Day in Detention

[sistermagpie]

Turns out yesterday's all-day detention at work wasn't so bad. I was sure we were all going to get yelled at but we basically just looked at stories everybody was working on and talked about them, better openings, how to skew them, what things to dramatize etc. Plus they served us a really good lunch with PIE! The main thing I was worried about was missing the train out of the city but somehow all 17 of us managed to get there on time, a minor miracle.



One is that our moving our offices might not be as set in stone as it seemed. The Editor-in-Chief said something like, "When we move...if that happens..." like it was up in the air. Then today I found out from one of the assistants that the building is trying to get us to stay. PLEASE don't let me have to leave office with nice window for cubicle because I just know the new place will have cubicles and I will hate that. The people who work in our other office that do customer service etc. work in the ugliest building in the world that was actually designed by the company to be that way. They have no windows because that's supposed to make them do more work. What kind of a jackass does something like that? It's not like it works, imo, anyway. The place looks like a mental hospital and people still get a million renewal notices they're not supposed to get.

Second, there's the relatively new guy that I've never had anything to do with before and after five minutes sitting next to him at this thing I really did not like him. He just bugged the hell out of me. I glanced over at his paper when we were talking about my story and he'd written short at the top of it. Um, excuse me but what are you, my teacher? Who are you to tell me it's short? Even if he's basing that on how many pages that piece is getting in the magazine, I happen to always write my first drafts short. Then I go back and elaborate on things instead of putting in useless information and cutting it. Anyway, he was just so pissy, arguing over stupid things (why argue about anything with this?) and wanting to make every story really unimaginative. Like, we have this great little story with a dog in it and he's all, "Where's the husband? Who cares about the stupid dog?" He just totally did not understand the point of the story or why the dog was doing something the husband couldn't--that was the point.

I'm such a geek. I complain and complain about stuff like this but sure enough as soon as we start talking about editing stories I'm constantly raising my hand and analyzing everything like I'm back in Frodo's kitchen. The new copyeditor had her first day while we were gone. The last one lasted one day and run away which makes me fear for her because this is so NOT a high-stress workplace.

Comments

[anamirza.livejournal.com]

Detention with pie -- it's good this wasn't a feature of high school detention or I would've been in trouble a lot.

What kind of a jackass does something like that?

I'm hoping there's a special circle of hell for the people who design those buildings. (No, no windows.) Actually, I hope there's a special level of hell for architects of really ugly buildings in general. Some places, it's like a public menace practically.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Ever since I saw the place I've figured it was the only building where they wanted to be or something. I figured they were making do with this horrible thing. To find out that somebody built this thing, designed it, drew it on a piece of paper, and then told somebody, "THIS is where I want to send dozens of people to work each day..." it just boggles the mind!