"Jay Honeck" wrote in
news:q6Hkb.822403$YN5.841029@sccrnsc01:

Ow, ow, ow! Stop it -- you're hurting my head!

"Just when I thought I was out, they PULL me back in!"

No way. If I ever go back to newspapers, it will be back into the
marketing side, period. No more dealing with drunk contract haulers at
2 AM, thank you!

I much preferred my years in marketing, where I never had to actually
*do* any work. All I had to do was come up with ideas that *others*
had to implement. (And if the concepts failed in the field, it was
OBVIOUSLY the fault of the soldiers on the ground who were incapable of
properly implementing the plan -- right?)

Hey - I LIKE that! I think I'll have to try that sometime myself!

snip
Nah... Our stuff works! Besides, many of the papers where we do
installations don't have DCs. They go out the window with route-based
bundle breaks to "ma and pa" carriers who won't stick around if their
stuff is late. They gotta get back home to get their kids off to
school, or get to their day job!

Must be using employee-run distribution/circulation operations at those
newspapers. Newspapers that utilize contract distributors (like my old
company) don't give a **** whether the papers go out on time or not --
it isn't *their* problem to deal with the ****ed-off drivers. It's a
whole different attitude at newspapers with employee district managers
running the carriers! (I've worked in both systems...)

Hmm.. I don't know. I don't think I've ever been in a mailroom that didn't
give a **** if they were late. At least not on a daily. It's true they
don't give a **** if the drivers are late... But they want to meet their
own targets, because in many cases they are rated on it.

That said, I've seen mailrooms make decisions to allow them to meet their
targets, even if they have adverse affects on drivers - like sequence
changes to improve inserter productivity. So you end up with a pile of
bundles in everybody's way, waiting for a driver who isn't in yet, and a
driver who's been standing there 15 minutes waiting another 15 minutes for
his bundles because they have a different sized Sears flyer... That kinda
**** happens ALL the time.

Ouch. Been there, done that.

The worst hold ups I've seen were when the Cedar Rapids Gazette brought
their new mailroom and press equipment on-line. Although their primary
problems were press-related (they actually ended up bringing suit
against Goss, it was so bad -- a losing battle, since Goss was bankrupt
by that time...), it always seemed that an inserter or conveyor would
go down whenever the press was "up".

IIRC 17 papers sued Goss. I was doing work for the NY Daily News who were
one of the plaintiffs. That was a mess. Amazingly enough, now Goss is
talking about buying Heidelberg!

We actually had to deliver newspapers at NOON one Sunday -- the papers
were NINE hours late, coming off the press. Many of my drivers had to
go to their regular jobs, and the ONLY thing that saved us was the fact
that it happened on a Sunday -- otherwise we would have lost them all.

My stomach churns just thinking about that day. And there were sooo
many like that, over the years...

Geez! That's bad news! NOON!! Holy cow... I can't even imagine that...

I finally just let my Editor & Publisher subscription lapse, after some
15+ years as a subscriber. Now that we've survived 14 months with the
inn -- thus far, successfully -- I'm hopeful that I can let the rest of
my newspaper skills atrophy...

Hey - you still have to distribute the paper to all your guests!


Wow -- they've got 38 products now? Impressive.

If you do hit Lee up, be prepared -- they're so tight, they make
Gannett look like drunken sailors... :-)

Well, we have a Gannett paper already (actually they're the one in
Colorado). And to be honest, They were for the most part a pleasure to deal
with. Then again, I am heavily sheltered by my key distributor in deals
like that. But even they seemed to be pretty happy with things over there.
Besides, we got to eat at this INCREDIBLE steak house. Actually, it was
more of a sports bar, but the meat there was absolutely out of this world!