‘LETTITOR

D uring last summer, the limits of my creativity were stretched to the
breaking point. I’m not a terribly creative guy, but I can come up

with a good idea every now and then (for example, it was my idea to
mix butterscotch schnapps and amaretto with Vanilla Coke. Sure it
tastes like crap, but dibs on copyright!) and usually these ideas will

get me by. But this past summer, I was an intern at a small town
newspaper, and I’ve never felt so useless.

I’d been wanting to enter journalism for a while now, and I figured a
stint at a paper like this one would be good experience (by the way, I
don’t think it’s fair for me to reveal the name of this paper, so
instead, I’ll simply refer to it as The Weekly Teabag). The Weekly
Teabag, and indeed all small town papers always have a problem in the
summer months: what the hell do we report on? _

A small town like the one The Teabag represents provides only two
kinds of news: local politics, and the adorable antics of the town’s
children. Unfortunately, there’s no local politics, school board
meetings or civic activities during the summertime. Also, the town had
been taken over by crystal meth, so the children weren’t that adorable
anymore. So, we had to be creative in the news stories we told.

Many news stories are inspired by press releases. The paper gets a
press release (which i is sort of like an announcement or event
description written by publicists), and then just flushes out the
information to make a story. But since there was no real news, The
Weekly Teabag was getting all kinds of BS press releases, everything
from religious zealots and the impending apocalypse to Arby’s new
30-cent sandwich. We also got a press release about a 90-year-old
woman who had won the Order of British Columbia, which told us she
would be available for interview. Not quite ready to do a story on
Arby’s disgusting sandwiches, I took the story on the 90-year-old
woman.

I should add that for me, this lady was to be my first interview
face-to-face. Ever. I’d spoken to people over the phone, but a
face-to-face interview is different. It’s very immediate, often
intimidating and challenging. There’s no barrier you can put up to
distance yourself from the person as you might on the phone, because
the subject is now just a few feet away from you.

The woman, a resident named Annie Warren (fake name, don’t even bother
to Google it), was a widower who'd gotten something of a reputation
for being eccentric. In the 1990s, she started the town’s hall of
fame, and made herself the featured exhibit. She also had a reputation
around the paper’s press room for hijacking interviews. Thanks for
telling me in advance, team.

 

Waitressing a tough gig |e!

_junior reporter?”

The interview was supposed to take twenty minutes, but eventually
spanned two hours. At first, she started answering my softball
questions more or less coherently. I wasn’t out to grill the lady, but
you know how ramble-y old people can be, so I found myself struggling
to maintain control of the interview. Before long, this egotistical
crazy lady had wrested control from me, and was now using me as merely
someone to listen to her outlandish claims and accusations.
“You know, princess Margaret counts me as one of her closest friends,”
she told me.
“Esther Williams lied about her success to Larry King,” she told me.
“J invented synchronized swimming,” she somehow had the gall to tell me.
You get the idea. How the hell was I supposed to make a story out of
this? What would the headline “ “Crazy lady shovels a on

I started off being sinajed: init eventually I just nee to pity
this aging fabulist. She has three large closets filled with photo
albums, but all of the photos are of herself. She lived in a large,
two-bedroom apartment, but one of those rooms was filled to the gills
with every sort of trophy imaginable, some she had been keeping since
she was in elementary school.

When it came time to write the story, it ended up as a glowing tribute
to her life, and I just bit my tongue about what I thought of her.
After all, I may be kind of a jerk, but I’m not low enough to tear
down an old woman like that.

So, to all those dear readers who may have to conduct an interview
with a difficult subject in the future, just remember to grab the bull
by the horns; or you could be dealing with a real cow.

  

Your friend in high fidelity,
Liam Britten
Editor-in-chief
The Other Press

 

Nines I do not read The Other Press, because it’s not my school’s paper. However, last week, I picked up an older issue that had strangely made its way up to UBC.
In it, writer Wendy Case wrote an article titled, “You have to work for it” (Issue #8 Vol. 35, October 27", 2008), in which she described waitresses (whether intentionally
or not) as being a bunch of dim-witted, lazy free riders who shouldn’t always be entitled to a tip.

For starters, I would just like to clarify that nobody is ever forced into tipping a waitress. It does not matter if the tip is added to the bill at the end of a meal or not;

dissatisfied customers are always entitled to remove the automatic subsidy if they are not happy with the service (and in most cases, they do.

.. perhaps your friend simply

didn’t clue in). Also, contrary to what you might believe, auto-tipping does not create an incentive for customers to actually tip. As such, the waiter does not know for sure
if they will receive a tip or not, and so he still has lots of incentive to do the best job possible.

By the way, the most strenuous work I have ever had to do was waitressing. In comparison to my other jobs, I would say that as a waitress (at an understaffed
restaurant, as they always are) I had to fit about 12 hours of work into an eight-hour shift. The hours were also terribly unpredictable, ranging from an extra two hours
onto what I was supposed to work, or being sent home after only a half-hour. Granted, most people acknowledge that waitressing is a tough job, but some presumptuous
individuals who’ve never worked in a restaurant seem to think waitresses are nobodies, who spend their time chit-chatting and eating at work.

Another issue I had with this article is how Wendy’s argument was very black-and-white: those who tip traditionally are simple-minded sheep, whereas those who
tip like Wendy are S-M-R-T. They employ “negative reinforcement,” which, according to her, is taking away an expected reward in order to reinforce good behaviour.
However, according to anyone who has ever actually passed a psychology class, this definition of negative reinforcement is false. Negative reinforcement means taking
away an expected chore or punishment, in order to reinforce good behaviour. Go figure; people as “smrt” as Wendy can make mistakes! Maybe next time you want to

educate your servers and readers, be sure you know what you’re talking about!

—Ericka Yung