Throughout my years in the workforce, I’ve only been in two industies. A few minutes ago, as I stood answering Mother Nature’s call in the executive washroom, I realized something they both have in common:
Trade Publications:
You know, those monthly perodicals that no one recalls ever subscribing to - yet they keep on coming. The ones with the annual ‘This Is Your Last Issue Warning’ that the mailman just wished was true. Those glossy, full-color magazines and broadsheets that no one reads unless they’re constipated and can’t find a regular newspaper.
We get about a dozen a month here. These are some of my favorites:[ul][li]Rock & Dirt: I guess the only reason I’m so endeared to it is its title. Payloaders, Kubotas and the like. Should be required reading for every elementary school-aged boy.[]Machinery Trader.com: If there’s a dot com edition, why in the hell do they feel the need to publish something the size of the Sunday NY Times in the first place?[]Compact Equipment: If it wasn’t for the glossy picture of the earthmover on the cover, you’d swear from the title it was the Asian version of Playgirl. Concrete Masonry News: With those classic cover stories “Masonry Restoration Analysis” and “EIFS in the 21st Century”[/ul][/li]That’s just a couple that clutter our bathroom at the moment. I’m sure our mail carrier will be dropping some more off tomorrow.
Do you have any Trade Publications you’d like to tell us about. I imagine the agricultural, engineering, technological and medical industries must get even more reading materials than we do here.
Oh, we can do better than trade magazines in our office.
Somehow, somewhere, some magazine subscription service wrongly surmised that our office worked with students and might even have a waiting room for them. We started getting all kinds of magazines, some even subtitled “WAITING ROOM EDITION.”
We’ve gotten Reader’s Digest, Opera News, Ski, ESPN Magazine…
Our current rotation has us receiving Rolling Stone, Spin, Men’s Health, Sports Illustrated, and FIVE copies of TV Guide.
We only have one man in the office, and no opera singers. Certainly no TVs. I read last month’s Spin, which featured the “30 Coolest People In Rock” and 27 different times I said things like “Who? What? Is that a person, or a band?” I felt reaaaaaaal old, and I’m one of the younger people in the office.
Oil World, Oil & Gas Investor, The Leading Edge, Geophysics, Earth Observation Magazine (watching the grass grow), hmm…, that’s all I can think of that come to me. The AAPG Explorer and the Oil and Gas Journal also appear.
When I had my own company, we got lots of strange stuff. One of my favorites was Bathroom World that was for people who build public restrooms. Do you have any idea how much you can spend on one of those wall-mounted stainless steel towel dispenser/wastebaskets?
The last isn’t really a trade publication, but one of those ‘check out what X is hot this month!’ mags. We use it to keep tabs on what’s supposed to popular at the moment.
I get Network World and Network Magazine, which I actually find somewhat useful. Back when I was surveying, I got P.O.B. (Point of Beginning) , usually with an interesting ‘How We Surveyed This Cool Job Site’ and a lot of product test articles. A guy I used to work with got Packaging Digest, but we did no packaging of any sort. I would sometimes take one home for bedtime reading. Put me right to sleep.
I get Mortuary Management and The Dodge Magazine. Dodge is the chemical company that supplies our embalming fluid. The most popular section of Morturary Management is innocently titled “News Briefs”, but it’s actually a forum to embarass funeral directors who screw up. Stealing money from the endowment fund seems to be rampant these days. They’ll put the money into some kind of investment or get-rich-quick scheme; if it pays off they put the money back and pocket the profits. If it doesn’t, they get their names in Mortuary Management. As many as there are getting caught, it makes me wonder how many are getting away with it.
MM also features technological advances, editorials lamenting the ever increasing cremation rate, war stories, who sold out to what conglomerate, how said conglomerate is doing on the NYSE, etc.