That’s it! I’ve had it! It’s now nearly 9:00 on Sunday morning. I need to leave for church in half an hour, and yet, somehow, the morning has not yet begun. Why, the hopelessly bored among you may ask? Because yet again today’s newspaper is neither in my apartment nor on my doorstep. We changed carriers recently, and things were all right at first. I also made allowances a few weeks ago when a Sunday morning snowstorm made things very bad. In fact, I thanked him when I saw him as I left for church on foot and by bus at 8:30 that morning. This morning, the roads are fine, as they have been all week. Every weekday this week except New Year’s Eve and (possibly) New Year’s Day, the paper hadn’t come by the time I left for work. It did arrive before 7:00 on New Year’s Eve, ironically, a day when I went into work late. Last Sunday, when I left at 8:30, it still hadn’t arrived. I called circulation on Monday; they said it should arrive by 6:00; I’d settle for 7:00.
Look, I know it’s a pain having to get up early to get the newspaper out to us subscribers; I also know that it’s part of the job. The reason I want the paper before 7:00 is part of my job means I have to be at the office by 8:00. If I don’t do that, I will get fired. I like reading the paper over breakfast. It’s a cheap pleasure, and a nice way to begin my day. I get up. I surf the SDMB until the paper comes. I read it over breakfast, then I get dressed and go to work. Reading it when I come home from work is like having pancakes for dinner. It may be all right once in a while, but when I choose to, not because I have no alternative.
Grrr!! Is it too much to ask to get the paper before or with breakfast, not after I get home?! (I realize I’m leaving myself wide open here.) Yes, I plan on calling circulation tomorrow and having a good long talk with them, one which may involve the word “refund”. Meanwhile, what is happening on Opus and Dilbert today, anyway?
My paper carrier leaves the paper down the walk,near the street.
This is very inconvenient on weekends and holidays when the paper comes in the morning and I don’t want to get fully dressed just to get the paper and bring it back to the bedroom. Complaints bring sympathetic noises from the circulation management staff but no real improvement.
The local daily is always advertising for new carriers–and the reason is their notoriously low pay.
Last spring, while looking for some supplemental income, I checked out the local daily and the outfit I now work for–a bi-weekly automobile advertising booklet. Local daily paid $250/ month for a couple of hours per day, 7 days a week. Ad sheet pays $350 for about 9 hours’ work every other week.
Good juvenile paper carriers find out that fast food pays better and you work indoors. Good adult carriers haunt the ad sheet publishers hoping someone will die or retire soon and give them their shot.
The local dailies put up with, and make excuses for, the lousy carriers who could never get hired anywhere else because they’ll work cheap.
I don’t subscribe to the paper any more. When we moved in here we were getting the Sunday paper delivered for about a year and a half, I didn’t ask for it, never paid for it, never was asked for money for it, and I wouldn’t pay if I was given a bill for it. It was delivered some time between 10:00 and 11:00, by a man who looked like he could be a brother to Ted Kaczynski. About two months ago it stopped being delivered, and I don’t think I will ask why.
Well, it’s now 1:30, and still no blasted newspaper, so I’m off to the convenience store to buy one. The car’s playing up, so I’ll be walking. In the rain. Uphill both ways (I swear that’s true – it’s a U-shaped walk!). Yes, I know life could suck much worse for far more dire reasons, and I am more worried about the business with the car, actually, but if you can’t vent in the Pit where can you vent? If I meet the paper boy on the way, you guys will give me an alibi, right?
I recently had a run in with my newspaper and the poor delivery I was getting. In the past I complained, it would be good for a while, then back to the same old late and/or missing papers.
This time I emailed the head of Circulation, with copies of the email going both to the publishing head, and the general manager of the paper. I really let them have it. No profanity, but I told them if there was another daily in town I’d switch, among other things. My Sunday paper was delivered in person(finally, on Tuesday) by the Circulation head and the general manager. I explained further why I’d been so upset. They also gave me two months credit on my subscription, and a copy of a book that the paper had recently put out, about the history of Topeka.
And my paper has been on my porch for the last two weeks. Being a polite squeaky wheel paid off. I suggest you write the head of the paper directly and do what I did. Maybe the consequences will “trickle down” so to speak.
After several phone calls and an actual face to face with the carrier (one extremely late morning), I canceled my sub, being very specific that it was the poor service. I got a refund on the amount left and several recent “free for yeay long” renewal beggings.
I don’t miss the morning paper at all now. I get most of news online. I do occasionally buy a Sunday paper on Saturday afternoon (news of the future!) just for the coupons, crosswords, and Parade.
And CJ, you live on a Mobius strip?
Hi, Baker!
Anyways, Broncos are losing and I’m going to a Sooner party in a bit so I guess I’ll see you in the funny pages!
Eons ago, the person who delivered our morning paper was a young boy. Several days a week the paper would be missing entirely, or would not show up until mid-afternoon. He was very upset when I would not pay for the papers I didn’t get. “But I hate getting up so early!” he whined. “So get a different job,” I replied, “You can’t get paid for what you don’t do.”
These days the delivery is by an adult in a car. Our driveway is wide enough for 3 cars. We have a large front lawn. The paper is always underneath a car. Sometimes I can retrieve it with a stick that I keep for that purpose. Other times I would only be able to get it if I moved the car, in which case I might as well just continue on to work. I mentally give him points from 1 to 10. Ten for impossible to reach, one for actually in the clear.
Siege, have you considered the possibility that someone is swiping the paper off your porch? When I lived in an apartment, this would happen frequently. It’s usually someone unaware that there is a person living in that apartment.
That’s why I don’t take the daily paper at home anymore.
Now now, if you’ve ever played the popular video game Paperboy, you’d realize the job isn’t as difficult as it seems. Contrary to popular belief, paper carriers must not only deal with mundane hazards such as dogs and irate customers chasing them, but must also fend off frequent (roughly daily) tornados and avoid the ghastly spectre of the Grim Reaper himself! It’s no walk in the park!
As a paper carrier I’d like to give my 2 cents. Apart from the blasted tornadoes, the most hated hazard on the route is the paper thief. With a route of about 250 daily customers I am allowed 2 missed papers/complaints a week. More than that and I lose $20 for the week and pay about a buck per missed paper. I have 3 problem houses on the route–all are end houses of cul-de-sacs and all are on the corner of the same street (some early riser–dog-walker, jogger, etc. snags a paper when they see one).
I get up at 2:30am, get to the warehouse at 3:00, bag my papers and deliver them over the course of an hour. Typically I’m home by 5:00-5:30 and makin’ breakfast & getting ready for my real job. When my papers are delivered late it will be because of one or both of the following: The papers arrive late from the presses, icy road conditions force me to drive more “moderately” while delivering. If the papers don’t come to the warehouse until, say 4:am, you won’t have it by 6. It will be late.
But some paper carriers just suck, can’t read a route list, can’t throw 2 feet past their car window, and don’t care. Me? I’ll pull the paper out from under your car–$20 is $20.
My mom (manager of the food service at the local city college) told me a great story over xmas. She’s been having a fight with the local minimal-cost (ad-supported) bi-weekly, basically her and her neighbors weren’t getting the sunday paper for about 2 months.
Finally, the manager of the local grocery store where she does a lot of the food-service shopping notices her standing in the store reading their sunday ad. Manager asks why she’s reading it here rather than at home, she tells him it’s because the paper doesn’t see fit to actually deliver the paper to all their subscribers.
Her next call to the paper, she tells them how interested the manager of one of their bigger clients was that the paper wasn’t reaching all the people that he’s paying them to reach.
Theft and bad aim aren’t the problem, I’m afraid. I live in an apartment building so, unless the paper carrier’s going to try a forward pass down the hall, the paper won’t be thrown onto my doorstep. Also, none of the other people on my half of the floor got their newspapers either. I certainly make allowances for bad roads. I’m afraid I wouldn’t have ranted unless I was reasonably sure it was plain incompetence. On the other hand, it may have been a substitute carrier; yesterday’s paper turned up on time.
and I’m going to a Sooner party in a bit 
so I guess I’ll see you in the funny pages! 