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Leftflank's avatar

I just blame everything on my subordinates : ) J/K

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Bobo Brazil's avatar

The two main workplaces in my life for over half my life were a restaurant kitchen (1%) and a newspaper newsroom (99%). There is nowhere to hide in either place. If you fucked up it was right there and everyone knew it. Blessedly, since both were high speed, high production environments, there was no time to dwell on mistakes -- just take your lumps and keep moving. And some of the mistakes, especially in newspapers, could be spectacular. When I started working at one paper, people still told of the time, years before in the turbulent 60s when the paper ran a P1 banner that was supposed to read, "Police spray student demonstrators with birdshot." The misspelling occurred on the final word. One of the papers in our group ran a classified ad: "Small room for runt." another ad proclaimed "50 percent off selected shits (shirts)." Readers asked if they should bring their shovels to the sale. Another paper ran a full page ad for a VW dealership in the 80s, supposedly touting the 1986 model year Volkswagen Rabbit. Oops. "Come in and see our new 1986 Rabbis," and to make the fuckup perfect, "Free Bagels with every test drive." One of our copy editors once wrote a P-1 teaser for the living section: "Salacious Salads." I myself was responsible for the headline, "Gumnan Robs Bank." Every 24 hours we would strive for perfection, fall short, and publish, though, to be fair, only rarely so egregiously short.

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