My name is Craig Dubyk, and I want you to take my job.
Please.
I work as the Copy Captain (aka “Copy Chief”) at the Daily Lobo.
My job is to edit the newspaper for errors. If you are at all interested in applying for the position, please stop reading and go apply for the job RIGHT NOW. If you have just applied for the job and are returning to this article, stop reading. Never read this again.
Alrighty! We can get started now that the suckers are gone. I’m here to tell you all about why you don’t, and shouldn’t, want my job.
I know you know why you don’t want my job already, but Chris Quintana is pretty desperate to get the spot filled, so it’s possible he’ll try to talk you into it as he did me, with his charming lies and crocodile tears. If he does, you can use the following list to systematically prove that he’s full of s***. I can say “s***” because I’m the goddamn Copy Captain, and I edit the page after he does (Editor’s Note: Craig can’t actually say s***).
Everyone here is crazy, and they will make you crazy.
Chris walks around with a hammer, slamming it into doors, desks, and whatever food you may be eating in his presence. “Does this annoy you?” he giggles, reducing your (my) hard-earned Halloween candy to powder across your (my) keyboard. The last thing you want is a shattered Fireball in your workspace. Fireballs bear no sins.
He lost track of the hammer for about a week recently. I think a small part of his soul died.
He’s not the only crazy person around here, however. Far from it. Just about everyone at the Daily Lobo is nuts in one way or another: We have men who wear tight pants and a guy who tears up the top of his desk to make a dinosaur shape. Others believe in horoscopes or “free” democracy. Losers. Having something off about you is pretty much a prerequisite for working here. That’s why I wear the Copy Cap.
“The Copy Cap?”
Aye, the Copy Cap! It provides a distraction-free thinking environment for the Copy Captain, and it is required attire during work hours. Its ergonomic paper design shields me from at least 40 percent of the lunacy taking place in the building at any given time. The Copy Cap is one of the few benefits of the job; it has been a hallowed Daily Lobo Copy Captain tradition ever since I got the job at the beginning of the summer.
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Everything is your fault.
Remember Chris’ hammer? Remember how he lost track of it? It’s my fault. No, not because I hid it from him (I totally did LOL, Chris don’t read this), but because I’m the Copy Captain. The blame falls on me by default. Spelling error in the paper? My fault.
Misleading headline? My fault. I change a story to make the facts in it wrong on purpose? My fault. You see the pattern here— there’s no way out of it.
My only redress is that I can just lay all of the blame on my underlings, the copy editors, in the relative privacy of the Copy Cave. The Copy Cave, by the way, is our (my) secret lair across the hall from the designers, cleverly disguised as a confused and expensive burrito shop.
With four copy editors at my disposal— each initially pure and angelic in their innocence, but now soiled by second-hand guilt— I never have to worry about shame or past experience impairing my judgment on the job. In this respect, hiring copy editors is like selecting virgin sacrifices to the Copy God. Maybe this job isn’t all bad.
You must carefully read stupid things.
While we regularly switch between Culture and Sports, the Opinion section is a daily occurrence. You see where this is going, I’m sure. “But if you don’t want to print stupid letters,” you might say, “why do you print them?”
HOW NAÏVE!
We don’t print any given letter because we want to, we print them because we have to. Truth is, we don’t get enough letters to have a choice— we either print them or don’t have an Opinion page. I’m not saying that all of the letters we get are stupid (anyone who writes to us on a regular basis may now say that they are in the minority of not-stupid letters), but damn. Sometimes the Opinion page is a great place to learn how not to think.
Also, Lakewood. I don’t have to read it, sure, but it’s like watching a metaphorical train wreck: I can’t help but watch in morbid fascination, and I don’t have to worry about calling police or seeing, like, dead people and blood and stuff. One of the highlights of my workday, and my official duty as Copy Captain, is when I get to draw in Lakewood to make it, if not funny, tolerable to look at. You poor readers have to suffer the unedited version, though. Schadenfreude— you should Google it.
That about sums it up for arguments against Chris, should he offer you a job when you happen across him in a dark alley or on your solemn journey down the circles of Hell. At least, that’s as much as will fit on the page.
If you are in any way offended by Craig’s column, you may contact him at 1-985-655-2500. He will be happy to address your concerns.
