1. What do you do for a living?
I am the Online Manager for my local newspaper.
2. What do you like most about your job?
The fact that I am dealing with the newest medium. It may sound geeky, but we take all of the great things that our paper has to offer, and bring it BEYOND our circulation area. It means a lot to people who have moved away to keep up with the area. We help them do that, and I’m darn proud of it.
3. What do you like least about your job?
Now that I’m in management, I find myself having to be the bad guy on some issues. I hate that. I hate to tell people “no.” But I’m getting better at it. No! See? 😉
4. When you have a bad day at work it’s usually because _____…
…someone in another department gives me a project to do without understanding the work behind it. Although it is possible to write a story, print it that night and circulate it the next morning, my little shop can’t recreate the cool new geegaw you saw at another website by tomorrow morning.
5. What other career(s) are you interested in?
Heh. Must be careful…I know people at work read this. I enjoy writing a lot. I’d LOVE to write for a living. But on the practical side, if I ever decide to move on from this position, I’d like to start a not-for-profit that builds attractive, working, non-cookie-cutter websites for schools, churches, and charities. If I had to do it all over again from the start, I probably would be a hospice nurse.
On that note, today was the suckiest suck that ever sucked. Unbefugly horrible day at work. Oh, everything worked out in the end, but only after 6 hours of my concentration and worry. And, for the first time in my 4.5 years at the CP, a caller made me cry. Not proud of that at all.
He was upset because I couldn’t properly explain to him the Classified rates that we had on the website. Why, you’re right, Dear Reader…I’m NOT in that department, am I? He asked me my job description. “Well, I’m responsible for the design and maintenance of the paper’s website.” He retorted that since the rates were posted on the website, I should be responsible for explaining them since in his opinion (“I’m a physician…not an idiot”) it wasn’t clear. So he accused me of not knowing how the paper works, not knowing how to do my job, etc. I wriggled off of the phone with him, started to cry, stopped crying, got the proper explanation of the rates, called him back (oh God that was so hard to do), explained the rates, and thanked him for calling. Politely. Professionally.
In case you’re curious, here we go…
I CAN’T post the exact rates for your classified ad on the site because it varies depending on:
So there. Dumbass.
God Bless the Classified Department. They put up with a lot of crap.
