Times they are a changing

This week in a Small Town Newsroom

It's that time of year that I start trying out Christmas cookie recipes. The cookie lady lied to me, and the recipe made significantly more than 36, so I took them to work. The boys have never been so well behaved.

Our main file sharing system has been on the fritz. IT has stopped answering calls promptly, so it was down for a while one day. We're all trying to figure out what to do, and talking about it. A good 10 to 15 minutes later, Wakeen pipes up that the system is down. Wow, I had no idea.

A little later, we all had to use task manager to shut the program down. Fergus and Wakeen didn't know how to do that. Fergus has a very basic understanding of the computer, but got started. Wakeen took a while, because he had trouble finding the delete key.

Fergus comes in super early. Like 3 or 4 a.m. early. And then he leaves most days about noon or a little after. It's sometimes hard to tell if he's gone, or just outside on a smoke break. I try to keep a screen saver on his computer to tell how long he's been gone. I went to put it back on the other day. I always drape a tissue over his mouse, cause it's crusted with things. This time, I had to use the keyboard, which I hadn't looked close at before. Oh my. Not only was it crusted with THINGS and most of the keys not only didn't have the letters, but were literally worn down. Much of the germx was used. So much. 

My ongoing irritation with the advertising secretary continues. She left me a note that an obit I charged for was supposed to be free. I disagreed, and told her so. She said that it was, and with her nose up asked if I'd ever read policy and procedure. I received very little training when I started, and wouldn't even know where to find such a thing. What she was telling me would mean that I have been doing it really, really wrong for over a year, but literally no one has bothered to bring it up. Unless I hear differently from Boss, I'm going to keep doing it the way I've been doing it.

We have a regional publication scheduled to go out Monday that I do the edit and layout for. I don't have the pages yet, nor do I have any content, and won't have time to work on it today. So that will be fun.

Violet almost killed Wakeen the other day. For some reason, he brought up cancer, and was naming people who had died from that particular kind. Violet's husband passed away from cancer a few years ago. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her face change, and she turned and told Wakeen. He didn't know, and apologized, then did not speak again for a while.

I had to have an uncomfortable talk with Boss today. It went well, but I was not looking forward to it.