<Yer Humble Narrator felt
like a ghost during this period...>
Suggested Soundtrack: "America The Beautiful" (DOA)
<Storyteller's Note: The following account, though strictly personal and anecdotal, is true. The names have been changed, masked or omitted to avoid retribution from the guilty.>
<i.>
Your second year passes uneventfully, because you don't have a managing editor stirring up drama. You haven't seen this situation before, and won't see it again.
Your publisher seems in no hurry to find one. That way, he can slap out the paper by noon, and piddle away his lunchtime on paperwork for an hour or two, so he can finish out the day drinking and golfing with his buddy, the supermarket store owner.
Your less astute colleagues grouse about this situation. It's a case of Stockholm Syndrome at its most extreme, but you merely roll your eyes, and gently remind them, shut the fuck up. We've never been left alone this long. Enjoy it while you can. Who knows how long it'll last?
At least you've grabbed some hard-won freedom. Your new starting time is 8:30 a.m., so once the paper gets done, you can cut out after lunch, and return by 4:00 or 5:00 p.m. to wind down the last couple hours -- but your publisher doesn't give a shit, as you correctly surmise. He's only paying you for a 40-hour workweek, anyway.
As long as your timesheet equals that magic number, nobody cares if you stand on your head. For pure fiction, your timesheets are right up there with Tristram Shandy. A small price to pay, you figure, for being left alone.
As the year-long anniversary rolls around, though, upper management starts clearing its throat. A series of hopefuls start parading through the door, like the guy whose garish plaid suit -- complete with brown elbow patches -- seems lifted straight from Herb Tarlek Closet Central. Thankfully, he doesn't get the gig.
Just then, the hammer drops, like it always does, from out of the blue. You arrive at 8:30 a.m., as usual, to find your coworkers reeling with dread. Your almost-nemesis, Chief Tightly Wound, is coming here by the end of September.
<photobucket.com>
<"Herb Tarlek's the name, mangement's my game.
Now that I've conquered the sales racket at WKRP,
there's only one place left to go...running
a local paper. Trust me, I'm a natural!">
<ii.>
Your gut knots, and your stomach cramps. You would have encountered the Chief at your last job, if you hadn't quit a few weeks before he arrived. He lasted just over a year, after alienating residents, staffers and local residents, who often mocked him as "The Editor From Hell."
The Chief's arrival coincides with your publisher's unceremonious sacking, presumably for not helping the paper hit its usual grandiose double-digit profit goals. For him, the drinking and golfing will continue, till his unemployment evaporates...just not on the Daily Bugle's dime, that's all.
His replacement arrives from the Plains States, though you don't have a conversation with her for three weeks. Like most upper class types, she's mastered a certain glacial civility, but doesn't appear interested in getting to know you on a deeper level.
Neither does the Chief, for that matter. From the start, he demonstrates a knack for going from zero to 100 mph emotionally. Like most control freaks, he doesn't handle change well. If he can't contrive it or manipulate it, it's no good, which is sufficient cue for a tantrum.
The first major taste comes one fall afternoon, when he shuts his office door, and launches into a heated talk with his wife (the exact opposite, temperament-wise -- what's that cliche again?). Suddenly, he shouts that something best happen by tomorrow, or... they won't like to see him then. Something like that.
Through the office grapevine, you hear that Chief Tightly Wound is moving into a newer, better house. However, the transaction got stuck, as he and his wife apparently didn't send along a key piece of paperwork to keep it moving. The agent was supposed to provide it; for whatever reason, that didn't happen.
But those technicalities don't interest you and your coworkers, who spend a couple days pondering the more relevant question: "If this is how he acts around here, what he's like at home?" You don't feel an avalanche of hammers ready to drop from the sky, yet. But it's getting way too close for comfort.
"Overtime
is
not
an option.
"Overtime
is
not
an option.
"Overtime
is
not...”
Ah,
never mind.
<iii.>
An uneasy calm prevails during the new regime's first six months. Like all such truces, though -- think of any agreement struck between some South American junta and its guerilla opposition -- it doesn't hold. The first crack comes with your evaluation, another ordeal you haven't missed during that year-long oasis without a boss.
Chief Tightly Wound's announcement that everyone will get a comprehensive look-see is the first indication of how soon your future will come undone. In your case, the result is the usual "compliment sandwich" of good (you're a fine writer, especially on "sight and sound" features), bad (apparently, you lack initiative) and ugly comments (show more get up and go, or...).
Even so, you wind up with a small raise, prompting you to wonder: if I'm so deficient, why'd I get a 75-cent bump? You figure that'll keep me here, so you can torture me a little longer?
But Chief Tightly Wound lives by a famous maxim attributed to the late U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen: "Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds."
The best example is the weekly staff meeting, which soon bloats to Promethean lengths -- one hour, 90 minutes, two hours -- as Chief Tightly Wound rants about managing your time: "Overtime is not an option. Overtime is not an option. Overtime is not an option." Why say it once, after all, when you can repeat it three times?
He's right, but not for the reasons he so ponderously enumerates. With all the extra work they're trying to squeeze out of you -- especially those special sections -- the few bits and pieces of overtime they toss you would never be enough to cover it. Unless somebody did the unthinkable, and reward talent is worth rewarding at, or above, the market rate.
You'll probably see a pig flying past your window first.
<https://vicmcquaide.weebly.com/blog/
dropping-the-hammer-or-so-i-thought>
<iv.>
The hammers start raining down, fast and furious, during your second year. The revolving door is humming at top speed, as newcomers size up the office manchild, and trip over each other to get out the door.
As time passes, you and the lifestyles editor -- who actually remembers when the paper had a "youth page" in the counterculture era -- remain the only holdovers from previous regimes, surrounded by an ever-changing, ever-younger cast of reporters and section editors.
Some last longer than others. A potential news editor who quits after one day, after hearing another explosive (yet one-sided) yell-fest between Chief Tightly Wound and the missus. You watch the soon-to-depart editor's expression go chalk white; you know what's never coming next. You never see her again.
The episode prompts the publisher to claim final say over all hiring, though the atmosphere doesn't improve. You're all getting berated for (mostly imaginary) errors large and small, so it's not surprising that morale sinks further and further below sea level.
Not to worry, as Chief Tightly Wound has the answer. One day, he proudly announces that you're touring the the towns you cover, with an eye toward potential story ideas. Though you welcome a chance to flee the increasingly suffocating office, neither you nor your cohorts want to be seen in public with the mighty Chief.
Of course, it doesn't take long for fireworks to ignite, at your first stop. One of your co-workers asks why we're touring Community ABC, when we're typically a) cloistered in meetings, or b) chasing sources over the phone.
The Chief's face clouds. He tells his newly-minted assistant editor to continue herding you all through downtown, while he asks your co-worker to stay at the local park. He spends 45 minutes dressing her down -- for alleged story lapses, inability to remember basic style points, lack of enterprise, and so on.
This is the story she tells you later, one brimming with an unmistakable message: how dare you question me. Don't ever do it again. Predictably, of course, the show of doglike obedience that she affects for the Chief's benefit doesn't stop him from firing her as year two winds down.
You feel like an extra in an Alfred Hitchock movie, as the lead actors continue to disappear. The hammers are falling fast and furious now, and there's no small town police chief coming to save you from the nightmare that consumes most of your waking moments.
Around town, the standing joke continues: "Who's protecting him? Whose relative is he?"
<v.>
Now that year three rolls around, you no longer care about the job, since Chief Tightly Wound is increasingly focusing his tantrums on you -- which always happens before he fires someone. Your overriding goal is to just survive each day, without the drama he stirs up. It's not a noble impulse, but that's how coping mechanisms work.
The internal stresses keep racking up. One major source are the "tabs," or tabloids -- eight- to 16-page special sections for which you must generate one to three articles, minimum, on top of your other commitments.
Naturally, this extra work doesn't mean extra pay. Naturally, the situation stirs resentment among the news staff, who are well aware that the ad reps get incentives over their basic salary, for each story idea assigned to them. Even so, for all the time and effort they put in, you wonder how money anybody makes off these litter box-lining exercises, as house ads ("Subscribe now! Don't miss a day of the Daily Bugle") fill up most of the pages.
The crunch comes after the county fair, when the ad manager drops the latest tab schedules on your desks. Your brow furrows: she's booked five tabs for next month, one right after the other. Your coworkers are furiously buzzing over this latest development, which prompts that inevitable question from the floor: "What do you think?"
You slap your schedule back onto your desk. "I don't think this is workable," you sigh.
Ironically, the Chief isn't here to digest this mutinous talk, having taken one of his rare days off. He responds by calling you all in for a Star Chamber-style sitdown in his office after the paper goes out for the day.
The accompanying rant runs like this: like them or not, tabs are a necessary moneymaker for papers our size. (Your mind drifts back to the lack of paid advertising that you've already noticed. The Chief's flushed face convinces you it's safer not to bring up this inconsistency up.) You'll want to start as soon as possible, so you'll need to manage your time like never before. Right now, every reporter is working harder in America, and you're no exception.
You're then dismissed, with the usual peremptory flourish. Apparently, though, somebody gets second thoughts, because in a day or two, a new schedule appears. This time, you get week or two of breathing space before the more complicated tabs -- like the fall sports one, which means summarizing the prospects of a dozen or so teams.
As a compromise, it's better than nothing, but another reminder, as if you needed it, that your destiny isn't your own.
"Every
Reporter
in AMERICA
IS
WORKING
HARDER...
Harder...
Harder...”
<vi.>
When the hammer finally drops on you, it falls with the weirdness of all the other involuntary exits you've witnessed. The Chief asks when you'll return from District Court, where you copy down each day's arrests and judgments for the police log. Huh, that's weird, you shudder. They're done at five o'clock. He knows that,
The reason becomes clear enough once you've finished the court case log, and the Chief summons you to the conference room, where the sphinxlike human resources director -- another person who's making way more than you -- is waiting.
He comes right to the point: you're out of here, right now. He claims that the final tipping point came when you referenced an accident victim's age in your lead, something that he warned you all not to do.
The reasoning, such as it is, makes no sense. Keeping up with the Chief's ever-changing edicts is a full-time job in itself. What's okay one week isn't the next, and vice versa, as he eagerly embraces one idea, only to change his mind, and abruptly ditch it.
He repeats his other favorite claim, of not showing enough enterprise, initiative, or whatever he calls it. Which sounds strange, since you're typically writing a third to half of page one -- sometimes, three-quarters, if it's a major event -- every day.
Apparently, though, the Chief still harbors a grudge for the time or two that you didn't dash out the door to cover some pissant fender-bender or car fire within shouting distance of the office. That's not showing enough enterprise, even if the local radio station will blare the details in an hour. (Hence, the mocking slogan coined by your critics: "Yesterday's news tomorrow.")
"Do you want to clean out your desk now?" he asks.
"Hell, no."
The Chief's eyebrows knit together in confusion. "Why not? If you have any personal items, we can..."
Your response is equally curt.
"Oh, you mean my Road Commission minutes? Nah, I don't think so. Someone else can have them." You slide your camera and front door key across the table. "Have fun doing it all by yourself."
You turn on your heel and leave the room. The hammer has fallen for the last time. Your long nightmare is finally over.
<Coda>
The Mayberry grapevine is a powerful force. Soon, you hear that the Chief -- a staunch right-wing Republican who has no qualms about using the paper to plug his church, that supports those things -- didn't like your friends, the town's small radical cadre, who hang out at the used bookstore.
A more basic reason emerges when an acquaintance buttonholes you on the street: "You know, he really just didn't like you."
The county prosecutor, whom you consider a friend, mentions that he tried to rally his local law enforcement colleagues -- including the sheriff -- on your behalf, but the Chief wouldn't see them. "Don't worry," you assure him. "Nobody I know reads the Daily Bugle, anyway."
Ironically, Chief Tightly Wound's refusal to grant you a day off during those last nine months helps at the box office. All those unused vacation days result in a $2,400 severance check that should tide you over for now, since (ironically) your next job is in the pipeline; you didn't expect to move up the timetable. But you're sure you can deal with it.
The Chief ends up losing his job, four years after axing you, when the Daily Bugle merges with its next door county neighbor. The powers that be decide that one editor can oversee both entities (really?), so his job gets eliminated.
By this point, the Daily Bugle is a pale shadow of itself, like most dailies, having sold its building (lock, stock and basement printing plant). This enables the Bugle to occupy a far smaller office downtown, and outsource its printing. All the dog eat dog-ism, it seems, couldn't stop this downward spiral.
But such subtleties take a back seat to more basic sentiments, even if you won't say so aloud: so he lost his job, huh? Now he knows how it feels. Couldn't have happened to a better guy.-The Reckoner
