In high school I had a few peculiar jobs, I did things from measuring the depth of a local lake to cleaning out and sorting trash, but one job stood out to me the most. During the summer of my senior year of high school I took up a job as a receptionist at our local newspaper, the Dresden Dispatcher. The job didn’t entail much, on weekdays I would arrive at work at 11:00 AM and then end at 7:00 PM, and on weekends I went to work at 3pm and leave at 11:00 PM with the exceptions of the days I did overtime. Besides arranging meetings I would take phone calls from the locals for stories. This is how we’d get the ideas for the majority of our features. Being a small town, good stories were limited, so we’d have to report on basically anything that someone sought out interesting enough to be in tomorrow’s newspaper. Believe it was one the most irritating and depressing jobs I have ever worked at. To give you an idea of what I had to endure, the first few phone calls I took were about a new stop sign that was installed and how bothersome it was. Anyway, after I’d take the phone calls I’d pass them on to our various reporters. They’d go out and get what they could then they’d come back; pass it on what they had to our editor who would give it to the printer who would then get published on to the next paper. I’d do this almost every day while I worked and got paid close to nothing.
The building that I worked at was rather small and cramped. It was made out of bright red bricks, which were complemented with a single glass door and next to that, a large glass window with a large green canopy. To the right of our building was an insurance company and the left was a small art studio, which were only separated by a small alleyway. Even though it was located in a rather popular spot it felt daunting and desolate. When you came into the building you’d be greeted by small waiting room with a few chairs and a large desk that sat at the back next to a door. Behind that door was the press room which had multiple desks with typewriters and a meeting room, and behind that room was the printing room. I’d work in the waiting room which, is where I’d take all of our phone calls.
The owner of the newspaper was a man that went by the name Mr. Melsborror. Being the owner of the only newspaper in Dresden he was well known and respected. My parents kept some tight ties to him and this is how I got the job. He was a rather busy man and would often be out doing his own business, so a lot of the time we were left to operate the newspaper by ourselves. During the day my working environment felt active and passive with so many people coming in and out, but as the hours multiplied it began to feel hectic and stressed as everyone would rush for the next paper. I was the exception to this fiasco, I would simply come in and work at my desk while everyone around me would from having sudden bursts of excitement for a “hot” new story, which would slowly turn to a panic at the midnight rush. With the exception of all the monotony that I’d have to go through, my job had its moments and it felt fairly easy. I might have considered staying longer, but after what happened I’m afraid I can’t step within a mile of that dreaded place without having flashbacks of terror.
I started my job with fairly little incident, besides a few missed phone calls I was able to stay on top of everything quite well. I was reasonably liked by my coworkers because they knew I tried the best I could at my job to ensure that they could do their job. During the first few weeks of my employment, each day felt unique because I was interacting with new and different people, but this feeling quickly began fading into the usual repetitiveness. Our stories were littered with some small accidents and car wrecks, but besides that there weren’t any real injuries or deaths. Our sports and politics sections were boring and monotonous, as our local government was small, and we’d usually rely on the high school for any kind of sport activities. Phone calls would come in about every half an hour. The conversations that I had with the people calling paper were usually quite similar, they’d start by saying how much they enjoyed the paper and then head into what they thought would be a groundbreaking story. These circumstances were generally the same and I never really thought much of it until I got the first call.
