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Deadlines Smeadlines

Well, it's now official: we have absolutely no freakin' deadlines for advertising in the paper. I was of the understanding that camera-ready ads could still be added on Tuesday, the day before publication, but that ads wouldn't be designed on Tuesday. Silly me for believing such a simple tale. Forget that the actual "deadline" is Friday at 5pm and forget the fact that the paper is due at the printers by 2pm on Tuesday.

I accepted an ad today that involved simple layout and sized it according to one filler I knew I could easily remove, even though the customer wanted it to be a 1/4 page ad (which is a damn lot of space to reorganize). Since the paper is already completely laid out and it is several days past deadline I thought I was doing a tremendous service to the customer by getting his ad in at all. I also thought I had found a brilliant way to do it without having to re-layout the paper.

When my boss arrived she had a fit about us turning away a large ad. She said that we never, ever, in our wildest dreams turn away an ad no matter what time it is. In fact, she's told me that if an ad comes in after the finalized paper has been submitted to the printers... we stop the presses and re-layout stuff to fit in that ad.

I've never worked in such a money hungry environment. I can't say that greed makes for a very pleasant aura. It's kinda sticky.