An Update From Scott MacCallum: Another month and another great sporting event. We are currently in the early stages of the Rugby World Cup being held in Japan, and the Japanese groundsmen have the world’s spotlight shining on their work.
They will be experiencing the excitement, the pressures and the armchair criticism which go hand in hand with every major sporting event these days.
For people who do regular jobs they cannot envisage the power of that spotlight and the negative impact a Twitter storm can have, all because a pitch is not what amateur groundsmen sitting in front of their TV screens believe that it should be.
If you work in an office you don’t get worldwide abuse for failing to note that the photocopier is out of paper or, in a sandwich shop, that you have not cut someone’s baguette into evenly proportioned halves. But with a job which carries television coverage anything goes and, without any external influences – bad weather being one example – being taken into account abuse can be hurled your way.
Unfortunately, the everyone has a right to an opinion society will continue and no doubt get worse. That particular cat is out of the bag and will not be returned.
While editing a newspaper a little while ago I got an email from a reader complaining that a word had being incorrectly spelt in one of the articles. It was great to be able to turn around and tell him that he had misspelt his own name in his own email to me!
If we all appreciated that none of us were perfect life would be much easier but even so a thick skin is very much the requirement these days to get though life.
