Face to Face

Being someone who has learned to communicate via e-mail and text messaging (and actually have come to prefer it much of the time), I realize that there is still an advantage to actually meeting face to face.

There have been a couple of misunderstandings between myself and the entertainment editor to whom I submit my reviews lately.  Nothing serious, but it just didn't seem that she was understanding what I was asking and she appeared frustrated that I wasn't understanding her either.

So I invited her to have lunch with me. 

She's been in this position for a couple of years now, so we have worked together for what is now a long time, but we had never met face to face.  I knew Derrick, the first entertainment editor I worked with, ever since he was a young man, performing on stages in Davis and running a game store (selling games in an era before video games) and have always considered him a friend. I would occasionally go to the newspaper office to do a couple of things, but mostly my job doesn't require me to ever go to the office and so once my friend was downsized, I just never had an excuse to go to the office. We had our disagreements from time to time but because we were friends, I never got angry with him and things smoothed over quickly.

The paper's chief editor was the first person to take over for Derrick and I had known her for a long time.  Then the sports editor took over the job when she felt herself overwhelmed.  He immediately invited me to lunch and we talked for a long time.  He admitted he knew lots of sports but nothing about theater and wanted to pick my brain about how things worked.  He didn't last long in the job and this new person, who had worked on the paper for a couple of years, took on the entertainment section too.  She also came out of the sports section and theater is not her bailiwick either, but we seemed to get along all right until the last few months...and even then, it was only a couple of things that I got upset about.

What a difference it makes to actually know the person you are working with!  I hope she feels the same way that I do this evening.

We didn't meet for lunch, but she suggested we meet at Starbucks, and the chief editor came along too.  I don't know if they thought they needed the editor to be a referee, but I was not there to confront; I was there to get to know her.

I got there first and decided that since the last time I was in Starbucks was about five years ago, when we met our Mexican daughter downtown and she offered to buy us coffee, I would treat myself to one of their specialty coffees.  I ordered a creme brulee latte, because I can never pass up any creme brulee.  

My first impression was to realize how people who regularly have these specialty coffees must either have very big salaries, or go into  debt on a regular basis.  My God.  $3.75 for a "tall" (Starbucks' way of referring to a small!)  And it came warm, not hot.  I like my coffee very hot.  I had to drink it quickly before it cooled off to cold, so I couldn't even enjoy the creamy goodness.

 The women arrived and we sat down to chat.  We both talked about our backgrounds.  What a fascinating woman she is!  I learned she had lived in China for a year, teaching English and doing something else.  I wish we had explored that experience more in depth.  I told her how I began doing newspaper with the long defunct free political rag, The Argus, which even the editor had never heard of.   I was the entertainment editor back then, pasting up the entertainment calendar and giving spotlight attention to friends of mine who were performing.  The editor didn't give a fig about entertainment and I don't think he ever even looked at that page.   The more comfortable I felt, the more fun I had with the page until he went bankrupt and closed the office.

The three of us had a great time laughing about an issue that we all agreed on.   I loved that!

We finally got around to the recent issues with my reviews, and it was not a heated discussion.  I learned the difficulties the paper has, with a smaller staff and fewer pages into which to put more articles.  I confessed that I have a review blog where I usually post reviews after they have been published, but when they are not published in a timely fashion, I may post to Bitter Hack before they have been published in the paper so the theaters can read them and use them for quotes, if they want to.  I hadn't told anybody that before, fearing that it might violate some copyright or something, but both women were fine with my doing that.  It's nice that that blog is finally out in the open and everyone is OK with it.

In the end it was a very positive experience, a lovely coffee, and I suspect that I will be less irritated by things because we have actually met face to face.

I hope she feels the same way.

I guess there are occasions where e-mail is NOT necessarily the best way to communicate with people!

Bib and Tucker

When we first moved to Davis and the kids began getting involved with various organization, my job became publicist for just about every organization with which I became involved, from PTA to Little League. I discovered I was sort of good at it. One of my more successful campaigns was getting a television sports guy to bring a camera crew to the swimming pool to cover the Davis Diving Team's preparation for an upcoming meet.

As the kids got older, our activities seemed to center more around theater than anything else. I was publicist for the Sunshine Children's Theatre, and for other (now defunct) theatrical organizations, including the Davis Comic Opera Company.

The long-time entertainment editor of the paper retired and a new woman was hired to take her place. As I recall, she was recruited from out of town. I spoke with her a couple of times and decided that I would curry favor by taking her to lunch, to meet her and so that we could each get an idea of how we worked, and how we could best help each other.

Our lunch seemed to go well. We got a long well during her brief time here and she was always willing to go the extra mile for me, if she could do it. For my part, I tried never to need the extra mile by being pepared and turning all of my information in in a timely manner, and when she had done something good for me, I always wrote to thank her. We had a good working relationship.

Oddly (and disappointingly) enough, nobody has ever thought to invite me to lunch to figure out how I like to get information and how we can help each other (or, for that matter, to thank me for going the extra mile). It's not that I expected it, but it made me realize what a damn good publicist I was! I meet once a year with the publicity person for the university to plan out the productions throughout the school year, but we meet at a coffee shop and we each buy our own coffee.

Today, I got treated to lunch by the guy who has taken over Derrick's responsibilities. It was kind of cool. This fellow (who is the husband of the newspaper's editor and who has been a newsman for more than 30 years, though took a break for several years to do other things) is a sports guy. His taking over entertainment news is like me taking over the sports desk. The things that Derrick knows intuitively, Bruce needs to learn, though he's mostly doing well.

We had a delightful lunch, getting caught up on old times. I was being witty, sincere, a delightful luncheon companion.

Until one point where Bruce said "oh-oh" and pointed in the general direction of my body. I looked down and there was a piece of pad thai on my shirt, which I picked up in my fingers and put into my mouth, realizing as I did it what a bad thing that was to do.

But I didn't have time to concentrate on that social faux pas because as I raised my hand, napkin still clutched in it, a long silvery strand of pad thai noodle glistened in the air, looking like a flat worm with garbage all over it.

No chance to maintain much dignity after that. I was just grateful that I was dining with someone I knew, that I already had the job, that he seems to think I do a good job, and that this is a small town and we weren't dining in some fancy schmancy restaurant in San Francisco!

Peggy once tried to explain to me why I am such a slob when I eat. It's really amazing how much food escapes between the plate and my mouth, how much of it falls on my chest or rolls down onto the floor. It's easy to understand why the dogs like to sit under my place at the table, hoping for some of those stray bits to land on the floor. I'm as good a source of treats as a baby in a high chair.

Mostly it doesn't matter. It's only people who love me who have to watch how disgusting I am when I eat. I really do try not to talk with food in my mouth, to keep my mouth closed when I chew, and to lean over the plate as I pick up a forkful of food, but somehow that doesn't seem to help. I really should carry a bib around with me, if I were serious about keeping clean during mealtimes!

It's probably good that I never had a career in the business world. If I had tried to become a successful business woman, my cleaning bill would be a whopper, and I would be a constant embarrassment to my co-workers.