Writing Boots

The other night I heard Suze Orman on CNN, predicting that we might see “bread lines” before this economic downturn is through.
My daughter Scout takes a broader view.

Employee communication consultant Tom Lee called and left me a message this afternoon. He's looking for a few good business euphemisms beyond the usual "rightsizing." Though I've been awash in business euphemisms my whole career ("career" itself being a euphemism in this case), I was as stumped as Tom.

I e-mailed him:

I think the reason you’re having a hard time coming up with these euphemistic howlers is that “rightsizing” is a rare example of a euphemism that’s ALWAYS a euphemism. As for others, a challenge sometimes really is a challenge, and an opportunity really is an opportunity.

Meanwhile, perfectly good words, like “merger,” can be euphemisms. (When Wal-Mart buys Piggly Wiggly, it won’t be a merger, it’ll be an acquisition.)

Sometimes when a consultant says he’d prefer not to “get into the tall grass” an issue but he’d be happy to talk about it “offline,” he’s dodging the client’s question. Other times, he’s just trying to keep the meeting on track.

Sometimes “synergy” means shit-canning half the combined workforce … and sometimes it means the executives really believe the two companies are going to be greater than the sum of their parts.

As for good old “rightsizing,” it’s never good; but downsizing and layoffs are not euphemisms for “firing people,” which implies you’re doing it for cause.

It has everything to do with intent, which is different in every case.

I also told him I'd run it by Writing Boots readers and see if they could help.

Well, readers?

Remember that piece I wrote for Vibe.com over the summer, about Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama? Yeah, that was published back in July.

After increasingly agitated, carefully calibrated e-mails and a voice mail to the editors there, I still haven't been paid the meager $250 I'm owed for the day's reporting and writing work that they approached me to do.

I've waited a long time for checks, but believe it or not, in eight years of freelancing this is the first time I've ever been purely stiffed.

I've decided to stop bugging the guys at Vibe about this, and to spend my energies writing a form letter, for all editors who I'll no doubt run across along my merry way who don't find it necessary to pay.

***

Dear Editor Who Won't Pay,

Hey, I know. You're in a pickle: You're pretending to run a legitimate magazine whose pages are filled with the work of legitimate writers who write legitimate stories about legitimately important subjects.

But in reality, you're not "running" anything at all, but instead merely proving it's possible to be demoralized and panicked at the same time, for years on end.

You realize you yourself haven't made anything—a great issue, a great layout, a great headline, a great article—in years, and that just about any half-literate 16-year-old could do the job you're doing. Only, the 16-year-old never would do your job, because it's boring and repetitive to put out a magazine that doesn't communicate to a community, but panders to a marketing niche.

And your reaction to a writer's repeated attempts to get paid for the work he did at your request—even though you knew his chances were pretty darn slim when you were promising the pittance—is self-pity.

You're too busy closing the next issue to talk to Accounts Payable. You're too bored with the Internet coding the assholes somehow talked you into doing even to bother looking through your in box. And you're too ashamed of your own lack of morale to consider admitting to a writer that you can't even fucking remember what the story was about in the first place.

You know I remember, because even though my child will not eat this week, I still have a memory, I am not numb, I am still writing, and thus discovering things about the world and my own mind.

You keep the $____.

I win.

Sincerely,

David Murray, Writer

***

Postscript: In response to a snotty e-mail announcing I was ceasing my collection efforts, the Vibe.com editor apologized, said among other things that he'd had emergency surgery and the office was moving and promised to get me my dough. So maybe I'll get that and the above form letter out of the episode!