It's time to suck up to a new boss

AFTER months of waiting, speculating and gossiping, the Tribune finally has a new editor - hurrah!

Surprisingly, it's not John "Scoop" Harris, who has been making some strong claims for the hotseat over the last few weeks.

These have consisted of only being five minutes late for work every day instead of 10, colour co-ordinating his ties, and taking long "lunch meetings".

He also promised to advocate new working hours which would see us start at 10am and finish by 3pm.

Alas, we don't work to set shifts, so he was always on to a loser.

Our working practices are far more ad hoc. Some days we might start at 7.30am and work right through to 6.30pm.

Other days we might start at 8.30am.

Then of course there's the night meetings and other evening jobs to factor in, plus sport commitments.

For instance, last Thursday I started at 8.30am, went home at 5pm, then headed off to the elections at 9pm.

I was there until 1.30am when it was back home to input all the results so they could be uploaded to our website ready for when everyone else was getting up.

A few hours sleep later and I was back in work to write up all the interviews from the night and start work on the next week's paper.

Working like this means on Thursdays and Fridays, our least busiest days of the week, we have less people around because we're all catching up on our time owing.

We do have an unusual way of letting everyone know it's time to go home, though.

Instead of the message going up that sufficient work has been done for the day, Mitch Irving, office stalwart, gets instructed to "blow the whistle".

This involves him sounding a referee's whistle as if it is full-time at a football match.

A couple of Christmasses ago, Mitch's secret Santa bought him an old-fashioned bike horn - one of those ones with the rubber ball on the end that you squeeze - so he likes to have a good honk on that intermittently as well.

Yes, we're a little bit strange, but we're creative people so we can get away with it.

Hopefully, new editor Simon Holden won't be changing the going home hooter - although those 10am to 3pm days sound interesting...

~ Emma Ray