on trying to earn a salary

For fuck’s sake.

Of all the bloody nerve. Gleaning and writing stories as a journalist often involves cutting through an excruciating amount of bureaucratic red tape, this I know. But this is just pants.

It’s not like I’m writing a story about how the UN is embezzling Saudi Arabian oil money to finance Kofi Annan’s crack habit, or like how Osama Bin Laden is living in a penthouse apartment on New York’s 5th fucking Avenue on US government scraps, or even that I know who killed Roger bloody Kebble here. The stuff I get to write about is about as exciting as watching Bonnie’s Best Buys in a padded cell, you understand.

I write about retailing, merchandising and branding food and beverage products. Riveting stuff. So riveting in fact, I almost fell asleep when I wrote that sentence.

You’d think this would be easy. It’s not like I sit with a dictaphone on the Western Front dodging bullets, I have to liaise with head office’s of large supermarkets and such.
Well.
These head office people are apparently hiding the crown jewels and/or state secrets, because they are the cagiest motherfuckers I have ever come across. Try and get an interview with a guy that owns a shop. It’s hard work. It's more admin dealing with franchisees than dealing with celebrity agents when I wrote for a muso-industry magazine. Far more admin for what it’s worth, believe you me.

In a nutshell, I organised an interview with a guy that refurbished a large store at the back-end of Roodepoort. (Living the rock star dream right there.) Unwittingly, he pretended not to know who I was after speaking with him on the phone just this morning and three weeks prior to organise the story.
I drove out there and instead of coming back with a story, I came back with a foul temper, and empty notepad and more loser’s syndrome that I even thought possible.

It’s not like I don’t have a deadline looming over my head like the UFO in Independence Day already.

Fuck everything.