Scanners/Desk

[zonatog]

we all "love" an assigment manager/editor who loves to send out photogs on first calls on just about anything! Just thinking of a new topic to discuss. How does each desk react differently to scanners?? At our station we've had too many overraction to the scanners. For one we don't have an overnight desk so the producers listen to the scanner, and we've been called out to some bogus scenes. Someone got called to a fire that turned out to be a gazebo fire! I've gotten called to an accident that was cleared up by the time I got there! So I'm sure we've all been in the same boat!would like to hear what bogus calls you've been called out to!

[TexasDave]

On thanksgiving, I was getting ready to eat my hungry-man turkey dinner, went the oh-so-familar beeping echoed from across the room. Yes - the pager. It read of a fire in an apartment complex and I needed to get there ASAP. I spung up and grabbed my gear and hit the empty roads on my way to, what I thought, would be a blazing inferno. Why else would they page me, right?

Well, turns out there was no fire. No flames. A little smoke. What happened? A lady in apartment 101 left her turkey in the oven too long and burnt it.

A less interesting story, I was out Christmas shopping and a call came in saying a murder out by the beach. Huh? I calmly asked the producer if he made any calls to verify. "No time - head out there now!" Well, I technically wasn't on call and didn't even have my camera on me, so I made a call to verify the frantic producers story.

Yes, there was a fatality. No, not a murder. Someone must of been lonely for the holidays and shot themself. Glad I didn't run home to grab my camera.

I see a trend developing - always a bogus call on the holidays!

[code20photog]

Running on first calls is a really tricky thing. I come from the Fire/EMS community in my previous life, so I have a little background on the subject. You can gauge even from the first dispatch on what you might have long before the units arrive. Just a few minutes ago, we heard a call for a structure fire, smoke to the rear of the building, I told the reporter, "Dumpster fire". sure enough, dumpster fire. "How do you do that?" was my reporter's response.

I don't know how much desk people are willing to listen, but there are clues in the first dispatch often times. "Next door to..." "Multiple Calls..." excited voices, things like that are tip offs that it might be a good call. brush fire in the center divider... gotta figure that's going to a whole lotta nothin'.

My old shop, which we covered a huge geographical area, they loved sending us 100 miles away for a first alarm brushfire, or an accident which would be long over by the time we got there (100 miles is NOT an exhaggeration) desk people have no concept of distance and travel time. You might want to start heading somewhere far awy when you hear it, but you have to keep an ear to the ground and see if ity's going to be worth the trip. When they cancel everyone but the first engine, or the cops call a quick code 4, there needs to be a decision made by the assignment manager/producer whether what you're going to get is worth the effort and the eventual video you're going to bring back. I've made many an hour long trip to arrive in time to find the last fire engine leaving, your story evaporating and stressed out producers expecting raging flames and filling a hole they shouldn't have to fill with shots of black dirt and firefighters packing up hose. Desks hate to follow up 10 minutes later with a phone call to get updates on the situation. They need to get into that habit and we'd end up chasing less geese.

[TexasDave]

Oh - I got another. I was out and about in town when an amber alert went off, followed shortly by the scanners saying they spotted the car. Well, the desk called and said go to that part of town and keep an eye out. I drove around for a while. Seeing nothing, I called in and was told stand your gound, stay there and look for the vehicle in question.

20 minutes...30 minutes...over an hour. Finally frusterated, I called and asked for a heads up. Whoops - police found the car hours before and noone remembered to call me! At least I got OT baby!

[Land Rover]

Seeing nothing, I called in and was told stand your gound, stay there and look for the vehicle in question.

Not quite the same but I was once ordered to park on the side of the highway to look for and wait for a small rain shower that was coming my way so I could get rain video. I actually had to move two times as the desk positioned me in front of the mile-long rain shower. I think that was the only rain for the day.

The station was OBSESSED with rain video.

[(Sin)ical]

My first market had me going to a lot of fire calls that turned out to be food on stove, or backyard BBQ's. Solution is to listen to the scanner traffic yourself. Stick in an earbud and respond when you know it's news. I'm sure your desk will be happy if more ears are listening. Hey, that gazebo could have been the ruin of someone's wedding day which is a bigger story. Spot news is just that...you have to be on the spot to cover it, and as we all know the bigger spot news events such as police calls generally don't have that much scanner traffic.
Now the real pain of "after the fact" video assignments is when the desk sends you to cover something they missed, but saw it on the other stations and are trying to cover their behinds.

[leftcoastphotog]

Back in San Diego I was a serious scanner hound. And as a result I was always calling the desk saying did you catch that etc. Now I have to say that my chief deskie was the tops and he always trusted my judgement and I his. I also have to say that the scanner traffic was very easy to understand and the dispatchers were usually very clear and concise.
As anyone from socal knows when the fire/medics get called out it usually goes like this.
"beep beep beep Engine 12 medic 14 respond to..." and when it's "engine 12 truck 14 engine 11" etc then you know it may be something good.
So anyway one day i was going to lunch and I heard "engine 12 medic 14 respond to 1234 San Ysidro blvd for injuries from a fall.(We all know that usually means someone slipped on a grape in a grocery store). However this time the word that followed was " Parachutist" Thats it one word. I heard it and started south got on my two way and said to the desk "327- 49 I am headed south NOW" my desk said "10-4 what do you got?" I said "I'll call in"
I got there 10 minutes before any other crew got the Navy Seal being treated, loaded and transported (he was concious and breathing) I got great video and the desk and I continued to have great trust in each other.
There was one time though that my desk sent me on a loose monkey call.....
Lcp

[LuccaBrazzi]

Looong ago...as a rookie photog...while driving between stories, I hear on the scanner a shooting in the east side of town (San Jose, CA.). As in lots of cities, the "East Side" is the ghetto/barrio.

So I pull over at a 7-11 and phone it in (we didn't have cellphones back then, and I didn't want to tip-off the competition over the 2way.)

AE's response?

"It's probably some motherf*ck*er gangsta thing. Lemme call P-D to confirm...start heading that way, though."

Less than a minute later, he calls me on my two-way:

"Cancel that...cops tell me it's a gang-shooting."
"I don't give a damn about it, and neither do our viewers."

So I proceeded to my regular story.

Today...in this era of "breaking news"...I wonder if I'll ever hear that response from an AE again???

I doubt it.

[Corporate Management]

There was one time though that my desk sent me on a loose monkey call.....
Lcp

Seriously? And you were disappointed?

[leftcoastphotog]

It rocked!!!
Some yahoo in a upscale neighborhood (suburub of SD) decided that
having a monkey as a pet was a good idea and while i cant remember what kind it was exactly it was about the size of a lemur not a small monkey (think little rascals) the cops were all over the place looking for this thing in the land of 600k homes it was a saturday afternoon so animal control was on weekend staff and finally after about an hour and a half they corner the monkey and capture him it was a lot of fun and made a great story. There was one shot in particular that I got that, believe it or not made me wish I was a still photog. Imagine if you will a 6' high privacy fence with the monkey sitting on it left lower third and a cop right lower third holding out an apple lower center made for a kick ass still but a little lost video wise if you get my drift. they caught the monkey and for all i know he is still live large in the worlds greatest zoo ( The San Diego Zoo). But one of many reasons we do this job...
Now that I think of it I kind of feel like Merle Olson (Mutual of Omaha?).
I have covered a full grown alligator living 1/2 mile from the beach (another yahoo)
The monkey...
A pigmy hippo living on a farm near the mountains of SD
Jabari the gorilla escaping his enclosure in dallas.
Hmmmm maybe I should call Planet Earth...
JK
Lcp

[SeattleShooter]

Go! Ya! Go!....no no wait! Dont go! Stay....wait! GO GO GO! No stay! GO STAY!

[stargazer]

I got a call one night to go and check out a fire. I was on vacation in another state, so I told them "OK...but my response time is about 16 hours." The assignment desk editor said, "well, just get there as soon as you can!"

[stargazer]

the desk sends you to cover something they missed, but saw it on the other stations and are trying to cover their behinds.

We used to say that we had the best assignment desk in the market, we just had to wait until noon, 5 or 6 to consult with them.

[soonershooter]

It rocked!!!

Now that I think of it I kind of feel like Merle Olson (Mutual of Omaha?).

Lcp
MERLIN Olson was a defensive tackle for the LA Rams.

I think you meant Marlin Perkins.

One of my all time favorite live shots I did was with his sidekick Jim Fowler.

[LuccaBrazzi]

Ever notice how Jim always stuck his hand in the lion's mouth...while Marlin always narrated from a safe distance?

"Watch as Jim attempts to retrieve his wristwatch from the Lion's stomach."

[leftcoastphotog]

Yeah thats right... Two totally different names only to be screwed up by yours truly...
Thanks,
Lcp

[cameradog]

I once got called late on a Saturday night because the producer thought someone had bombed a Walgreens. I got there and discovered that some kid had gotten shot in the leg, and his friends had brought him up to the Walgreens to use the payphone to call an ambulance. The signal codes for shootings and bombings were one digit different. Even after telling the producer that it was a shooting and NOT a bombing, she asked me if there was any damage to the building.

I got a call one night to go and check out a fire. I was on vacation in another state, so I told them "OK...but my response time is about 16 hours." The assignment desk editor said, "well, just get there as soon as you can!"

One time I went out of town for the weekend and didn't bother to take my pager with me. I was neither the on call photog nor the backup on-call for that weekend, so I figured I was in the clear. My destination being a neighboring city 90 minutes away, I saw no reason to carry the pager since I couldn't respond to spot news anyway.

When I got back, there were more than a dozen messages on the pager demanding that I call the station and half a dozen more on my voice mail. Some strong thunderstorms had swept through the area and caused some relatively major flooding in the area. Strangely enough, the weather was fine where I was just an hour and a half away, and I never knew there was a problem.

When I showed up at work that Monday afternoon, both my chief and one of the weekend producers jumped on me about not responding. The desk had kept both the on-call and backup on-call photogs out all night the evening before the storm on a bunch of bogus spot news stories, none of which rated more than a VOSOT, so they had decided that other photogs needed to chip in. Fine, except I was out of town.

When I explained the situation, my chief backed off, but the producer insisted that I should have had my pager with me.

"What good would it have done?" I asked. "I was 90 minutes away."

"We would have called you back," she said.

"All the more reason for me not to take it with me," I said.

That didn't go over well.

[1911A1]

We had a former AE who once sent a photog to an attempted purse snatching where no money was taken and the woman was uninjured.

"Shoot it anyway!"

The sad part was that the AE was a former photog and knew better, but was so scared of getting yelled at by the news director for "missing something" that he'd send photogs on anything he heard over the scanners.

The night shift photogs coined the term "MV/squirrel" to describe the non-stories that he'd send them to cover.

He's a news director himself now.:rolleyes:

[Corporate Management]

they had decided that other photogs needed to chip in.

Talk like that really burns my bacon. If you're not on call, you're not on call. Period. They're welcome to call once--to ASK if you'd be willing to come in--but expecting it? Demanding it?

That's why someone's on call in the first place.

[f11vid]

I was putting away my gear after a really hard shift at 10 pm when the desk called and scrambled me to O'Hare for an incoming airliner with an emergency.Most of these in-flight deals are inconsequential,but this desk person " Barb"* would send us without checking .But ,you never know,so I raced out there and set up.Waited.Waited.Called Barb. Stay there,she says angrily.Shot every jet that I could see on approach.Nothing.Finally, I see another photog driving by.He stops to say hi,and tells me his desk says it was nothing,called him back.I call Barb on the 2-way.No answer.On another radio channel.No answer.I call engineering. No answer.Call on the phone repeatedly.Finally, a sports producer happens to walk by the phone.He picks up and says Barb and whole newsroom has gone home.As I live right by the airport, he authorizes me to take the live unit home to come in for 10am shift next day.A little backround now.Our live trucks had gps with tracking programs the desk could use to locate us.They didn't think we knew this.The next morning, I know Barb is on the desk.I get up to get my morning paper,and coffee in hand,fire up the truck and call the Barb on the desk.I ask her to please advise...still at the airport.I hear her gasp,and tip-tap on her computer for the tracking system.She sees the locator right by the airport (actually my house),and I hear her scream off mic " HOLY _ _ _ _"


* Not her real name

[cameradog]

Another situation that comes to mind actually isn't that great a story, but it might be of interest anyway just because of the solution I came to. In one market I lived in a pretty convenient location, close to downtown and all the major highways and about ten minutes from the station. I also worked the night shift. Since the other two night shift guys had further to go to get home than I did, guess who got called for EVERY spot news event between 11pm and 6am? The nightside EP even acknowledged that they considered me their primary victim when it came to dragging photogs out of bed, just because of my schedule and where I lived.

"I can't wake the dayside guys up," she said, "because they have to be back at work in a few hours anyway."

One of the dumbest incidents was when I was kept out for two hours, driving up and down a stretch of interstate searching for the "ejected baby" the EP swore she heard about on the scanner. Oh, I found a minor wreck all right. But the cop handling it literally laughed in my face when I asked about the ejected baby. When I reported this to the EP, she told me I had the wrong wreck and insisted that I keep looking. You can probably guess that the "other" wreck was just in her imagination.

If that weren't bad enough, in addition to all the late night callouts, the dayside desk would call me in early to pick up a VO or VOSOT. My regular start time was 2pm. At first they were calling me between 9:30 and 10am (after having had me out until 4am that same morning chasing after some phantom) to tell me I had to be in at 11am or noon. When I somewhat strongly suggested to them that they NOT call me that early, they started calling me at noon to send me on stories that had already started. When I complained about that, the assignment editor said, "Well, you didn't want us to call you earlier and wake you up."

It was totally inconsiderate, but they didn't care. Complaints to my chief and managing editor about it only resulted in lip service. They promised to do something about it, then promptly... didn't. I guess they thought I would learn to live with it.

After a few months of living with it I started to get rather irritated at being dicked around late and early several times a week. So I discovered a convenient way to put a stop to it. I normally parked my take-home news van off the street, behind my small apartment building in an area where there was space for about three cars. One night I came home from one of these wild goose chases to discover a cop blocking my driveway, writing a report on my neighbor's crazy ex-boyfriend having put a brick through the passenger side window of her car. That gave me an idea.

I promptly reported to my chief that someone had recently broken into my neighbor's car, and that with some additional crime incidents that had happened in the area (which, fortunately, we had reported in our newscast), I didn't feel comfortable being responsible for a station vehicle in that area; nor was I comfortable leaving my camera unattended in my apartment where a burglar could possibly take it while I was out of the house. Thus, I argued, it was in everyone's best interest for me to no longer take my gear home, but instead to leave it at the station when I left for the night. He grumbled about it but said he couldn't require me to take my gear home, especially if it wouldn't be safe. So I began driving my personal vehicle to work.

A couple of days later I got a call at around 1am, after I was already relaxing at home. It was that nightside EP, telling me I needed to go check out another wreck they had heard about on the scanner. I said, "Sure, but you know I don't have any gear, right? I have to come to the station to get my camera and vehicle."

"What? Whatever, just get going," she said.

Fifteen minutes later I walked into the newsroom and said, "Hey, I'm all loaded up. I just wanted to check in and see if there was any additional information about this before I head out there."

"Why are you here!?!" she said. She was visibly angry. "I was just paging you! You haven't left yet?!!"

I wanted to laugh, but didn't. "I told you I had to come get my gear. I'm on my way right now."

The wreck wasn't anything major (as usual), and it was pretty much cleaned up by the time I got there. But that effectively put a stop to all the nightside callouts.

A few days after that, the dayside desk called me early, woke me up and said they had a VO for me to pick up half an hour later. I said, "Sorry, I'm not gonna make it in time. I don't have any gear."

"What? Why not?"

"All my gear's at the station," I said. "I can come get it, but I won't make it there in time."

"Uh... No, never mind. I'll find somebody else to get that."

And that put a stop to the early calls as well.

I still had to stay late quite a few times when a call came in before my shift ended (including an overnight stakeout in which the completely untrained kid on the desk forgot about me and wouldn't answer either the two-way or the newsroom phone--leaving me out there until 8am the next morning!). But that idiot EP would think three times before calling me back after I had already left, so at least two thirds of my wild goose chases were cut out.

Thinking back on it, I can't figure out why having a take-home vehicle is considered such a great perk, unless you live way out in the boonies and want to let the station pay for your gas. I usually try to live close to where I work, so the take-home vehicle is only a source of nuisance to me. Even with gas benefit, though, I'm not sure it's worth the irritation of being called out for wild goose chases. Certainly take-home vehicles tend to be better cared for than community use vehicles. But since everybody else had take-home vehicles but me at that station, nobody ever drove my car when I left it there. I got most of the benefits of a take-home car without the irritation of being called out at ridiculous hours by clueless producers and deskies.

Just something to consider.

[thru-the-lens]

the next morning, I know Barb is on the desk.I get up to get my morning paper,and coffee in hand,fire up the truck and call the Barb on the desk.I ask her to please advise...still at the airport.I hear her gasp,and tip-tap on her computer for the tracking system.She sees the locator right by the airport (actually my house),and I hear her scream off mic " HOLY _ _ _ _"


* Not her real name

PRICELESS! I gotta know did she ever know the real deal?

thru-the-lens.

[cameradog]

The next morning, I know Barb is on the desk.I get up to get my morning paper,and coffee in hand,fire up the truck and call the Barb on the desk.I ask her to please advise...still at the airport.I hear her gasp,and tip-tap on her computer for the tracking system.She sees the locator right by the airport (actually my house),and I hear her scream off mic " HOLY _ _ _ _"


Ha! I didn't read that before I posted my long message above, so I'll expand on my incident actually being left out overnight.

This was actually a legitimate news story. I had been on the clock since 2pm on a Friday afternoon. Shortly after my shift was over, but before I had left for the evening, a call came in that the cops had cornered a guy in a motel room with his girlfriend, so he had taken the girl hostage. The cops had surrounded the motel and evacuated everyone else, and had set up to wait him out. It was a standoff. My EP sent me out to check it out.

I arrived, realized the situation was for real and shot my video. Then I called the desk. The phone rang forever. What was the deskie doing? Why wasn't the EP answering? I knew there was supposed to be someone there.

Finally this kid answered the phone. He was thoroughly rattled and had no idea what to do. I asked to speak to the EP. "She went home," he said.

I asked him to call the on-call photog. "I don't know if I'm supposed to," he said. "This is only my second night on the desk by myself."

So that f*cking waste of air executive producer had sent me on a story, then left me in the hands of an untrained kid fresh out of college with NO NEWS EXPERIENCE WHATSOEVER. The extent of his "training" had been two days of answering phones during the day, under the supervision of the other deskies. Then they set him loose on the weekend overnight shift.

"I'll call somebody," he said. Then I didn't hear from him.

After about a half hour of watching the cops just sit there, I called back again. Again it rang forever. Finally he answered.

"I couldn't get in touch with Steve," he said, referring to our main assignment editor. It turned out later that Steve had told him that if he needed anything, anything at all, to call him at home. Then Steve went out of town his very first weekend and wasn't available to answer questions.

"Then wake up the news director," I said.

"Uh, okay," he said. "I'll see..."

Then I didn't hear from him again. At all. An hour later the cops had set up a makeshift coffee and donut cafe for themselves out of one of their trucks and were obviously settled in for the long haul. I called the station. No answer. I called on the two-way to try to get him to answer the phone. No answer there, either.

From then on, I called every fifteen minutes. I finally got an answer around 4am. It was our weekend morning producer, who had just walked in the door to put together our 7am weekend morning show. I told her what was going on, and that nobody had been answering the phone.

"Well, he's sitting up there at the desk," she said. "He didn't say anything at all about you being out there when I came in." Apparently this moron simply shut down mentally when I told him to call the ND and was sitting there staring at the wall.

Since we had a show coming up, I suggested that the producer get the live truck out there for her show. We were the only station there, and if there were ever a legitimate opportunity for a live hit of a "breaking news" situation, this was it. I should make clear that this girl was one of the three most competent producers we had, and she actually agreed with me. But because she was just recently out of college and was in her first producing gig, the EP (who was threatened by her) and the ND (who was the EP's best friend) wouldn't let her make ANY decisions on her own. "I'll have to get the ND's approval to send the live truck out there," she said.

Meanwhile, the cops wouldn't talk to me, other than to say, "Sir! You need to step back to your vehicle! Sir! Don't make me tell you again!" I couldn't get any information out of them as to when this thing might be over.

So I waited while the producer contacted the ND, who was apparently irritated at being rousted at 4am on a Saturday and told her that it wasn't worth wasting the overtime to send another photog out there with the live truck. Instead, the ND told her to leave me out there until 6am. Then, instead of calling the on-call photog, she was instructed to call the regular Saturday dayside photog in early.

"I'm so sorry," she told me. "Can you wait there until 6?"

"Sure," I said, "Why the hell not?" By that time, what was another couple of hours?

But when she called the dayside photog at 6am, the guy didn't answer the phone. I can't blame him. He wasn't supposed to be in until 8, and after all, I didn't particularly care for being called in early either. I talked to her shortly after 6, when she told me she couldn't get him.

"Do you want me to run this video back to you for your show, or stay here?"

"Stay there," she said. "I don't want you to risk missing it if they go in."

The other photog finally arrived a few minutes after 8am, and I left. I was quite irritated to learn later that the cops made their raid just twenty minutes after I left, and the photog that replaced me didn't get any video of it. Why? Because just before they went in, the cops sent two uniforms down to where he was set up with instructions to stand in front of his camera. He had a live truck with him and could have climbed on top of it to thwart them, but he didn't bother. He didn't even roll on them standing in front of his lens.

I stood out there all night for nothing. Not only had we missed the opportunity to run my video in the morning show, the evening producer decided it was too old by then to run just video of the standoff. The story never ran at all.

The following Monday afternoon I had a brief discussion about it with my managing editor. He tried to blame it all on the inexperience of the kid at the desk and assure me they were "taking steps" to prevent this kind of thing in the future.

"Hold on," I said, "That kid doesn't seem to be all there, but you CANNOT blame this on him."

"Why is that?" he asked.

"Because STEVE [the assigment editor] is the one who hired him, put him on the desk without training him, and then went out of town, leaving him to drown. If anyone is responsible, it's Steve. That was outright incompetence, and I will never be able to take our desk seriously again with him as our assignment editor."

"Oh," he said. "Uh, well, I guess you have a point."

But nothing came of it. They're probably still putting untrained people on that shift even today.

Recounting these stories, I'm so glad to be out of local news.

[NEWSSHOOTER3]

We have a pretty cautious and well informed desk... for the most part. I say that, as I am on call at this minute. But, we have a four hour minimum call out and free take home cars. They say that's about $7000+ perk. With a staff of around 20, that's around three to four times a year on call. Not bad, really.

[cameradog]

But, we have a four hour minimum call out and free take home cars. They say that's about $7000+ perk.

Well, is it really? The current federal mileage rate is 48.5 cents per mile starting this year. For a take-home car to be a $7000 per year perk, you would have to drive it on personal business 14433 miles per year.

There are about 260 work days in a year. That means you would have to drive it 55.5 miles each day on personal business. If you live 27 miles from your station, maybe you really are getting a $7000 perk. But really, how many of your photogs live 27 miles from your station?

Personally, every place I've worked I've lived no more than a few miles away. Most of my commutes were less than two miles, the longest was six. If I average that out at four miles each way, making eight miles a day, that's just over $1000 per year at the federal mileage rate.

You should always be suspicious when companies try to impress you with some "benefit" in lieu of actual, real compensation. I would rather have the $7000 in cash.

[NEWSSHOOTER3]

Well, is it really? The current federal mileage rate is 48.5 cents per mile starting this year. For a take-home car to be a $7000 per year perk, you would have to drive it on personal business 14433 miles per year.

There are about 260 work days in a year. That means you would have to drive it 55.5 miles each day on personal business. If you live 27 miles from your station, maybe you really are getting a $7000 perk. But really, how many of your photogs live 27 miles from your station?

Personally, every place I've worked I've lived no more than a few miles away. Most of my commutes were less than two miles, the longest was six. If I average that out at four miles each way, making eight miles a day, that's just over $1000 per year at the federal mileage rate.

You should always be suspicious when companies try to impress you with some "benefit" in lieu of actual, real compensation. I would rather have the $7000 in cash.

A regular Alan freakin' Greenspan here folks! I love how you animals thrive on picking everything apart on this board. Listen, I'm just making a general statement about my situation here. Try figuring in insurance, gas, maintenance, license plates, tires, windshield wipers, toll costs, emissions tests, and the occasional fender bender. And, I don't need to be impressed by anyone for loving what I do! I make enough money to enjoy my lifestyle and cruise for free. Sorry if you feel like the fire hydrant... Dog! ;)

[cameradog]

Try figuring in insurance, gas, maintenance, license plates, tires, windshield wipers, toll costs, emissions tests, and the occasional fender bender.

That's all figured into the federal mileage rate. If it were just gas, it would be no more than 20 cents per mile.

But go on and believe the lies your company sells you. Companies are always looking to hire suckers.

[f11vid]

PRICELESS! I gotta know did she ever know the real deal?

thru-the-lens.

Yeah, I 'fessed up when I came in for my shift.She actually got a laugh out of it.Plus she was off the hook for some huge OT.;)

[TXPhotog]

Not quite the same but I was once ordered to park on the side of the highway to look for and wait for a small rain shower that was coming my way so I could get rain video. I actually had to move two times as the desk positioned me in front of the mile-long rain shower. I think that was the only rain for the day.

The station was OBSESSED with rain video.

Word on the rain obsession. Once the desk, when they heard of a slight possibility of precipitation, sent me out with this "simple" instruction: "Find rain."

[NEWSSHOOTER3]

That's all figured into the federal mileage rate. If it were just gas, it would be no more than 20 cents per mile.

But go on and believe the lies your company sells you. Companies are always looking to hire suckers.

Yeah... lots of suckers here in the top ten markets?!? Its terrible making a comfortable living doing what I love! How did I ever fall for such a scheme!?! :eek: