It's times like these
that call for a major post.Unfortunately, this won't be it. This will be more of a structured post because I work with an idiot. I'm sure most of us have had experiences with coworkers over the years which cause us to slap our foreheads, bang our heads on desks, or even want to drive nails into our sinus cavities thanks to something the moron said/did or in my case wrote.
When I first started at the paper, I had a wonderful editor named Christine. She was incredible, very witty and I enjoyed writing articles for her. Christine was there for over a year, before the hustle and bustle of a daily paper called her back from the weekly periodical. The publisher was forced to find a replacement interim editor. He even went as far as to offer me the job, which I turned down as I felt I wasn't ready.
In stepped Laura. Laura worked at the other paper the publisher owned and even though she was younger than I, she was very cool. Now Laura's agreement came with a stipulation that in the fall, she would go back to working for the other paper so she could become a head coach of a high school volleyball team. At this point, I believe they were struggling for a candidate to replace Laura. So they did the only thing they could.
They hired a turnip.
She managed to stay with the paper even after it switched owners. And she's still a turnip.
Yes. A turnip. A turnip with no social skills, devoid of anything resembling professionalism, organizational skills and even basic hygenie (meaning I don't think she knows what shampoo is.) The turnip even has a loud, backwoods, hickish accent that almost seems to come out of the side of her mouth. Needless to say, her writing is atrocious.
Part of my duties include copy editing for grammatical mistakes, punctuation, sentence structure, etc. With our sports guy, maybe it's a comma here or there, maybe even a missing space. Nothing major as he's been doing his for a long time. With her, it's almost as if she wants to see how many different mistakes she can make. In the last two weeks, she's had not one, but TWO 60-word run on sentences. Verbs ellude her. I don't think I have enough red ink to correct her stuff. She can even screw up a press release that she didn't write.
My grandmother actually goes into the office once a week to help stuff inserts into the paper. We have a circulation of about 2000. The other day the turnip was pacing around the office, (mind you not in her own office) rambling about how the publisher was going to be mad at her because she forgot to do something. My grandmother asked her why she didn't make a list. To which she replied, "I don't like Post-It notes. If I did a list, I have to use colored pencil and color it."
After my grandma told me this, blood began to shoot from my nose and I think I finally understood what an aneurysm feels like.
Someone come and off her.
posted by Rusty @ 10:59 AM
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