At Least They're Committed

A couple of lifetimes ago, when I was city editor at a small daily, I was told on several occasions I should fire certain people on my staff. I said ‘no.’ Although there were times that my ‘no’s did no good and they made me fire the person anyway, I was proud of the stand I took. My favorite incident, however, was when a reporter (who, yes, I’d been told by the higher-ups that I should fire) lashed out at me.

The reporter had been having a rough time. You’ve seen it in sports, you see it in writing. A bad spell comes along and you’re wondering what you’re doing wrong and the more you try to fix things, the worse it becomes. Your confidence is shot.

Bill had one such spell. It started as a misspelling, no big deal. But then he wrote an article in which he had some bad information. A little worse. Then a woman called and complained that he’d misquoted her. Then it eroded to where he was shifting tenses, botching ledes and scattering sources. He was panicked and it was getting worse.

I handed him a story assignment and he stood up and screamed, “This is fucking bullshit!”

I sternly said, “I don’t care if it’s bullshit, you need to do it.”

Bill: “I hate this fucking place!”

Me: “I’m sure you do.”

Bill (yelling loudly): “What the fuck do you care?”

I wasn’t sure what to say, so I shrugged.

“Fuck you, I quit!” he screamed. He threw down his notepad and pen so hard they bounced back into the air and fell to the floor, and he started to walk out.

“You do not fucking quit!” I yelled.

“You heard me, fuck this shit, I quit!”

“You’re not quitting,” I screamed back at him. “Shut the fuck up and sit the FUCK down!”

He did both. His articles were fine from then on out. Life had crapped on him and he was having a tough time sorting through it, but knowing that I had faith in him and his abilities, that I wasn’t about to give up on him, took away at least one of the debilitating challenges he was facing.

I think it would be great if more people could do that.