Team Spirit

I received an email from a former employee in reference to a previous blog about the satisfaction of achieving something as a team. He had fond memories of when we had done that.

I published a local weekly newspaper. We grew it to the 5th largest of its kind in spite of being in the 29th ranked media market. But, he had something more specific in mind. And yes, it was a very good memory.

Thursdays were hectic. It was still in the days of cut & paste print production and we had to have the issue done by 7:00 pm to make the courier to Louisville, where the newspaper was printed. It went into the mail on Friday for Monday delivery. Subscribers expected it on their desks Monday, without fail.

We had a meeting scheduled for after lunch, although most ate in on Thursdays. Dana had gone out and was late for the meeting. He was a bit of a wild card, but extremely good at what he did.

Dana casually plopped down in his seat and eyes turned to him in expectation of an explanation. “The building’s on fire. They have the elevators turned off.” Eyes widened. That was a heck of an excuse, even for Dana.

As though on cue, my phone rang. It was the building management office informing me that the building was on fire and it would be a good idea to evacuate. Hard to argue with that.

I asked why we hadn’t heard an alarm. She said she had 45 floors of companies to call and didn’t have time to explain. If it was much of a fire, I imagine the last half of the list would probably know before she called.

The explanation I later received was that older buildings had been grandfathered around some of the codes. Why invest in fire safety when you have insurance? I’m guessing there were about a thousand dissenting opinions in the building.

I had three thoughts. Get everyone out, grab every scrap of editorial and ad content of this issue and put the phones on the answering machine mode.

We filed down eleven floors of stairway and stood out in the street amid the fire engines with boxes of rough drafts, typeset copy and photos. Now what?

We walked across the street to a hotel lobby and I called the general manager of our printer. Many wouldn’t expect a woman to hold that position then, and Patty certainly wasn’t what you would picture for running a large printing plant. She appeared to be a delicate southern belle, but there was a hard core under that sweet facade. And, she could flat out get things done.

I was not optimistic. Time on the big presses was tightly scheduled and if we missed our window…

Patty said to c’mon down and they’d be ready for us. And, ready they were. Two hours later, she was leading us into their warehouse where they had set up tables stocked with the equipment and supplies we’d need to lay out the issue. It took a while to sort out the hastily packed materials, but we had the boards put together by midnight. Patty had juggled the schedule so we could still get on the press. We had pulled it off.

I gave my staff the option of hotel rooms there or driving home. We drove home.

I went in the next day at my usual time, even though I had told the staff to sleep in. It came as some surprise that the office was filled with excited and jabbering people, exchanging stories of how they had improvised this or that to get the job done in the face of setbacks. They were on a high of accomplishing something above and beyond.

I decided that this Friday was not a day to have them work. This was a day to throw them a party. So, I did.

And that’s what Dana emailed me about. I’m glad he did.