A newspaper op-ed piece gives food for thought
An actress as supervising proofreader: something of an anomaly
Two types of proofreading, meaning two types of personality styles attuned to each
Tensions boiling over, and papers get slammed down
Analysis: In what way was this show of anger malapropos, and in other respects, not?
[Edits 4/4/15. Edits 7/5/15, mainly on when Mike started. Edit 7/17/15.]
It seems that recounting my
experience at Prentice Hall in 1997-98, with the important addenda of 2001 and
2002, is becoming something to do in little “passes,” rather than in one chunky
series. After all, to go through my old journals, papers, etc., to put together
a fuller story seems quite daunting at times.
And certain “topical” issues sometimes
clue me off to what to say about PH, piecemeal.
A newspaper op-ed piece gives food for thought
There was an op-ed piece in The New York Times yesterday, April 1,
about how the federal tax laws don’t favor the peculiar
work-income-and-expenses circumstances of “creatives” like, among others, TV, film, and stage actors.
I looked at some of the incomes mentioned in the piece and I was shocked; I
thought, “Try doing what we freelance editors do in New Jersey for the tiny
incomes we can make. Without unions, lawyer help, etc.” I remember in the New
Jersey scene one woman, Bonnie G., who was a longtime medical editor who was
among the few “editor’s editors” I encountered in the freelance medical-promotional
realm: in about early 2006, she almost lost individual health insurance she
paid for (this was years before the
ACA) because The Guy Louise Group, her employer at the time as it was mine, was
starting to go belly-up, and its paychecks were bouncing. GLG failed completely
about a year later, in spring 2007.
Anyway, the ways people can be
“star-struck,” or just under illusions, about what the “arts” as most generally
conceived can entail can be amusing, or annoying, depending on circumstances.
If people thought that a fellow freelance editor I worked under, Penny, being a
TV actress (as I said in the immediately preceding entry), made her something
special, well, that depends what you mean by “something special.” As an editor,
I think she was adequate, nothing spectacular. But more generally, she was
unusual and nice, rather unique in my longer-term experience, but could give
pause at times.
(Amusingly, in spring 1998,
after I came back to work briefly in the PH School division [with me no longer
on the HS lit project], a new freelance editor, Amy Capetta, was also working
with me. For a time Amy and I worked—and not under Penny—in the same room, and
chatted about various things as well as worked. She was star-struck over Penny
being among the workers we more broadly dealt with; Amy had actually seen Penny
in a TV show. [I had never seen Penny on TV or in any film, and I also don’t
give her surname here because I myself can’t find her on the Internet, and whom
you do find under her name is not at all her—whom you find is actually a sort
of men’s-mag model.] As for Amy—who, incidentally, had worked at AB Bookman, in
about 1993, after I had left—she would later work as an editor and writer for
the likes of Women’s World [maybe this should be Woman's World; she worked, I believe, for several publications, and I'm pretty sure she worked for Bauer Publishing, which I believe is in Englewood Cliffs, N.J.].
She was attuned to the TV/film world. I was a more bookish sort.)
An actress as supervising proofreader: something of an anomaly
Penny was interesting. You would
figure that talented sorts—I mean, the types to get into TV and film (the likes
of the Myers-Briggs test could tease out
typical traits), with the attendant money, public exposure, stresses,
etc.—would run the gamut in how they strike you. Arrogant? Crazy? But Penny was usually very nice. She
consistently looked, with her curly, blonde hair and eyeglasses often perched
on top of her head, like a slightly distracted, upscale soccer mom. She was originally
from Texas, I think, but seemed to have well acclimatized herself to living in
the upscale county of Bergen, N.J.
But at times, she could also be on
the manic and arrogant side. A prime example: when she first met with me in
July 1997, all enthusiastic about me (i.e., relieved to simply have another
proofreader to help with the immensely burgeoning PH lit project, without
knowing just how I worked), on a hot day (with nice air-conditioning in the PH
building), she talked down my throat (filling me in on needs, etc.) in such a
manic manner than right after I parted with her, I did a weird, squealing
intake of breath as relief. I had never done this with anyone else before (and
never did again).
Then, when we worked together,
her “manic mouth” was typically in abeyance. (And we usually worked in our own
rooms or cubicles, which helped.) But one time, months later, she berated me
over some specific issue—I don’t remember what—and was flatly arrogant in how
she talked me down. I remember her finishing with a tough, staccato, “Just don’t do it!” And at times she
could also talk with me as if she was talking to a child, which in the exact
manner she did it was an extreme case of a female office behavior that I think
is completely inappropriate. (Incidentally, it would be interesting to know if
she had children, but I don’t know, or remember, if she did.)
In short, she was
personality-wise cut out for other things than being a bookish editor dealing pragmatically
with an immense flow of work (as I had demonstrated I could be, going back to
All American Crafts in 1990-91). If I consider numerous places I’ve worked at,
no one else of her age and gender had the type of potentially-arrogant soccer
mom flavor she did (and actually, since she was an actress, in the PH context she
may have been “acting” [to some extent] with how she habitually comported herself).
But more discreetly and attuned
to the circumstances, she was also definitely handling herself in order to
preserve her ability to work at PH beyond the monstrous HS lit project, so
among other things she acted as a sort of “second proofreader” to a lot of
stuff that other proofers had worked on, especially what I had worked on. (Once
Mike arrived in about early October [correction 7/5/15: it wasn't until early December], she, and Rebecca [the other female proofer
among us], did this with him, too—or tried to, as much as the crazy, billowing
work flow allowed.) (By the way, if I recall rightly, Penny was employed directly by PH as a freelancer, not through a temp agency. This kind of non-temp-agency way of working for a big publishing company I would prefer and would be able to achieve with some ease in later years, including at PH. [Update 7/17/15: Actually, she appears to have been a temp through the agency Pomeranz; I discuss this in Part 10, subpart A.])
(I haven’t talked about the
group of the compositors and their supervisors, who were really the meat of the
PH School studio. Very generally, individual workers among the compositors also
could seem like stars while we proofreaders were something of an afterthought,
or nerds. But helpful chemistry can always develop between various individuals
in such a high-pressure situation, and did here; and there were some
compositors, for instance, who bonded with me, especially Frances T., a young
woman in her twenties who went from being a mere hands-on compositor in July to,
in about September, being more of a supervisor for some grade-levels of the
books; her pragmatic style made her favored in the eyes of management [to Penny’s
slight disapproval], and Frances also seemed to like me for my being pragmatic,
too.)
Two types of proofreading, meaning two types of personality styles
attuned to each
What this is pointing to, in
part, is the two general types of proofreading there are (as I have personally
come to understand them), especially in high-volume situations, and where two
reads of the same iterations of items are done, either by explicit direction or
out of some supervising editor’s suspicion or sense of caution. The first
proofread, which I have often done at numerous companies, I call the “marine’s
proofreading.” This is when you go onto an item without it having been
proofread, and try to find all the errors you can (under whatever relevant criteria).
The second proofreading I call the “coward’s proofreading” (it can also be
called, less “judgmentally,” the “derivative proofreading”). As I’ve found from
experience, and as I’ve often seen when I’ve found how few errors a second
proofer has found in something I’ve first-proofed, the “marine’s proofreading”
usually catches a lot more errors than the “coward’s.” And, particularly, it is
easy to do the “coward’s proofreading,” because you have yourself the
motivational spur of trying to “do better than the previous guy.” Some people
like this spur; I don’t. (It’s why I call the second read the “coward’s proofreading.”)
Anyway, in that 1997-98 period,
it sometimes annoyed me a bit that Penny relegated herself to second-proofing
as much of the stuff I first-proofed as she could. This even when the volume of
work for us all made that strategy impractical and precious.
(In fact, as I’ve long known, if
proofreading work gets to be too voluminous and you know items in new
iterations will be read again, you can be quick with your proofing, or can read
items once, and you can safely calculate that you can try to catch any errors
that slipped through, on later reads. It’s amazing how editorial people in
these situations don’t remember this, and I think it speaks to how Penny wasn’t
terribly seasoned as a proofreader.)
In fact, as I could have made
clear in the previous intro-entry on PH (and didn’t), the fact that we
proofreaders had up to 8,000 pages of material to go through didn’t mean that we, in fact, went through
that all. In fact, due to sheer practicalities, we didn’t. And I think—in
fact, I know—some staffers (of an editorial and staff nature) started
deliberately bypassing us on some items or iterations of some items we’d
already seen, because they wanted to stuff to get pushed through the system
faster than we proofreaders’ apparent “bottleneck” was allowing it to happen.
And on this score, I thought
Penny’s will to second-guess me in trying to second-read all the stuff I did not
only was a bit insulting to me (and could have given the wrong impression about
me to staffers there, for purposes of my getting future work), but was contrary
to what was generally needed in the circumstances. But as I suggested, she was
very clearly working in order to preserve her prospects there (and ignoring how
she was undercutting these with slowing things down), never mind what might
have been, from her management, conveyed, or suspected, by staffers about me
(or any of the other proofers—Mike also left the School division for good when
I did, I believe).
There are a lot of other details
and nuances of the several-month situation to cover in future entries.
Tensions boiling over, and papers get slammed down
But here’s one little amusing,
or maybe striking, kicker. Penny’s usually being “nice, but with a potential to
be overbearing,” brought something to a head one time in, I think, the fall of
1997 [update 7/5/15: it was in mid-October]. I don’t remember if Mike was already onboard [no, he wasn't]. It seemed just about every
day she would check in with me after I first came in (or after she did; she sometimes arrived later
than I did). But at times—whether the first time she checked in with me, or
later in a day—she could be nagging/niggling, and—though never as crazy talking
down my throat the way she did when she first met me—overweening in her
approach to me. (I remember I learned to try to get a period of work going in
the morning, just after I arrived, “in blessed peace” before she got there,
because when she did and checked in with me, that often would give me food for
some bit of upset, you could say.)
Sometimes I would have stuff to
tell her in an exchange, and she had a way of “stepping on” me, or preempting
me, or such, in often trying to assert some air of prerogative. I say this
conscious of how this particular manner she exhibited usually didn’t work well coming from others in other
situations (at other companies) of multiple proofreaders, whether one of us was
designated as “first among equals” or not: at AB Bookman, at Reed Reference
Publishing…; in short, proofreaders who were trusted to do a heavy load of work, and whose
skills were self-evident, were generally not talked down to as to arouse a gradually mounting indignation over
time.
Well, one day I had a big batch
of pages to bring her—the sheets were typically 11 x 17 inches, and there could
be many pages, with an associated folder or such, and the whole packet could be
clipped with one of those giant black-metal (with silver handles) paper clamps.
It was a busy time where stuff was generally being charged through. I brought
her the packet, and had something to say, and she was talking down to, or at, me again. (Mind you, in general—as I
found since all the way back to All American Crafts [1990-91]—you always found
tactical ways to deal amenably with certain women’s passing expressions of ego
or anxiety, even if you developed a cumulative indignation at them.) In
response, finally willing to express my moral indignation at her, I slammed
down the packet on the big round table she was at—she was seated there with
Rebecca, and the table had a lot of work on it for them already.
By the way, Rebecca Myers was
someone I’d worked under at AB Bookman, in 1992-93. She was editor/owner Jacob
Chernofsky’s close assistant there for years. She had left it in 1996 or so, I
guess fed up with how things were going. (AB went bankrupt in 1999.) Rebecca
and I actually got to know each other as workers much better at Prentice Hall
than we had at AB, and I found her to be quite nice (and companionable), which
was not quite the case at AB. And at the PH project, we could trade notes at
how things could be screwy, such as with how things were managed. And I
remember when telling her about some emergent, ethically questionable thing I
found with my temp agency Prime Time Staffing, she referred to them with
sympathy for me as “shysters” (not too far off the mark, if you take the longer
view).
Anyway, when I slammed down the
packet, as I did not intend at all, the metal clamp popped off the packet and
went sailing past Rebecca’s head. (She gave me a slightly severe glare.)
And for her part, at the slam, Penny
let out a whoop of surprise, as I recall.
Analysis: In what way was this show of anger malapropos, and in other
respects, not?
Now, analysis: When you know how
things can get emotionally and “politically” in these high-pressure and
high-volume editorial situations, and you know that most of the time people
work up an ongoing rapport interwoven with the stresses as well as have
occasional rubs, you know that ethical assessments, based on the specifics of
the situation, can seem as they might not
be (regarding roughly similar situations) in the outer, less-pressured world.
So here:
I felt bad the clip flew past
Rebecca. I didn’t mean to hit her with it (it didn’t), and if it had, I would have been sorry and made amends.
(And I think she forgave me readily, since she knew me including back to AB
Bookman in 1992-93.) But as far as my responding this way to Penny’s manic
mouth was concerned, I felt it was appropriate. Tough but appropriate. It was a
long time in coming, as you could have said.
After weeks or months passed, Penny
ended up forgiving (in fact, I don’t think she even mentioned the slam after
the day it happened). When I finally left the project (when a number of others
were released from it) in January 1998, she was gracious in seeing me off, or
whatever. And when I paid a visit to PH again (for a legitimate item of business)
in the spring or so, I stopped by the PH School studio, where Penny was still
holding court under much more relaxed conditions, and we had a friendly
catching-up. At some point in 1998, she even commiserated with me on a staffer
there, Christina B., who had given me short shrift in a way I hope to cover, as
rather significant, in a future entry.
##
So if Penny was a TV actress,
I’m sure she was a good one, and earned her money. As an editor, she was rather
sui generis, an odd cross-breeding of different types of workers as you might
see in a hothouse-flower situation as Prentice Hall could be in 1998. But
generally, print-media editors, especially in the less snobbish quarters of New
Jersey, are not consistently-poised soccer moms with glasses perched on their
heads and with occasional inclination to talk down your throat.
