05 July 2006

Picture this

As a former newspaper reporter, I looked at this LA Times story (reg req) about fat girls wearing too-tight clothing differently than most people.

My first thought was: some poor reporter had to go out and try to interview fat women about being fat?

How do you start that line of questioning? "Excuse me, I was noticing that you are fat and your clothes are too tight..."? It makes me shudder to think of getting an assignment like that.

There were too many other terrible ones: talking to people whose kid had just died. Or whose kid had just committed murder. Or whose house had burned down...and there was no choice. You HAD to go try and get the story. Those were the days at work when you felt like the scum that got scraped off the bottom of other scum. (But then there were the days when you got to interview Rosalynn Carter and found out you had a crush on the coolest 77-year-old woman on earth).

If you read to the bottom of the article, one woman called a relative who fit the description and the girl was still pissed three days later. I'll say.

Please delurk and tell me tales of crap you had to do at work.


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10 comments:

super des said...

ha ha ha. Muffins.

I see that a lot here too. (nobody will admit that L.A. & NYC are that close.)

Kimberly said...

I have been wondering why big girls are wearing such small clothing...but to be honest I don't mind. It makes me feel thinner ;-)

Table4Five said...

I can NOT believe the article referred to those girls as "Sausage Casing Girls". That is just unbelievably rude.

I've been lucky in my jobs not to have to say or do unpleasant things to people. But I did witness loan officers telling people they were turned down for loans based on their sucky credit and having the people yell "you won't give me a loan because I'm BLACK". No, we won't give you a loan because you never pay anything on time.

You interviewed Rosalynn Carter? Sweet.

Suzanne said...

As a FoFaW (Formerly Fat Woman), I was once interviewed by a reporter for a Chicago Tribune story about couples who lost weight together. That sounds like a more pleasant assignment to some extent.

As for the crap they make me do at work, I recently put up excerpts from an utterly insane getting-to-know-you ice breaker survey we were asked to fill out. Question #2 was "What is the most dangerous thing you have ever done?" How the fuck is anyone supposed to answer a question like that?

Bamboo Lemur Boys Are Mean To Their Girls said...

'Please delurk and tell me tales of crap you had to do at work.'
This is great for me! For the crap I have to do at work entails picking up crap at work. Indie my Burmese Mountain dog, love him, but hate the beginning of his walk as I have to pick up his nasty shit in a very big bag and I'm LUCKY if it's not soupy. He's such a dick, intestinally..

Anonymous said...

Along a similar vein...

I used to work at a fashion magazine in the department that retouches images. (That's right! Even models and superstars need fixing to make you feel like total crap. Lots of fixing, in fact.) The worst was dictating retouching of "real" people. You know, people who aren't PAID to look good. There was a series of articles in one mag about a woman on a 6-month makeover paid for by the magazine. She actually worked in another department of the same.

The rule from above was to leave her before pic as is and make sure every subsequent pic looked better and better regardless of her results. Okay, fine. Not too hard since she actually made good progress. But I still had to stand next to this girl in the elevator almost every day. I still get hot cheeks when I think about it. I know she put herself up for it, but DAMN those were some revealing shots.

Anonymous said...

back in the day.......I worked as an assistant in an ENT office. It wasn't bad enough that I had to clean out the machine that sucked the snot out of people's sinuses, no. One day, one of the doctor's doctor friends came in for a follow up on his septum surgery. They put these little splits in your nose to hold the septum straight and he got them removed. He went through is appointment, and left and about 10 minutes later as I was cleaning out the snot sucker, the doctor friend came back and decided, hay, he wanted to KEEP his septum splints. So I got to go dig though the trash, find them, "clean" them (i.e. take all the blood and snot off) and give them to doctor friend.

Miss Violet said...

Hi. De-lurking, here.

AS an employee of a temp agency, I once had to dress up as Ernie from Sesame Street and entertain an Arabian prince and his family at the prince's first birthday party. It was a special kind of humiliation, the low-paying kind.

Violet

super des said...

everything at work I do is crap. I won't go into it here.

SUEB0B said...

Thank you all for sharing. I think that septum splint story takes the prize though. It made me just about lose my cookies.

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