A day of AR at the office

OK, at the copy desk here at my current daily newspaper, another copy editor does initial proofreading of a page, then, after we make corrections, we print a second copy and the news editor or assistant reads that. If he or she really don't like the page, they'll make us do a third proof.

But, a third proof after marking just one change on the second proof? That's anally retentive, from where I am.

It's easy to see how playing lotteries becomes tempting.

Through a bit of an emotional wringer

I should put "bit" in scare quotes. Already anxiety-festooned over my current newspaper job here in Odessa, Texas, I got offered a job, then had it pulled back away, all in just six hours.

I had a phone interview to be named the editor, and general manager in training, at a weekly paper near Dallas. Ideal!

Was tentatively offered the job over the phone, then the publisher said he'd like to meet in person just to give himself final assurance.

No problem, I said. I'll drive to Dallas this weekend.

Well, less than five hours later, I get this message in an e-mail:

The powers that be with the chain have decided to move things in a different direction.

Sheiss!

That said, it's the second time in 10 months I've had an "interesting" interview situation with this newspaper chain.

I'll be very gun-shy in the future.

Right now, I'm pretty drained.

But sober.

A bit of rational reaction at work

OK, it's near the end of the work shift tonight, and, the one other copy editor there has spit out all four pages for Saturday's religion section, working in advance. I had proofread them, marked up corrections, and stapled a little corrections check list sheet to each one.

He made the corrections, printed out another copy of the pages for a second reading by either the news editor or assistant news editor, the person off whose personality my anxiety level, already on high, has been feeding since being here, and stapled those second pages on top of the first ones, then placed them on the table for "advance" pages. All by the book.

She, the assistant news editor, picked up these pages, noticed the checklist sheet at the back of each "first" page, looked at the un-proofed "second" page on top of each group of three sheets of paper, and asked me where my correction marks were on each page.

When I first started to answer, I could feel the anxiety in my voice, and in my self. I said that I thought I had proofread the pages, then I remembered that I had seen him print out second copies of a couple of the pages, and with a bit more calm in both my voice and my body, said so.

I don't even need an "I'm sorry, I didn't see that." A semi-legitimate, "oh, OK," or even a halfway legitimate "oh," would have been nice.

She didn't say a word, though. She just put the pages back down.

I understand more all the time the managing editor's comment on the phone, when I was considering accepting this job, and he said, "If you're here a year, I'll help you look for other jobs within our company." Maybe that's not at all behind his "if," but it feels that way.

That said, both he and the executive editor commented on my openness at the time. I'll say no more.

Work co-dependency?

I saw this phrase on a recovery blog today, namely from someone responding to a post of mine about my frustration with my new job, job hours, one supervisor and more here in Odessa, Texas.

For people like me who, by nature, nurture or some combination thereof, are somewhat loners in general, and/or who focus either on the world of ideas or the world of things rather than the world of people, our jobs often give us a fair amount of person-to-person interaction.

So, his phrase was eye-catching indeed. But, when you are more of a loner, is something like that possible of happening?