First Job

My first real boss was mean. He later went on to become a jailer at a state penitentiary, a position he was well suited for. Though I feel sorry for the inmates who had to endure his nasty glare and that little chuckle he had that made me shiver inside.

I was fresh out of college, full of idealized aspirations. He was at the other end of his career. We worked in television news. For someone just starting out it was a great opportunity. For someone his age to still be working in a tiny newsroom in a very small market with limited resources, it spelled failure. He could have embraced it and been the big successful fish in the small pond. Instead he wore his disappointment on the sleeve of his three piece polyester suit. He had two of those suits in his rotation. He proudly explained how he got them for a great price at the local Woolworths. The pant legs were at least two inches too short, revealing his scuffed up dress shoes.

He drove an old model Barrecuda. It was orange with black stripes and very low to the ground. It was impossible to climb out of that car gracefully in a skirt when I had to ride with him to cover stories. The official news car was a Ford Fiesta. It broke down frequently, so we had to use his car to get around town. I was always scared when he was at the wheel. The only thing he seemed to really care about was his car and he loved to go as fast as he could get away with, telling me that the cops would give him a break since he was on TV

I did not know anyone in the town outside the TV station. On weekends we would all gather at someone's cheap apartment and talk about TV news and drink beer. We did not like the boss but we had to invite him. If he found out he was left out our lives would have been worse. He would always take home the beer that was left at the end of the night.

He was the news director and the anchor man. He left the newsroom each day precisely 20 minutes before he was due on air. He walked across the parking lot to a bar where he threw back two stiff vodkas. It was the best part of the day. He was gone so we were left to produce the show without him yelling at us. The alcohol actually made him more pleasant so he was easier to get along with during the broadcast. Afterwards he would ask us to go back to the bar with him to talk about the show. No one ever wanted to go.

He liked to yell. The world was against him and he was always angry. Angry that we were all inexperienced and didn't know what we were doing. Angry that management didn't appreciate him. Angry that he was stuck in a small town and his career trajectory was trending downward. Angry that our very attractive anchor woman found him beneath her and was not shy about letting him know it.

He took his anger out on all of us. No one had ever really yelled at me like that. I was fascinated and terrified at the same time. It did not take much for him to go into a rage, yelling because I did not know how to work the video camera or I was too slow writing my story. I did not fight back.

His greatest achievement the year I worked for him was obtaining permission to interview a convicted rapist who was incarcerated in the nearby state penitentiary. It was not really much of a scoop. The guy had been convicted over a year before and the story had been covered at great lengths by every news organization in the state. Plus the rapist was a true psychopath who continued to profess his innocence against all evidence to the contrary. He lived to spew venom against the cops, lawyers and judges in his case to anyone who would listen. Worse than that, he disparaged his victims. No one wanted to hear anymore from this guy.

But our boss didn't care about any of that. He wanted a big story and he loved going to the penitentiary. He loved the process and the paperwork and walking through the cell blocks past the inmates. He liked hearing the taunts as he strutted past on his way to set up for the interview. I was fascinated but mostly terrified.

The interview went as expected. The rapist exclaimed his innocence and no news was made. But my boss was exhilarated. He had a big story. Normally we drove in awkward silence but on the way back to the station he was almost gleeful. This was a coup and it would be picked up by the bigger news organizations in the state. I did not say much, I just let him ramble on.

He quickly threw together the first installment of what he told us would be a five part series. Five days of forcing a convicted rapist on viewers as he spewed hate. The boss was ecstatic, almost manic, as he laid out his plans. It was the lead story that night. He called it an exclusive. It was painful to watch.

The next day we got to work and he was screaming. His face was red and we had never seen him so angry. Someone had erased the tapes from the interview. It was gone. Nothing left to salvage. He demanded answers. How could this have happened? It had to be an accident and he wanted to know who was stupid enough to put those tapes where they could be erased. The tapes had been sitting on his desk - how had they gotten away? I had never seen anyone that furious. It was as if everything that had ever gone wrong in his life had boiled down to that moment.

"WHO ERASED MY INTERVIEW?"

There was nothing we could do. Shooting the interview again was not an option. The boss was fuming and we went on with our day, doing everything we could to stay out of his way. I was trembling inside but tried not to show it.

Putting those tapes on the erase pile was one of the bravest moves of my journalistic career.

The boss got his job at the state penitentiary a few months later.