Jodee Taylor: Ads tell me about pals

Jodee Taylor

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Taylor

May 30, 2011

By Jodee Taylor, Features editor ---- The Record Eagle Mon Apr 09, 2012, 09:42 AM EDT

There's a series of ads running in the Record-Eagle about the people who work here. Finally, I'm learning about my co-workers.

There are plenty of things I know about plenty of people, but these ads are introducing me to new aspects, like, um, last names.

OK, it's not quite that bad, but it's amazing how little I know about the people I spend most of my waking hours with.

The Record-Eagle employs about 125 people in two locations on shifts that go around the clock. There are people at the plant on Garfield Road printing, sorting and inserting while most of us are sleeping. Then the drivers take over before dawn. The webmaster starts her shift at 6 a.m. And the copy desk and sportswriters work until 1 a.m., when the people at the plant take over again.

It's understandable that I don't know all these people. I don't work in the same building as a lot of them, and I'm not awake at 2 a.m. But there are people who work at 120 W. Front St., during the same shift, about whom I'm learning all sorts of fun things.

This one's a pilot. That one worked at the Los Angeles Times. Another one used to be obese and now is running marathons. (OK, that was a column in the paper, not one of the aforementioned ads. But still, it was news to me.)

Then there are other coworkers I'm way too intimate with, thanks to Facebook and the proximity of our cubicles. I know everything from when they change the kitty litter to what's in the refrigerator. Actually, I like it like that.

It's partly my fault that I don't know my co-workers better. I eat my lunch at my desk most days, instead of partaking of the conviviality in the lunchroom. The various departments (advertising, circulation, editorial, etc.) are islands unto themselves, with little mingling between them, unless our jobs call for it. The divide between advertising and editorial is an old newspaper tradition. Some journalists think their objectivity may be compromised if they hang out with the people who sell the ads. I'm not one of those people, but I don't regularly hang out in that part of the building either.

I see my co-workers out and about, of course, and learn more about them from what's in their grocery cart or what movie they're seeing than I do in the course of a 45-hour work week.

There are, of course, close friends you make at any job, who stay with you despite leaving that job or city. But what about the others, those on the fringe? Are you friends with them? Do you know their kids' names, the pets' names, their favorite foods? Do you talk about hopes and dreams, or just weather and work?

Friendships can sometimes be quite predictable, with people drawn to each other because of similar interests. But work friendships are more intriguing, with people thrown together with only one commonality, then making it happen.

I have work friends who are decades younger than me and work friends who grew up in foreign countries, touched down in this one for a couple years, then jetted off again.

And now I'm beginning to have work friends I'm only just learning about.