Summer Works

Flying again, July 27.

I’ve been working this summer at the same local newspaper I’ve been working at for the last year. Still doing the occasional freelance story, but mostly I’ve focused my attention towards the Circulation department, where I fill in for a very nice lady who’s decided she really doesn’t want to work Fridays – and who can honestly blame her.

Being in charge of the Circulation department, it’s my job to deal with the barrage of calls from two distinct groups. You have the young children carriers – who are supposed to deliver the papers every Thursday – and the angry adults who don’t like the fact that their newspaper was strewn across their lawn instead of placed lovingly into their mailbox. Some people are never happy.

It’s the calls from the kids that are the biggest problem. I’m not sure I was ever a child, but if I was, I remember being able to deal with a PHONE better than these kids. I get two types of calls. One in which the kid seems to be reading off a script provided by a parent, which is the preferred type of call, because at least I get the message clearly and completely. The other, however, is a garbled mess of missing information and confusing details. “Hello,” came one call the other day, “My name is John. I quit.” It took me seven times replaying the message to realize that’s what the message said; initially they all sound like Mickey Mouse struggling through a colonoscopy.

Having received a message like that – and they’re extremely common – it becomes my job to figure out just who the hell this kid is. This is probably easier now than it was fifty years ago. Back then, kids all add names like “John” and “Bill” and “Tom.” Nowadays, thanks to the rich cultural tapestry that blankets our society, kids’ names are more varied. Also, hippie parents – who number into the zillions – seem to enjoy giving their kids names like “Unity” and “Liberty” and “Racial Tolerance.” As such, names are much more diverse now than they were fifty years ago, or even ten years ago, when I was in a class with three other guys named Matt. We had a gang. A posse, if you will.

Our newspaper delivers to about 25,000 homes in North Oakville. There are about 400 routes. And as such, 400 carriers. Even with the diversity mentioned in that weird digression above, it still takes some doing to figure out who these first-name-only wonders really are. It’s times like that when I’m thankful the job pays by the hour. Thankfully, I possess a very keen ability to root through a giant filing cabinet for hours on end and not one of these mysteries has eluded me yet.

The REALLY difficult cases are the ones in which the kid – in a feat of logic only the young possess – decides that instead of delivering his papers, he’ll just place them in a nearby forest, where interested patrons can pick them up at their leisure! The most common solution for this type of incident is the threatening phone call. I suck at this. I know that I’m regarded as something of a rough and tumble badass Canadian from the backwoods of Canada in many Internet circles, but in reality, I am far mellower.

So when it comes time to make these calls, I do a lot of stammering. You’d be surprised how hard it is to yell at a 12-year-old. And they always deny everything. “Four people from your route called and said they didn’t get their papers, and a bundle was found in a forest near your house with YOUR address label on it” is immediately followed up with, “It wasn’t me! I delivered mine!” I usually wuss out and say something like “Please remember that the people on your route prefer to have their papers delivered to their mailboxes, and not thrown in the river,” except with more coughing and stammering. I’ll be a great father some day. The kind that buys his kid a nailgun to make them stop whining so much.

But really, it beats retail.