Okay, to be fair, let me explain that this exterior is typical of most Florida businesses and is no indication of what the place is like inside. I call it the Third World Look. In this case the interior is exactly like an old Texas pub, with a long counter and one pool table. There are three dart board machines and a dozen totally outdated video gambling devices [off-line].I took the day “off” to spend some time investigating the seriousness of the problem with the dog wig web page. Sure, I always insisted I was not responsible of the web page, there was still a tacit inference that I was responsible for things to be done correctly. I need a raise. Somebody around here has to know more about how things are done than the people who are supposed to get those things done. Management? The phone company knows this is what happens when you hire people based on documentation rather than ability. Ability, you see, is hard to measure, dammit.
By deciding not to go in to the dog place today, I invited a flurry of phone calls. In the breather, I developed an analogy that I’ve been getting good marks upon. Here goes. What I do is similar to paddling a boat up the river. Every time you need me to stop and (say answer a phone or write an email) things do not remain where you think – the boat immediately begins to float downstream. How do you like it?
I’m actually glad somebody else recently mentioned “micro-management” so that I’m not the one who brought it up [over there]. There is also the problem that I don’t do clerical work but then get the old comeback that I’m paid many times more than a clerk. Um, I also get paid more than a janitor, but that does not mean I clean toilets.
Instant DVD, the Pinnacle product, is getting packed up and sent right back to them. Not only does it not work as claimed, it locked up my entire system and would not uninstall even in safe mode. I had to beg Fred to leave an OS reinstall overnight so I can get the print server working before I go to work tomorrow morning. I wrote to Pinnacle about this severe and undocumented problem and their “live” chat popped up underneath what I was working on while waiting. By the time I found it, they had timed out. Pinnacle, stick it where it feels good. As far as the answer, they said 2 to 3 working days. Fine. I’ll just pick my nose until then.
While all this was going on, that is between phone calls from the dog place, I tripped over two new chunks of valuable information (to me). Dragon “Naturally Speaking” is again making the rounds. What a complete sucker-job. All you people who don’t have the aptitude to type are given new but false hope. It is my conjecture that CEOs buy this software, for they are the easiest to convince the world wants their secrets. It is side-splitting to watch somebody who can’t spell or think trying to learn how to type. Where did that “c” go again?
The second was a customer who brought in a laptop. He works for the “New Times”. I’ve often read their product but except for flashes of humor even rarer than here, it is not a useful resource. The point is, he whispered the going rate for this brand of writing. Forty cents per word! We’re rich! Not.
Now I know finally somebody who writes [short articles] for a living, as different from a book author. That is correct, for decades I have been unable to find out what a writer got paid, but I was not really diligent about the search and I guessed it was somewhere in that range. I don’t write for money but then, nobody has offered me any. Some sources told me 5 cents to 15 cents a word but I knew they were low-balling. What was equally informative was his description of what would “sell”. He rattled off names of (local) people that I have sincerely never heard of.
The public, he insisted, wanted to know what these people did and thought. I’ll wager that type of thinking accounts for the tedious predictability of most newspaper articles. I do know that if I had a boss that told me to come up with something by a deadline, it is the exact kind of twaddle I would crank out. My writing, I think, tends toward information with a dash of entertainment value. He describes the opposite as the correct formula.
It is certain that the beginner’s market for writers is choked full and spilling over on all sides. That is understandable because most men can write a good chapter or two before tapering down to their normal boring selves. Just ask any woman who goes to night clubs. Writing is like the music or landscaping business, where the real barriers are from the constant supply of newcomers.
Trivia. At the going rate, today’s entry is worth $384.80. Actually, it was hard to do what I just did. I could not write the sentence without changing the number of words. The challenges a writer must face, sigh. (I put in dummy words, then replaced them when I had the facts.)
