Had a full-on, all-out break-down at work today. After the 5, I went into the X studio because I saw Heather and when she asked if I was going to the gym I said no. Docc said I was going to be going home to cry (I had said that jokingly earlier), and then I actually started to. I pride myself on keeping my shit together at work most of the time. Yes, I get upset, Yes I get cranky, Yes I will yell and curse and step outside for a moment, but I don't CRY at work.
But I did, and once I started, it didn't stop. Complete cryface. I hate cryface. And I felt awful because here I am crying in the studio with Heather and Docc. Heather has her own stuff to deal with, and Docc, well, I feel bad losing grip in front of him...he's a guy...it's just not done. I just don't let myself drop my basket infront of guys who aren't my boyfriend.
So Heather grabbed my stuff for me and I snuck out the back. I didn't want to have to explain to anyone why I had cryface.
But I'll try to explain it here.
First of all, the newsroom is horrendously understaffed. There is NO reason we should be running a newsroom of this size with 3.5 employees. There is Bill who does the morning run, myself for the afternoon, Wil who is incharge of the weekends and has Wednesday and Thursday off, and Michelle who works from 5:30-9:30 doing the network casts. For a station that is responsible for getting news to four cities....it's just completely unreasonable.
The reason we are down to 3.5 people is because EC quit. That's fine, I don't blame her in the least (really, I REALLY don't...I'm AM however damn jealous). She gave her notice two weeks ago and it took them two weeks to even post the job. That's just flat out ridiculous.
Next, the server crashed completely. Estimated time of normalcy is still Thursday.
Next, we can't do anything with audio, so there's no tape to run with stories...except when we download it from BN (read my last post for how well that works)
Next, the network still needs at least some semblance of news and the internet keeps crapping out on us.
Then, to put the icing on the cake...my mic died just as I was trying to do the 3 o'clock cast. The intro is playing and I'm talking, but nothing is happening. I leapt out of the studio and ran to the Wolf control room where Al is looking at me with a "what the hell's going on?" look. I jump into the studio and tell him my mic is fucked. So he asks me if I can read it from the second mic in the studio. I run back to the newsbooth, grab my cast and run back to the control room and then give one of the most out-of-breath casts of my life.
The thing about it all is none of these things are something I can't handle...but all balled together it's too much...especially when there's really not much of a light at the end of the tunnel. I mean, let's think realistically for a moment. The server will be back to normal on Thursday and we'll be able to be up and running again. Everything is still gone and there's no way to retrieve it. As of Monday we're down to a newsroom of 3 because Michelle quit. Even when we get a news director and regional news director, it will still take a while before things are running smoothly with that person...and then as of March we no longer have BN (a MAJOR source of news for us), and things will be bumpy yet again.
No light.
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