My Weekend Buzz ...

Regardless of the titles, daily responsibilities, budgets, billing and collections, radio can be a fun business. The days when the woes of society and realities of the job become a little overwhelming, I cope by daydreaming about some of the funny things I've seen, heard about, or done over the years. Most of us got into radio because we thought it would be fun ... that and free swag. Just get a conversation going with an air talent or former one posing as an adult in a management position. The stories will have you laughing non-stop. I have never taken myself so seriously that I can't laugh at myself by sharing my walk on the goofy side.

Rough Week

I had been working in New Orleans for about a month and had a rough week at work. It was Friday night and all I wanted to do was go home and do nothing. However, when I got home I noticed the hole in the screen in the bedroom window hadn't been fixed by the apartment complex. Even worse, the widow was up, and the screen was gone; obviously they had started the work but never came back to finish it. I would have called the management emergency number, but it was after 7p and it was not the end of the world. I closed the window and turned on the air conditioning. Too tired to eat, I fell asleep on the couch and woke up to an intermittent buzzing noise coming from my bedroom; it sounded like a wasp. Armed with a rolled-up newspaper, I headed in and looked around. Not finding the wasp I closed the bedroom door and slept on couch.

I knew The Wasp Was Somewhere ...

I woke up Saturday morning with a stiff neck, determined to find the wasp, and get maintenance to bring back the screen for the window. It was one of those weekends that I decided to only listen and not drop by the station. I stayed home the entire time, and my phone never rang. Meanwhile, I kept hearing the buzzing and I hunted around to find the can of wasp spray I knew I had. Instead of going to a motel for the rest of the weekend, I was determined to find the wasp. I called the on-property handy man and he informed me that he only worked on emergencies on weekends. I was in no mood to argue, so I agreed to disagree. The wasp buzzing was off and on all through Sunday.

Monday Morning

It is hard to sleep on a couch unless it's a pullout and mine wasn't. I got to work and found notes under my door telling me about equipment causing problems with paid remotes over the weekend. Apparently, engineering had not responded to calls from anyone at the remote or the studio. I had a standard rule: Call me anytime day or night if anything goes wrong. I called an emergency programming staff meeting. All morning I had been dealing with the sales manager, salespersons, engineering, the GM, and traffic over client's dissatisfaction with remotes; we had three of them that weekend. Just before walking into the conference room, the sales manager pulled me to the side and said he had tried to contact me all weekend. I thought he was full of it and was trying pass the buck because none of his salespeople were present at any of their client's remotes over the two days.

The Wasp ... Or So I Thought

The first thing I said in the meeting, "Why didn't anyone call me about these problems?" The sales manager, promotions, and the air personalities said they had tried to contact me. Now I was thinking there was a problem with my landline phone. I asked, "How many times did you try and call me?" And that's when it came out, "We paged you." I had reluctantly accepted a pager from the company, I said, "You did?" So, to prove it, one of the air talents paged me and I heard the wasp noise again, coming from my office. The wasp was my pager on vibrate in my briefcase and prior to the meeting, the sales manager did use the word contact, which meant he had also tried to page me. Once I told everyone what I had gone through over the weekend, the room was in tears laughing and so was I.

The Lesson ...

I learned to be more accepting of new communications technology, not to list multiple ways in a company directory to contact me, and that pagers can be tricky. I bet right now some of you are thinking about your own funnier moments. Those times will help you remember to keep everything in perspective.