Batter Up! (Angry Bosses)

 

When your angry boss walks into your office brandishing a baseball bat, what do you do? I just told him “Get out!” and he did, with a smile on his face. I don’t think he really intended to use it.

 

This was typical of my experience as editor of Satellite Orbit magazine from 1987 to 1992 in McLean VA. Few people in the cable-dominated Washington area had heard of the magazine, though its circulation of 400,000 was the sixth largest for any magazine based there.

 

When I visited our summer home in Cluster Springs, I loved visiting the Food Lion news stand. There would be maybe 50 Orbits stacked up for sale, with only 10 of maybe Time or People magazines. It was a vital guide for people in rural areas with those big satellite dishes.

 

We didn’t even have a satellite dish at our office up there. My boss, who owned the magazine, angered the building owners so much that they refused to let him install one. I experimented with one at the home of William Royster, a Cluster Springs family friend.

 

My boss, who is no longer with us, moved from a western city to D.C. because his third wife wanted to live there, but he left most of the company behind. I was between jobs and landed the editor’s position just before he arrived. When he got there, he had an idea: Fire the 50 or so people still in the western city’s office and move the headquarters to McLean. The plan: Send a “You’re fired” fax to that office with their names and then flee our office before we all got frantic phone calls. We talked him out of it.

 

There was a firing culture at the company, and in a few years it would be my turn. When I sensed that my time was up, I answered a particularly interesting ad: an editor was needed by an entertainment magazine in the Washington area. I sent in my resume, later finding that my fears were justified: I had applied for my own job!

 

While still employed, I frantically tried to intercept my letter, but the jig was up and I was out on the street. I called one of my former employees later and asked if the letter arrived. “Yes, and they had a good laugh about it,” she said. I had found another job, and we laughed too. (I didn’t get my old job.)

 

The timing wasn’t bad. The big dishes were soon replaced by little ones that were easier to install, and people could get their listings electronically, without a magazine. I had been working for a dinosaur.