Four-ging ahead...

Week Four... was a bit of a flop really.
Linda had emailed me earlier in the week to say she wouldn’t be in the office but that my other two colleagues would have work for me...
Taking a leaf out of last week’s book (where I was shoved a 9am job as soon as I entered the office at 8.45) I decided I’d rock up at 8.30 this time... only to discover that no one else was there. Luckily I had brought my own work... an interview from one of the business managers I met at last week’s dinner meeting for my partner’s work. The talent was an accounts manager at a Queensland wide radio station (based in Townsville) who started her career with heavy involvement in volunteer work... It would make a very interesting story. All I had to do was turn my little question and answer form into a 400 word career profile...easy as pie! Turns out neither of my colleagues arrived in the office until almost 10am...So I was extra glad I’d brought something to occupy my time.
However even once the other two ladies arrived they seemed a little lost for ideas of what I should do... It’s a bit difficult working on Fridays because the whole office is in end-of-the-week mode, while I am in Monday-mode...wanting to achieve as much as possible and working on high speed. The two women I work with are head of the social club and their Fridays are often taken up with barbeques and raffles... as they were this particular day, leaving me a little lonely and lost.
We had the Catholic News lift-out that is printed every three/four months to fill in (next edition is to be printed in a few weeks) so one colleague gave me a list of phone numbers with three or four word descriptions next to them...a faint clue of what the story might be about when you ring the phone contact... unfortunately as this is the list provided to her by the Catholic Diocese she couldn’t really help with any more information than the very little that was on the list... it was a case of the blind leading the blind really.
My two office companions also had places to be in the afternoon and left the office about 2pm...leaving me alone with the “list from hell.” (Her words, not mine!)
I tentatively rang the first number...a Father in Mt Isa answered and told him I wanted to talk about the Pilgrimage... he rattled off very few details at lightning speed and I felt my stomach turn... politely asked him to repeat himself...tried the re-word the question a dozen times... and finally got down something remotely story-esque.. .
I rang the next number... the contact wasn’t home but the person who answered the phone would get them to call back on Monday.
I rang the next number... similar story.
I rang the next number... no answer.
It was 4.30pm. I left the office. Hopefully next week would look up.
On Monday I got an email from Linda regards the career profile story I had filed;
“Hi Bessie, I feel so bad. I should of told you we don't do career
profiles of radio. They are our opposition. Last time I did it I was
called into the General Managers Officer. It is bit different in the
general news pages of the paper but because our publication out here are
linked to advertising I think that is the reason. Sorry again. Linda”
As you can imagine... I was ecstatic. Though really I was incredibly gratefully that she let me know later rather than too late... it would have been beyond awful for it to have been printed and then for me to have been called into the general manager’s office... but still I felt like my day there had been a great waste. And I was worried about telling my talent that I couldn’t run the story.
Another stroke of luck was that the talent took the bad news incredibly well and even gave me a long list of her friends with interesting jobs who didn’t work in the media sphere for me to me to do profile on... So at least this week kind of finished on a high. :)