A clarification for those who need it

I guess I wasn't very clear, was I?

I work too many hours a week doing something that has become so familiar to me that it's ceased to be interesting except for times I'm able to do something really creative and fun with it, like the big spread I got to do last month on the Canada geese problem in Quakertown.

The product that we put out is inferior, and I can't stand having my name attached to it. My Crane's Ford reporter has been writing for 14 years and still can't write worth crap. Her stories are incomprehensible, which means I have to spend as much time editing them as I do writing my own.

She's obnoxious and condescending, thinks nothing of berating me in front of the rest of the newsroom but won't take criticism in private, and refuses to learn new ways to do her job. I've caught her plagiarising not once or twice but three times and she still works there, and her bias is so thick I could choke an editor with it. Actually, I have choked on it several times.

We're given no real support in terms of the job we do. Until November our terminals were 30-year-old MycroTech machines that lacked even an oops key or spell check. Our phone system is antiquated and now that it's starting to die on us, reporters are being left without phones of their own.

I'm asked to do essentially two jobs: Edit two newspapers and report for one of them. That raises questions in my mind about journalistic credibility within the community since everyone knows I'm writing editorials about the stories I'm covering, but no one up above seems to care.

The pay is low and apparently done without regard to a salary scale. I've been with the company since June and make $35,000 a year. I discovered a co-worker of mine has been with them for four years and is now an associate editor -- he outranks me -- and makes only $28,000. Our chief photographer makes only $24,000 a year.

Quality apparently doesn't matter. As I said, my reporter overwrites and writes badly, but has been here for four years despite her problems, which are readily acknowledged by higher-ups. Another reporter has been here for seven years and all she does is rewrite press releases from the Union County Prosecutor's Office.

Another reporter, new to the business, has discovered he can get by with writing four stories a week about two towns -- barely enough to fill the front page. We have two photographers who take absolutely pathetic shots. A few of us care, but the company's apathy is driving us nuts. As I told a new editor last week, after a few months, you give up, and then something inside you starts to die a little more each day.

If I had a viable job offer doing something other than journalism, I would take it in a heartbeat. I believe in what I do, I just can't stand where I'm doing it.

God doesn't promise us happiness, nor does he promise us self-actualization or career contentment. He does promise us suffering galore if we follow him, but I don't believe this is what he meant. This is drudgery -- the sort of thing promised after the Fall, as part of a curse we're not obliged to live under if we live a life of faith.

I want out. I need out, before I go crazy and sell Girl Scout cookies made from chopped-up imitation Girl Scouts (like I want to go through that again). The economy sucks, and no one's hiring.

Bleagh.

I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.

This has been a self-pitying public service announcement. Thank you.