The contract is up and its getting scary.

I have had the experience of working with different managing editors of a newspaper over a 16 year period. Each bringing their own style of editing and managing. I've had some really great editors and some I thought hated my guts and waited for the moment I crack under pressure and laugh at me.

I'm not complaining, because obviously it was a lesson in life I needed to learn on how to tolerate others as well as learn to adapt to the changes and overcome any obstacles they throw my way. But working at a military newspaper, I knew I only had to put up with these young bucks sergeants for three years and a new one comes on board. So you try your best to keep your cool when they assign you what seems like a gazillion assignments that either overlapped or conflicted with one another.

Believe me. I worked them. And at one point in 2005, I worked four days straight with no sleep, $2 microwaved banquet meals from home, starving cat at home chewing through the box of cereal I forgot to put away three days prior and a reprimand for being caught taking a ten minute nap in my car when the coffee/caffiene pill/soda pop cocktail stopped working. And end the night at 4 a.m. negotiating with an Army Lieutenant General over a story he didn't like and wanted to replace with one he wrote himself which was two paragraphs shorter than the one already placed in the paper, but can't find it. So the paper is at a standstill until he finds which thumbdrive he remembered to save the story on.

You want to have a nuclear tantrum but you have to remember he's the customer ... and the customer is always right ... even if they are wrong.

You ask, why am I writing this? Because recently I've had to deal with a co-worker who is having a tantrum because they disagreed with how the editor is running the newspaper. More or less, they won't let her cover an event that has nothing to do with the military and because they asked me, "how can you stay cool and calm about this, when the editor is obviously an idiot?!?"

To which I responded, "first, you must remember. These are our customers. This is their commander's newspaper ... we publish news about the military and their way of life. Therefore, if the customer does not want a photo of a bunch of non-military ladies dancing and drinking at a club that is off post ... then don't run it. Second, that editor is our editor ... the boss, and as long as they sit in the editor's office. They will pick and choose what is published in their newspaper."

Am I right or wrong? What life lesson's have you learned in your career as a journalist?