Or why the New York Times is now implementing drug testing for newspaper carriers…
My wife got a tentative, but hilarious, call from the New York Times this morning. It was from the district manager for delivery services in Beacon, who was obviously a bit shaken. The call went something like this:
Delivery mangager: “Hello this is the New York Times calling. My carrier said that he was unable to deliver your paper today because, uhm, well… well he said that he couldn’t deliver the paper because there was a problem with the house.”
K: (Muffled laughter, then,) “Oh, the house isn’t there?”
DM: “I asked him three times and he kept on telling me that the house was just not there. That it was there last week, but there’s nothing there today.”
K:(Still kind of laughing) “No, it’s OK. There was no fire or anything, we just knocked our house down to build a new one. He’s right, at least for now, the house isn’t there.”
DM: “So he can just leave the paper by the mailbox?”
K: “Yeah, that’s fine.”
DM: “22 years. 22 years I’ve been doing this and have heard every excuse in the book as to why a carrier couldn’t deliver the paper. But this was the first time I had ever heard this one!”
K: “I bet you were ready to do a drug test on the carrier, weren’t you?”
DM: “Yeah!”
Note to self… next time you decide to knock a house down, have the paper delivered somewhere else. Or at least get a temporary daily subscription so the carrier can see some daily progress. It’s not nice to traumatize innocent bystanders.