The Suck Factor -- office life & too much Crazy

Careerbuilder cranked out a list of 10 Annoying Workplace Habits. It hit the mark of things that make your daily slog irritating, but still came in fairly tame on the workplace suck-o-meter. That office couldn't have been a daily newspaper.

The list captured some of my own co-worker peeves of days gone by: playing music/talking on the phone, stanky food, excessive cigarette breaks (and I do mean excessive -- how about several hours a day?), and gossiping as though Springer's calling any minute for a hot tip.

But I could add a few additional quibbles with co-workers. Such as humming and bopping to your headphones. That bobbing head in my peripheral vision for hours on end made me mentally practice how I'd have to pretend to act sad if you ever got hit by a bus. Which I fervently hoped you would.

Then there's blasting Christian rock on a boom box while others are working, constantly drumming your fingers on your desk, and treating the newsroom to a song. Not just a line of it that got stuck in your head that one time, but singing the whole thing. Thoughtful, no?

Or how about colleagues throwing chairs at (surprisingly tough and bouncy) windows and flinging exacto knives at walls? Life on daily deadline is not conducive to sanity. (I should point out this was in the States, so it's probably a different kind of madness to UK newspapers.)

And I can't forget the co-worker who wore the same sandals every day all summer, sharing a stank-feet waft so foul it immediately gave me a headache. Do you know how gross a smelly foot headache is? Do you?! I'd rather have a poo-flinging monkey in the room. At least that I could dodge, maybe wear a blast helmet and poncho. When your desk is right next to someone with funky BO, there's not much you can do, no way to tell him without inspiring his hatred forever -- and it probably wouldn't fix the problem, anyway. He'd just sprinkle a little powder in the nasty sandals rather than burning the foul things, and my stank-headaches would continue.

Then there's the Snark Queen, full of nasty comments about everyone behind their backs (and right to your face if you were the unlucky wench seated next to her). She's only too happy to brag inappropriately about her husband's penis size and her stint working at Hooters (obviously intended as proof of an attractiveness she mistakenly thinks she still possesses).

But it's not just the co-workers who crap up your day -- it's the public. When first starting out, I worked at a small-town newspaper office designed by someone who either had zero idea of the challenges of a journalist's job or was extremely sadistic. It was designed open plan -- anyone could walk in off the street and not only see the newsroom, but round a corner and walk back to us unencumbered (and uninvited).

That's right, they could accost us any time, deadline or deep concentration be damned, with demands to know when a story would run, why a photo from their family reunion was omitted or what kind of moron could fail to follow up that hot tip on the dancing Chihuahua (which was the kind of story we'd never run even at a small paper -- unless everything else fell through, in which case we'd gladly place a funny hat on the mutt and make it a four-column front-page photo). Most newsrooms are designed with limited access for a reason -- newspapers attract the disgruntled, the unbalanced and the self-promoting like George Clooney attracts the ladies.

The layout screwed us over every day, not least when Crazy came a callin'. I didn't give her that moniker -- she was known as that long before I worked there and probably is to this day. We could hear her loud voice crackling with frantic energy carried back to us from the reception desk as soon as she entered. Our hands would freeze over our keyboards as it hit us: she's off her meds.

I'd call a newsroom meeting (really more a get-out-of-the-line-of-fire meeting) and we'd rush into the conference room, locking the door and closing the blinds on the floor-length glass windows facing the newsroom.

We'd discuss whether the windows were bulletproof. (We hoped they were given the tossed-chair incident wherein a rather severely under-qualified editor had a hissy when he couldn't handle the job yet again and hurled a chair at the surprisingly sturdy windows currently between us and Crazy. The chair bounced back and just missed him, making that story far less awesome than it might've been). However, we also wondered if we could break the outside windows with a chair to make an escape if need be, since they only opened a few inches. Given the aforementioned example, we thought the chances slim.

Crazy never made threats nor seemed violent, but her ability to detect sinister hidden meanings in innocuous articles, mixed with her wild-eyed intensity, put our nerves on edge and freed our imaginations to concoct worst-case scenarios. I once checked the employee restroom for homemade bombs after she'd used it (without asking) because she'd stomped back there purposefully and with an air of frenzied intensity whilst also carrying a giftbag.

Crazy was infamous in the small town. She'd been banned from City Hall and in fact from our own newsroom, but no one on our end had the balls to face her down and make her leave, unlike City Hall which had the Police Department on site.

She was actually a sad case, but there was nothing we could do about it other than try to get our work done without too much incident. Besides, insanity was a normal part of our day, something to take in stride, sidestep or submit to as the case required.

And all of that was just what happened in the office, nevermind what took place once I grabbed my notepad and hit my beats. But there are many stories in the Naked City (or Primly Dressed Small Town, as the case may be), and I'll save the rest for another day.

Newspaper freebies are cool, too

Another cool thing about England is the freebies newspapers often offer to get you to part with some coin. Granted, all these alluring freebies wouldn't be necessary if more papers here didn't seem to think a National Enquirer-type reporting style was the way to go, but the freebies are still nice.

For instance, the Daily Mail may not be that great of a read, but it can get some great DVDs on offer as freebies. My particular favorite is when they offer costume dramas for the price of a newspaper (as in when they offered Pride and Prejudice, the wonderful Colin Firth version, as a two-parter). This week I nabbed Jane Eyre, and today's offering is Lady Chatterley.

The shame is that the better papers, the ones I'd much rather actually read, don't give out as many freebies. They probably focus more money onto design and better writers -- though that doesn't stop papers like even The Times from having a slew of typos and sometimes doing rather misleading reporting that's far beneath it.

It will be interesting to see how UK papers can survive changing reading habits that are putting the hurt on U.S. papers. Will freebies make the difference? Would you be more likely to buy a paper in the States if it cost 50 cents or so more but you got a free Bowie CD? Time will tell what papers have to resort to, to stay alive.

Lament for the Sunday paper ritual

Oh, how I miss it. I woke up this morning, clinging to a waking dream of being able to step outside the door and scoop up a thick Sunday newspaper, darting back inside before the neighbors could see me in my wrinkled Old Navy sleep pants and T-shirt.

I'd go inside and climb into bed next to Cutie-Pie and we'd snuggle under the covers and divide up the sections. He'd skip straight to the opinion section to mull big issues and world events, and I'd grab the A section and make a show of reading through the headlines before tackling my real first choice: the sales papers. Because I care what's going on the world, but the sales at Target have more of a direct impact on my life. Besides, Sweetie will discuss the news with me while I browse the Lifestyle section.

In my fading memory, the Sunday paper is thick, heavy. There is section after I don't know how many sections, and that's before I pull out the hefty plastic bag holding all the sales papers and the Sunday magazine and whatever else sold some ads so they stuffed that in, too. I worked Sundays in the States, so we only got to enjoy the luxury of curling up together over the paper a few times that I happened to have the day off. We looked forward to a time when I would have all Sundays off and we could talk over the news and sales and new books and movies in bed on a Sunday morning (or afternoon) and get our hands stained with newsprint and tickle each other as we swapped sections and know that it was $1.50 well spent.

Now we live in England. I have all my Sundays off. But the Sunday paper isn't the glorious event here that it was in the States. At $4, it isn't cheap, either. It isn't even delivered to our home.

Sweetie went to a news agent when we got here (that's your basic news stand with mags, newspapers, fatty snacks and overpriced soft drinks). He was told you can get papers delivered at home, but it costs more than buying it in the store and apparently isn't done often as you see no ads for home subscription here, no papers awaiting readers on neighbors' doorsteps. And there goes part of the joy of the Sunday paper, being that it was a bargain and you could collect it at your doorstep without having to get dressed, brush your tangled locks, go out and generally wake yourself up more than you wanted to on a lazy Sunday morning. It usually cost less to have it home delivered in the States, or at the very worst, it was the same price as trudging out to buy one in a store or newspaper box. Not so here. If you can manage to get it brought to your door, you apparently pay more for the privilege.

And it's not much of a privilege, considering the Sunday papers here. They've pretty much all gone to tabloid format, one big section that I'm sure is easier to read on a train or bus or carry home from the store as you walk several blocks with the groceries you have to go buy every few days because the refrigerators here are too small to load up in one big shop.

So dividing the sections is out, unless you buy the Sunday London Times, which is the only paper all week where the Times isn’t a tabloid. And there’s no comics. And the sales papers, what a luxury we took for granted all those years! There are no sale papers in the British newspapers except for ones about pricey furniture, no coupons, no way to discover huge rebates at electronics stores on items I never knew I wanted until I found out it was only $20 after rebates. They have sales here, but not big ones, no we've-got-to-rush-out-and-get-that ones, not the ones that stores have when they've got a huge country of competitors breathing down their necks. England's a small country; you can pay either twice as much for things as you would in the U.S. or you can leave it on the shelf. Those are the choices, and the stores don't care much which way you decide. Shoppers are a captive audience competition-wise on most things. No need for big rebates and coupons, this is England. You're not going to get it so shut up already.

And so it's Sunday morning here; I'm not at work, I'd love to be snuggled up with my honey chatting over the news and comics and sales and tickling each other. But that's not the English Sunday morning. Instead, we each turn on our laptops and browse the news. Not that I'm missing out on chances to snuggle and talk and play with my sweetie, we do that every day. But a leisurely morning taking apart a big, juicy virgin paper waiting to be defiled by our eager hands isn't part of our Sundays like we dreamed. Did you know that an inexpensive, thick, sale-paper laden Sunday paper delivered to your door is part of the American dream, the American way of life? Neither did I. But it is, and I miss it.