September Surrender: Day Twenty
I feel like people at work question me a lot. They’ll shout out an inquiry about some piece of news, and more often than not, when I have the answer, I’ll blurt it out. But then the odd little phenomenon happens where my colleagues simply don’t believe me. They’ll say, “No, I think it’s this.” I shrug and let them figure it out for themselves, and when I’m proven right, I’ll say, “See? No one believes me!”
It’s a bad habit that I always preach against other people doing. I don’t mean to rub it in their faces, but it’s just too dang ridiculous to let go. It actually happened twice today. First off, we were using a reporter from our sister network who we’ve had on a handful of times. She’s on our floor, so she stopped by my desk to go over the reporter hit we had her doing. When my senior was going through my script, she didn’t think I had her reporter title correct.
“We don’t need to add that she’s an online reporter,” she told me. But we did. I knew that to be right. I pushed back a little bit, and was meet with one more denial. So I said I’d ask the reporter to confirm. Luckily, she happened to walk by my desk as we had this conversation, and told me she did indeed need the online angle in her title.
I was a bit too mirthful at that moment, but we all laughed it off and kept working. The second time it happened, there was a dispute over a Trump soundbite we used before. We needed the transcript of the interview, and were questioning the date. “February,” I said, to which I was immediately met with, “No, it was August.”
I knew I was right. I had said as much. “It was definitely February,” I said. Before the pushback could make it out their mouths, another producer spoke up and corroborated my recollection. “It was February,” she said. We got one more “Really?” out of our senior when she conceded with one head nod from the producer. Once again, I was right, and squeaked out one more “Seeee?” to drive the point home.
Like I said, this happens a lot. Most of the time, I’m not as animated about it. But I did question out loud why it is no one trusts my correct answers. I feel like I speak so assuredly that it’d be impossible to find me wrong. “What is it about me that makes people not trust me?” I wondered aloud, an impossible question with no correct answer.
We were just about halfway through the show when the senior was going through another one of my scripts. And while copyediting, she had yet another doubt about me. We were talking about the CNN reporter questioning a Trump-supporting boat owner who, like all Americans, is still feeling the effects of 40-year high inflation. “Gina, are you sure this happened at a Trump rally?” I was asked. Me, still high off my correctitude from before, said “Yes!” with no hesitation.
But I was wrong.
That thing in my gut went off again and I called into question my own remembrance of the story. So I scanned the copy one more time to confirm the script. And sure enough, it was just a Trump boat parade. Not a Trump rally. Yuge difference. I said as much out loud and jumped in the script to fix it, the prompter changing mere moments before our host read it. I knew it, she knew it, the whole dang control room knew it, as they witnessed a plot-driven reason why people have a hard time believing me.
I really wish there was a way to rectify this. I wish I could tell you one new thing I can try in order to right this wrong, but there’s nothing that’s really going to fix the problem. That perception of me feels like one of the ones that’s here to stay. I can perhaps ease my frustrations by not saying anything and rather feast on the internal satisfaction. Or maybe the new thing is to just stop caring and embrace the absurdity in my situation. It’s kind of funny after all. I’m fine being disbelieved if it means all of us get that much closer to the truth. Really, I’m good. Trust me.
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