Runny ink and other tales of injustice

Ah, the disgruntled phone call.
The right of any paying subscriber, or anyone, really, with access to a phone and too much time on their hands.
I've been in the newspaper business now for 13 years, and my acquaintance with the irate phone call goes all the way back to my first week on the job.
I was working at a paper in Ohio, and doing an update on a story where a man had been severely beaten in a bar and later died of his injuries. I can't even remember what I added that was new. Most of it was background from previous stories. The suspect in the case had already been tried and convicted. My name wasn't even on it.
But I learned that when an angry call comes in, your cohorts, who know it was you that cobbled the article together, will sell you out in a heartbeat. The call, when it came, got transferred to me.
"Yeah, are you the one who wrote that?" came the immediately hostile voice of the woman on the other end of the line.
"Yes."
"Well, when that guy was kicking the other guy in the head, he was wearing Georgia boots, not cowboy boots."
I made the rookie mistake of laughing. Was this person serious? Apparently so, because laughing was the wrong thing to do. The woman made it very clear, with proliferated swearing, that she was not joking around.
"He was wearing Georgia boots," she said again.
"I apologize," I said. "What does that mean?"
"Cowboy boots have tips. Georgia boots are rounded on the toe."
I realized that this woman, who was involved with the man incarcerated in the case, was trying to make the point that the repeated kicking to the head that caused a fatal hemorrhage was somehow less savage because of the type of boots involved.
"To be clear, he was kicked in the head repeatedly and died?" I asked.
She went on to claim that this was not the case. In fact, she said, the man died because he was on a lot of drugs, but they had railroaded her significant other (through lengthy due process) in the case.
Sigh.
"I'll look into it," I said.
This, I learned, would become a very valuable phrase.
The next call came a week later. I had done a story on the election to determine who was going to make sure the tractors ran on time in Podunk Township, Ohio. I asked both candidates the same questions from a standard questionnaire the newspaper had developed.
One of the men answered the questions very eloquently, and gave a detailed response to his main goals of what he wanted to accomplish if elected. His opponent gave a response I would hear frequently over the years and have since dubbed the "empty suit" or "I'm in over my head" reply.
"Well, I'll have to get in there before I can see what I can do," he said.
When you say that, you might as well wear a sandwich board that says "I'm in it for the money."
Anyway, candidate number two's wife called me incensed that I had intentionally and maliciously made her husband look stupid in print.
First off, your wife is calling me? Come on.
I tried to explain that I had asked both candidates the same questions and merely placed their responses in the story. That wasn't cutting it. Eventually the woman did what many angry callers do, she threatened to cancel her subscription. But that wasn't how she phrased it.
"I want to cancel my circulation," she said.
My mouth responded before my brain could stop it.
"All right, but you realize when your blood stops moving, you'll die?"
"You know what I meant!" she screamed.
Angry callers don't get to me anymore. Look, I've been in the same room as murderers, rapists and Republicans. Sometimes all at once. You can't intimidate me, and you don't scare me, so let's talk you down, and get to the issue.
I have become much more adept at customer service over the years. The calls haven't stopped, so I might as well try to help these people. And I genuinely do want to help. It's a big part of my job.
Sometimes it's best just to listen. Especially when a guy calls you claiming the Skull and Bones Society was responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and he has proof, but is under heavy surveillance. There's a half-hour of my life I wish I had back.
Crazy calls are a delicate navigation. On one hand, you know the person is completely out of their gourd and might not even remember they called you. On the other, they have your phone number, know where you work and could mail you something that ticks.
It all depends on the context of the call.
I had someone call me up not too long ago and tell me that there were two moons in the sky that night. She had even gotten a picture.
"Uh, can you email that to me?" I asked.
"I don't think so," the woman replied. "But you should get a photo of it. I'm serious."
I assured the woman I would at least look at the sky. I then hung up and informed the newsroom of what I had been told.
"By the way," I added. "If there are two moons in the sky, it's because one of them is a comet and it is headed right for us."
I went to the nearest window and spotted the moon. Singular. I scanned the sky for any other large, luminescent objects. Nothing. My theories boiled down to three: there was something wrong with the woman's camera, she was given a wildly inaccurate pair of prescription glasses or she was tanked.
At least she was the nice kind of nuts.
Really, my least favorite type of call is the voicemail rant. Well, that's not entirely true. The voicemail rants I don't like are the ones that attack you, your company and your product and then leave no name or number. Brave, man, very brave.
Sometimes they can be rather entertaining. Make no mistake, if you call a newspaper and leave a voicemail rant, it is shared with everyone in the department. So, if any of you voicemailers out there are reading this, I just want you to know that after you took your angry stand of defiance about God knows what, you were laughed at. To a great extent.
A recent voicemail I got was from a person complaining about getting ink on their hands from the newspaper.
Ink and newspapers? What's next, mustard on hot dogs?
The person ended the voicemail with a pleading "Why are you doing this to me?"
Just so you know, I , who have nothing to do with the circulation or production of the newspaper, go down to the pressroom every night to conduct my evil schemes.
"Is that one going to 1000 Maple Drive, Bob? Yeah, extra ink on that one. Who am I? Let's just say I'm not the only one with too much time on their hands."

For more on some of the phone calls newspapers receive, check out this link:  http://www.facebook.com/#!/note.php?note_id=10150253016147344