Complain Too Much?

I had a comment left on my last post about my complaining about my jobs and how I should just wake up to the real world.

That's fine and dandy, except that I work in newspapers, and when I sit at my desk at my job for up to 2 hours after deadline (a time when the paper should already be off the presses) still waiting to see pages to send to the presses and nothing is done about it, then that's a legitimate problem.

It's been a problem since before I was there, and I found out after taking this job, that the inability of my current newspaper to fix itself to get the paper done by deadline was throwing off my print time at my last job, which prints at the same location.

Incidentally, that last little fact led me to the much better job.

And if the presses start their first job late, then the shit follows through for the whole evening. So this problem at my newspaper has been screwing me over for about 3 1/2 years now ...

But, I don't really have problems with the rest of my job,and unlike my last job, I'm being compensated far more fairly than at The Times Herald, where my editors essentially lied to my face every day.

Finding this out led me to quit, as I was being paid about $2,000 a year less than the person who I was supposed to baby sit. Apparently error, after error, after error was worth more than I was. And I had asked for better compensation to play babysitter, once that was added to my job requirements.

What was I told by my editor? Well, you know, the more you make only means the more you spend. Hello? what the hell does that mean? That's your reasoning for being unfair to me?

But alas.

I'm happy at my current job and my expectations are legit, not just by me, but by everyone else there.

And I've had some very good times at my first two newspaper jobs and at the AIA Bookstore, which, sadly, is closed for moving and revamping, which will change it drastically from "the little store that could" on Samson Street. Nary a familiar face will be seen when it reopens in a very stripped down fashion.

The problem at my job is accountants and number-crunchers running newspapers rather than editorial people.

There is no profit to in-depth, investigative journalism and there isn't much either if a newspaper is going to be appropriately staffed to do its mission, and so rather than newspapers doing their jobs, jobs are being cut and stories are falling through the cracks or slanting in ways stories shouldn't be.

Just look and see what Fox News has to do to make money and ratings and there you have the problem facing journalism today.

Will I continue to complain about jobs? Probably, but my issues have declined exponentially now that I'm where I am.