.... From the press room to the mail room, from bright, glass-windowed offices to dark, cluttered cubicles, many of the Globe's 2,100 employees tried to go about their work like it was any other Friday.
Reporters worked the phones for stories. Paper handlers moved 1,500-pound rolls of newsprint to the presses. Press operators, with their names emblazoned on their shirts, ran the presses, churning out today's paper, and sales representatives sold advertising for papers to be published in the days and weeks ahead.
But a typical Friday it was not.... With little insight into how the talks were going, employees lingered in pockets, swapping gossip, and thinking about what they might do if the unthinkable happened, and the Times Co. chose to close the paper.
:)
Bobby Gott, vice chairman and a second generation employee in the mail room where employees prepare the paper for delivery: "We work hard for our money and stuff like that. And to have all that taken away at the ripe old age of 40 would be a scary situation."
Gott, a father of two, was trying not to think about it, and security guards Mike Walsh and Ron Guevin were trying to do the same, even as they monitored the comings and goings of television crews gathering outside the paper's Dorchester headquarters to cover what was happening, or not happening, inside the paper.
"What'll happen is what will happen," said Walsh. "You can't change it."
Hope not.
And yet, for many it was impossible not to ponder the future. "We've been printing the paper our whole entire lives," said Bill Admirand, a pressman at the paper for 35 years. "Christmas, New Year's, Thanksgiving. Rain, snow, everything. This is all I know."
--more--"
I don't think the Times' cares.
