Pitchers, Hoarders fight for control

For years, I have been witness to rival gangs in this newspaper office.

It’s been the Pitchers versus the Hoarders.

This is an advertising office that I am, thankfully, allowed to share so that I don’t have to drive back and forth to Little Rock.

Newspaper people in general tend to be messy — I’ve rarely met a neat one in my 30-plus years in this business. Real newspaper reporters usually have scribbled-in notebooks, stacks of newspapers and poorly written press releases, pens that leak, scraps of paper with phone numbers of sources, stylebooks, coffee mugs — unwashed — and in the old days, ashtrays — never me, but usually my bosses.

We got the word just days ago that we’re moving our office. The new place is just a few miles from here, but moving is moving — especially when you’ve had the Pitchers versus the Hoarders, and the head honcho is a hoarder.

Boxes to all electronics — including a vacuum cleaner for the office — were kept for years. If they have to be returned, head Hoarder countered to head Pitcher, you need the box. We never returned one, to my knowledge, but we were ready. We also kept the old vacuum when we got a new one, although I’m not sure why. It’s not like we were going to use it for parts.

Whenever something was missing, the head Hoarder blamed the head Pitcher. Sometimes it was true, but not always. There was almost a rumble at the recycling bin over a missing box of 2010 papers, which the Hoarder blamed the Pitcher for throwing out. The Pitcher denied it. One day, lo and behold, the 2010 box was unearthed.

The office was decorated with some of the Hoarder’s old furniture, including a 20-year-old couch that was perfectly good (albeit ugly) and a small piece of furniture that she used in her now 10-year-old daughter’s nursery.

Yes, sometimes things come in handy, but the price of keeping too much can be high. The Pitcher in the office can’t function when the clutter becomes too much. She is a great saleswoman — they both are — but sometimes Pitcher will have to stop and rearrange water bottles on the counter and dust her desk before she can go sell a contract. Hoarder says it’s not a priority for her.

Pitcher was looking for something one day, and she found a box on top of a shelf. It had roach droppings on it — as so many of our boxes do — and she almost came unglued. She took a Sharpie and wrote, “Roach poop in box! Don’t grab inside!”

I fall somewhere in-between these women. My gang would be the Packrats. Thankfully, my mother came last summer and spent six hours helping me purge and clean my desk. Still, I have stacks of notebooks, old newspapers, file folders, books and coffee mugs.

We’ve hauled out dozens of sacks full of old newspapers and magazines for recycling, and filled the recycling bin to the brim multiple times.

Hoarder has talked about the walk down memory lane she’s had as we clean out. She has almost burned up a shredder going through a decade worth of documents.

We got a phone call from the guy trying to set up the phone system at our new office, and he asked whether our fax machine was digital. Hoarder couldn’t find the information on the machine: “See, Tammy Keith — we needed that box!” she said.

OK — one box out of 100.

Moving has been good for the gangs. Hoarder is letting go — of the couch, a dusty ficus tree, files from the turn of the century.

Pitcher took from the Goodwill box a couple of plastic bowls for her grandchildren to play with.

I took some unused company Christmas cards out of the recycling, but not all of them.

And we’ll all live happily ever after.

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

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