Ballad of Samantha Shrieker
Ok, let’s see if I remember how to do this… Oh, right… I fucking hate Robert J!
I still got it.
Sorry for my second little hiatus, but sh!t got real while I was away. Being in charge is not something you want to do when the people working under you are spastic yellers, prone to panic attacks, & Robert J. Last week was a living hell, for example.
We have a process for everything we do in this office. There’s a list of procedures we have to perform before documents/software/or what-ever-the-hell-else-we-do-around-here gets released. One of those steps is to submit our documents to our editors. Nothing serious right, I mean it sounds like a practical thing to do, right? Well not for Samantha Shrieker! Hell no, she’s convinced everyone is out to get her & that she’s hanging on to her job by a thread. Seriously home-girl, if Rob can stay employed for all this time then you have nothing to worry about.
Our typical post edit conversations go like this:
Sam “No, no no no no nononononoNONOnONoNonoNoNOnOnOno.”
Me “… What’s going on now?”
Sam “The editors, I’m telling you! They’re out to get me! They want…. They want to sabotage my work!”
Me “…Really?…”
Sam “YES! Look at this! Look at what they said about this document!”
Me “… It looks like all you need to do is un-bold a few words & add a few punctuations after these line items… I don’t really see what’s so bad about that.”
Sam “I KNEW YOU WOULDN’T UNDERSTAND! I’m sorry, but I can’t do it! I can’t make these changes!”
Me “Well, why don’t you go take a long lunch & think about things. In the mean time though we need to make those editing changes & get those documents prepped to go.”
Sam “Oh, So you’re going to take credit for my work?”
Me “What? No, edits are virtually untraceable. No one will care as long as they get done, & I really need those documents out the door tomorrow.”
Sam “Nothing I do is good enough for this place!”
*Then she runs away crying.*
D-R-A-M-A! How am I expected to get things done when one of my writers refuses to apply edits? It sucks, I feel like I’m her on-call life coach. I spend far too much of my time talking to her & trying to calm her down. Doesn’t she realize I have all of Rob’s work to do?
