Opinion: Sorry, Editor, I Don’t Have an Article For Tomorrow
That’s what I told him this afternoon. “Again?” That’s what he asked me.
“Look, nothing has been happening all week. How am I supposed to write an article when nothing is happening?” I asked.
“Things are happening all the time. You just don’t pay attention.”
“Not interesting things.”
He groaned and slid his hands down his face. “We literally have stuff going on all the time. What’s your real excuse?”
“You remember how last week I told you my car was making those funny sounds whenever I used my left indicator?” That’ll get him.
“Yeah.”
“Well I make a lot of left turns throughout the course of my day. But my left indicator finally gave out the other day, so I haven’t been able to make it.”
“You don’t need a car to write an article.” Shit, he’s smarter than I thought. The editor exhaled very loudly and clasped his hands together. “I have made it very clear that I will not tolerate any more of your bullshit. Not after your last stunt.” Obviously, he was referring to the time I filled the water cooler with watered-down peanut butter. Crunchy, of course. I’m a troublemaker, not a savage. It became known as the Watered-down peanut butter incident.
“The watered-down peanut butter incident?”
“Yes, the watered-down peanut butter incident.”
I sort of laughed, but I didn’t move very much when I did. The editor’s sight is based on movement. He pulled up a document on his computer and exhaled again, very loudly. “I’d like your resignation by the end of the week.”
“You can’t seriously want to let me go. Not after I wrote the Pulitzer winning op-ed on the watered-down peanut butter incident.”
“Look, I know you wrote a Pulitzer winning op-ed on the watered-down peanut butter incident, which you caused, I should add. But that’s the only thing you’ve done in the past seven months besides put ketchup packets under the toilet seats so they spray on people’s legs.” That of course, was the ketchup packets under the toilet seat incident. No victims so far.
“Look editor, give me one more shot here. Next week, I’m going to hit it out of the park.”
“You said that last week.”
“And?”
“And the only remotely journalistic thing you did this week was rank everyone’s desk from least comfortable to sleep under to most comfortable to sleep under.”
“I still haven’t slept under yours.”
“Get out.”
And that’s the story of how I lost my job at the Third Spur, even though I wrote a Pulitzer-winning op-ed on the watered-down peanut butter incident.
[Editor’s Note: I can’t delete this article. How the hell did you even publish it?]
