Previously on...

This week in a Small Town Newsroom

(Sadly, I do not know how this ended) Yesterday, it came over the scanner that one of the banks had locked someone in the vault by accident, and they needed the police to come and get them out. 

Fergus sent one of our photographers to get some pictures of these two little girls raising money for St. Jude. Well, he wasn’t really specific about what sort of photos he wanted. The next day, we all get called into Boss’s office, who asked what in God’s name is going on, and there is no way we could publish that, and was Fergus some sort of perv. The photographer had taken pictures of the two little girls (Maybe 6 yrs old?) sitting on a bed, holding dollar bills fanned out. With no context, it did not look like a upstanding situation. We chose to run the photo of them “presenting the money to the police” which I called paying off the cops. 

Late Saturday night, the computer systems stalled, and one of the IT guys had to remote in and try and fix it. The system was overloaded, and some things needed to be moved or taken off. He got excited, and started deleting things right and left. Boss somehow compared IT deleting stuff to flinging Napalm in Vietnam. It was a stretch, but he really committed. 

Jane was in a seperate space in our bullpen, and could hear what was going on, but could not see us, and was removed enough to have her own space. She has now changed jobs, and moved to the desk across from me and next to Farquad. I’m taking bets on how long before she goes off on him. He started talking about his dating life again the other day while I was training her on one of our products, and I half thought she was going to smack him. 

Boss is taking this weekend off, so Jane gets to do my job, and I have to do Boss’s. This will involve the creation of our front page. It could go terribly. If all else fails, there will just be a note at the top to the effect of “This is what it would be like without local newspapers” and the rest of the page blank.

I previously wrote this on the July 20 Friday open thread on Ask A Manager.

The Robots are coming

This week in a Small Town Newsroom

Fergus is going on about the singularity again. He doesn't know that's what it's called, and I'm not going to encourage him and point it out, but that's what it is. He starts with how he'll never use one of those virtual assistants (He doesn't even have a cell phone) and then it devolves into him showing someone a video of a robot talking about taking over the world. He has done the same thing three times in the last month. (I am uncertain how the robots are going to get along with the lizard people.) He talked to me for five minutes one day this week about it. He 100% believes that it's going to happen. I have gray hair now.

Wakeen (our new reporter) had a fight with his wife. We got to hear ALL about it. He also got a call from the Bahamas. He assuredly informed me that when you get a call from the Bahamas, it's usually a scam. Usually? I and my friends are not the jet-setting types, so I can't say I've ever gotten a non-scam call from there.

I also found out he is in awe of the color printer. I was printing a proof of something, and it was taking FOREVER because the printer would print a page, then stop. He asked if it was two sided, and I said it was in color. He told me the last place he worked had a printer that could print in black and white AND in color. What a time to be alive.

I had an obit where the man's dog was mentioned. His children were not.

We got a very nasty email from a lady mad at Farquad. She wanted her church news in the paper, which we publish one day a week. He did not communicate this to her, and blew her off several times. Now she's mad, and my problem. I sent her an email apologizing without taking blame (which I'm fairly good at) and we'll see how she responds. (The answer - not well. Also, ad, like advertisement, only has one d.)

I think Fergus is trying to choke me out. He's smoking more than normal, and had a LONG conversation the other day standing behind my chair. I cannot hold my breath that long. I kept coughing, but he did not get the hint. I had to walk next  to his desk this morning to get to the fax machine, and I'm pretty sure there's a fog around his desk. He also messed with my papers yesterday. I suspect it's the nicotine on his fingers, but whenever he touches my papers, there's a stain. It's disgusting. 

Pull Yourself Together

Sigh. I had such high hopes.

Wakeen  had a fight with his wife Monday morning. In the newsroom. In full hearing of everyone. And then we got a rehash of it.

Ooh, he said he didn't talk to her, and hasn't for two days, because he knew she'd get upset. Better not tell her that, dude.

I understand that spouses argue. It happens. Fine, whatever. Sometimes you take calls from your spouse at work. But you tell then you'll talk later if either of you is mad about something, or you  take the call outside.

The fight was about him not making reservations for a hotel because it was booked.

He got a call  a few minutes later from who I'm guessing is one of his children, and he rehashed the fight with them, saying that is wasn't his fault, blah blah.

I want to point out that he's at least in his late 40's, if not his 50's. Not the third grade.

I might have to change his nickname to non sequitur. We were talking about an article, and then he says that his father-in-law is calling, and he doesn't want to talk to him. Ok?

Then, while I was at lunch (which is a whole other post) he comes by and tells me that his wife says it's over. He was very matterafact about it, and almost downright cheerful. He says he isn't worried, because she's said it before.

That seems like an awful heavy statement to just fling around.

Tuesday he says that he's having to stay somewhere else for a while, so I'm not sure if she kicked him out or he left. However, he says he has hope, because she ordered something using their last name(?), which I'm assuming is her legal last name.

Tuesday afternoon, he said he had to go see his father-in-law, and he wasn't looking forward to it, but he'd just have to take it like a man. (As opposed to what, exactly?)

He doesn't have a black eye, so I'm guessing it went ok.

He hasn't said anything about it so far this morning, but the day is young.

Previously on...

This week in a Small Town Newsroom

Farquad was bemoaning the fact that he can’t find an apartments, and actually wondered if there was anywhere stuff like that was posted. I told him if only there was something like a classified section, with listings of places to rent. He did not know that was what was in the classifieds. He was worked in newspapers for the last 20 or so years.

The fax machine ran out of paper, and Fergus decided to refill it. Instead of asking where the paper went, or looking to see if he could figure it out, he simply found the biggest opening he could, and shoved the paper in that. It was not where the paper goes. It was ridiculous. He’s been in this business for over thirty years, and really has no idea how to use it. He did leave a paper jam in the big copier up front, then didn’t tell anyone and walked away. The receptionist said that if he ever did it again, she was going to shame him over the intercom, then murder him and leave his body in the parking lot.

We got a ‘new’ copyeditor this week, when someone else was reassigned. Fergus does not like this person. When he asked whose stuff was at the desk, and I told him, he stood there without speaking for several seconds. I could see the gears in his brain grinding to a halt. 

Another coworker and I were talking about work, when Farquad interrupted that he’d been on OKCupid, (while at work, at his desk) and gotten matched with someone from his high school. Instead of ignoring it, like I feel most people would, he informed us that he messaged her on Facebook to let her know they’d been matched.

I originally wrote this in the July 13 Friday open thread on Ask A Manager

Invasion of the Lizard People

This week in a Small Town Newsroom

So something I've long suspected about Fergus has been confirmed. With his personality type, I was almost certain that he would be a conspiracy theorist. Whoo, boy. Is he ever. He talked for probably about a half an hour today about how some celebrities are secretly lizard people. Lizard people. He made another coworker watch a video on it. He's not sure about some of the others, but he's sure about Beyoncé. There's about a 60/40 chance that he actually believes this. He talks about it like he does.

We did some articles on breast cancer for October. Farquad did a story on a lady who's a breast cancer survivor. He wrote about how she had chemo and radiation. And then a vasectomy. We had to have a talk about how ladies don't have those.

You hear the most interesting things on the scanner on Saturday nights. A woman called in to 911, said her boyfriend/husband/whatever was outside slashing her tires. The dispatcher said she could hear him going on in the background, yelling. Well, about fifteen minutes later, the woman calls back, and says that she doesn't need cops, because he was only pretending to slash her tires. 

Fergus asked our sports reporter how much weight he's lost recently. Sports reporter told him, then Fergus responded that he looked sexy. Sports reporter went back to his office.

I had to take a story over to Great-grand-boss's office for him to proof. I don't really care for him. He  is, frankly, an awful little man. Anyway, I take it to him. He then shooed me out of his office like a dog. I spent the next half hour (while we were on deadline) sitting in his secretary's office, listening to him talk on the phone to someone about how employees today have no loyalty. Also, how to pay them less. His secretary had been in his office a couple of times, so I knew he was working on it. He doesn't know my name, despite the fact that I've been working here more than a year. (My name is not uncommon or hard to pronounce.) So he didn't have a way to call me into his office, and I did not get up. He had to get up out of his chair and come around the corner so it didn't sound as bad when he said 'here you go.'

Farquad is still busy with his big man on campus routine. It was old after five minutes.

This must stop

So since Wakeen has started working here, Farquad has been all puffed up. I think if I poked him with a pin, he'd go flying around the room while all the hot air leaked out.

He's always of the opinion that he's hot stuff, and since Wakeen is here, he's been big man on campus. Talking about how we do it here, and he's done this forever so he knows, and make sure to let him proof a story before it goes out.

Well, that would be fine if Farquad was a half decent writer. He gets some basic grammar wrong consistently, and after insisting that something was ready to go, I read over it on the page. It's good I did. The name of our state was spelled wrong. In the first line of the story.

I'm going to have to help Wakeen along a little soon, because some of the things that Farquad has ben training him how to do are not how we actually do them, and it's making my job a little harder.

(A note- Farquad, while he has no real managerial power, is technically like a half step above the reporters. I am not a reporter. Technically, he's been at this longer, though we've both been at the company the same amount of time, and I in no way report to him.)

Farquad's calmed down a little, but last week I got to hear all about his time in college (again), his time in the service (again), and how he was in a band (you guessed it, again). He also thinks he's funny, and was cracking jokes left and right, then laughing hysterically when he was done.

I cannot take much more of this.

Previously on...

Late July in a Smalltown Newsroom-

It came over the police scanner that an elderly lady was in the street in her wheelchair, trying to direct traffic.

One of my coworkers was fighting on the phone with her husband, telling him he better be out of the house by the time she got home, or he could pick up his stuff in the yard. The next day, they were all the phone being lovey-dovey.

I had a lady call about the cost of an obituary, and come to find out she wanted to put one in for her dog. (I couldn’t help her, but I directed her to advertising.)

I was threatened with a lawsuit by two separate people because they didn’t like an article we published.

It also came over the police scanner that while a criminal was running away, he got caught in barbed wire. The then decided to shoot his way out, (You can see where this is going, right?) and shot himself in the leg.

I originally wrote this in the July 6 Friday open thread on Ask A Manager