Paying Tribute to the Dragon Lady
The year after I graduated from college, I found myself miserably employed as a Classified Advertising Sales Assistant at the local newspaper. The building was windowless and cheerless. Wednesdays were the highlight of my week because that was my day to edit the obituaries. Every other day, I would spend eight bleak hours typing in classified ads. “Loving caregiver wanted for the night and early morning shift at Golden Acres Retirement Home.” “30 Prime Wooded Acres in Sauk County. A hunter’s paradise!” And so on.
If something exciting was going to happen, it was in the 15 minutes before and the 15 minutes after the daily pagination deadline. A last-minute ad would come in over the fax, and there’d be a scramble to type it in before the clock struck four. If you failed, the consequences would be dire: you’d either have to make a very unpleasant phone call to a customer or take your chances with The Dragon Lady.
The Dragon Lady was in charge of pagination. She would arrange all the ads and articles and images in neat columns for the next day’s paper, filling up every space in a mindnumbing game of textual Tetris. Her desk was in a dark alcove about 15 feet from my modest cubicle. You could walk by most of the day without even knowing she was there. But during the Deadline Hour, she would come alive and the heat from her wrath could be felt even from the relative safety of my desk.
I learned the order of things quickly in my first few weeks. Pagination deadlines were not to be missed. Missed deadlines were my problem and my problems were not to be shared. If I were so bold or foolish to forget this, I would be reminded: swiftly, loudly, and painfully. The only recourse (which could only be used sparingly, in extreme circumstances) was to humble yourself deeply and offer some kind of tribute (a can of soda, a candy bar, a compliment). If you did this well, you might be rewarded with a rare act of magnanimity and see your ad placed in the next day’s paper.
I studied the customs carefully, like a diplomat in a foreign land. Consequently, my days were largely spared from The Dragon Lady’s fiery breath. My coworker, K., did not pay similar heed and suffered greatly for it.
K. arrived with a freshly minted master’s degree in journalism and the confidence to match. She was ready to take charge and make things happen! When the Deadline Hour approached, K. was cavalier. She’d waltz up to The Dragon Lady’s desk with an armful of ads that had to be placed for tomorrow’s paper.
She’d return to our cubicle row a few minutes later, stamping her feet to put out the flames and pulling at the singed edges of her hair in frustration. Then, she’d turn to me and whisper things confidentially, like “That woman is impossible. Can’t she see how important this is? Wait until she hears from so-and-so.”
I certainly couldn’t argue with K.’s assessment of how difficult The Dragon Lady was to work with. But I saw another side that perhaps K. failed to appreciate.
Like many people who earn a reputation for being difficult, The Dragon Lady was expected to deliver flawlessly every day on time without fail. If she failed to complete her task, the paper could not go to print. Not going to print was not an option. Ever.
And if The Dragon Lady made a habit of being pleasant and accommodating every time someone swished by with “a tiny favor” or “one last thing” or “this will only take a minute,” she would fail to meet her deadline and set off a catastrophic chain of events affecting hundreds of other people’s work downstream.
Instead, she established a boundary and breathed fire on any who attempted to broach it.
The older I get, the more I admire this woman. She had clear reasons to say no, and she didn’t flinch when she had to do it.
From the limited view of the Sales Assistants’ cubicles, it was easy to believe The Dragon Lady’s demeanor created lots of problems. But from a wider angle, her position surely prevented far more issues for the company as a whole than she ever created for the two of us.
I don’t wish to become a Dragon Lady myself, but these days I’m far less likely to be bothered by such a person. They probably have a great deal to teach me. I just have to listen (and bring a candy bar along just in case).
