom

Fergus is the crime reporter, and as such, has… interesting phone conversations. We all try and drown him out, because there’s only so much you can hear about the stripper map before you want to hurt someone. But try as we might to ignore him, some things just slip through. This week, one of the phrases was, “Unless that attorney puts a muzzle on her.” Lovely. 

Fergus is also not afraid of swearing. He has an outside voice as his inside voice, and normally, he could swear up a blue streak. Yesterday, however, he was talking to someone on the phone about one of the jailers. (Who he described, not by name, but as ‘you know, that BIG girl.) He starts talking about how she has a potty mouth, and how he couldn’t believe what she was saying. Blank blank this and blank that. And the most shocking part of it was that he wasn’t saying the words. I don’t know who he was talking to that he didn’t want to cuss in front of, but we were all shocked that he was so offended. 

As part of my job, I do the layout for those plaques that you see with newspaper stories on them. (Don’t buy one, they’re a waste of money. Just frame the article.) I am supposed to send them to Grandboss’s secretary to be proofed at the same time I send them to Advertising Boss’s secretary to be ordered. GB’s secretary approved it, and AB’s secretary was supposed to order it. This was about two weeks ago. I go on with my life. Wednesday, I get a call that why hasn’t that been ordered yet, haven’t I done it? I said yes, it was submitted two weeks ago to AB’s secretary. Not ten seconds later, she was getting paged over the intercom. She didn’t like the look of it, apparently, and felt that there were changes that needed to be made. She didn’t tell me what changes, but I guess I was just supposed to know.

Grandboss wanted to order one of the plaques about a nascar race. He told me to get started on the layout, and he would get with his secretary about what size. I can’t do the layout unless I know the size. It took me a couple of hours to get a hold of her. She told me to do whatever I wanted.

Yesterday afternoon, Farquad starts in how he doesn’t feel well. I didn’t respond, because I didn’t want to hear about how he hadn’t eaten, or did a ‘really hard’ workout, or whatever. This morning, though, he runs to the bathroom and begins throwing up in the bathroom. Which we can hear. From our desks. Thirty feet away.

Jane asks Fergus a yes or no question. She is trying to get an answer and go back to work. He stands up from his desk and comes over and stands RIGHT behind me. (She and I sit across from each other.) He was in my bubble, which I did not appreciate, smelling like smoke, which I really didn’t appreciate, and taking way too long to come up with an answer. 

I previously wrote this on the Friday August 10 open thread on Ask a Manager.