On the morning of Christmas Eve 2013, a Tuesday if you recall, I was scheduled to go to the office – label the December 26 issue of the paper and then go forth on my paper route making deliveries to store racks and post offices.
Our paper is usually printed on Wednesday and dropped off overnight in the Greenwood office. But the Christmas season inevitably mean that deadlines get moved forward. Here at the Times we had to meet three printing deadlines within six days. The plan was that both the Dec. 26 and Jan 2 papers would be delivered the truck in Greenwood the morning of the 24th.
Needless to say I was ready for a week off myself. The office was to be closed as soon as I delivered the December 26th paper, and that was going to happen on the morning of the 24th - Christmas Eve. After that I wouldn’t have to be back to work until Jan 2nd.
So the sooner I got the paper route done the earlier I could get away to visit mom and sis for Christmas.
Imagine my surprise when I got to work that morning and found nada! No papers had been delivered!
So I started making phone calls.
I did my best to keep it together – I tried to remind myself going weird was probably not going to be helpful. My chances of getting papers to Greenwood would fall way off I if I started yelling at the truck driver or dispatcher whose cooperation I needed to solve this problem.
So I did calm and nice. After a few calls I found out the papers had been dropped off in Grand Forks and I could go pick them up there.
They were several pallets of newspapers behind the Grand Forks Gazette office when I got there. I spotted a pile of papers with our front-page banner on them and started tossing bundles into my car.
When I pulled away there were still a couple of pallets piled high with what looked like copies of the Kootenay News Advertiser and I was thinking how grateful I was not to have that paper route.
Getting back to Greenwood I hustled all the bundles into the office, grabbed the subscription mailing labels and started addressing the papers for the post office deliveries.
After about half a dozen labels I noticed that I was putting them on the Jan. 2nd issue instead of the Dec. 26th.
I looked around the room for a bundle of the Dec. 26th edition and didn’t see a single one. It seems that when I’d unloaded the car I’d just tossed the bundles into a pile. And of course every bundle on top of every pile was dated Jan. 2nd.
I freaked! Convinced that I still didn’t have the Dec. 26 papers, I started making phone calls, and by this time I must have been sounding panicked.
I phoned the Gazette and had them look out their back door to see if papers were still there. Unfortunately I wasn’t any more specific than that – are there papers still there? - and the answer I got was that, “Yes there are lot’s of papers out there.”
So it looked like I was heading back to Grand Forks again. But I got some good advice from one of the little people who was sitting on my shoulder that day.
I was pretty sure the papers on those pallets I’d left behind in Grand Forks earlier were all Advertisers. So I called the Gazette one more time and this time I asked the specific question, “Were any of the papers they had copies of the Times?”
This time the answer was no. So I went back into the office and reorganized the two piles of bundles.
Lesson learned – sort, then struggle.
I sure hope Santa didn’t have that kind of trouble making his Christmas Eve deliveries.
Take care of someone who loves you …
