Rules? Yeah, those don't apply to ME.

For your Tuesday diversion, I would like to tell you a workplace story. Names will be changed to protect the guilty but still living and therefore able to track me down and scalp me.

I have kvetched over my job before. I am a run-of-the-mill administrative assistant but because of my background I do quite a bit of editing for professors and preparing their papers for publication.

The general drill runs like this: they email me the document and the journal that they want to publish it through; I check the formatting requirements and reformat the document accordingly; then I edit it for grammar, flow and style and then either shunt it back to the professor in question for additional revision, or send it on to the journal for review and (hopefully) publication.

Have you ever looked at an academic journal’s requirements for publication? They’re very specific, usually involving word count, source citation specifications, layout format, and table/figure/graph requirements. And the competition is fierce so they use these formatting requirements to sift people out of consideration. Trust me, in order to appreciate the humor of this story you need to understand these rules.

The professors I work for are as different as you can imagine. Sometimes I get papers that are formatted and polished and they just want a fresh pair of eyes to go over it and make sure that they didn’t miss anything. Sometimes I get hieroglyphs and a stack of articles for citations and I have to build the paper from the ground up.

So, DM asks me to format this paper for JAMA (you want some mind-numbing? Read their instructions for authors—it is a tomb of instructional material). It is the previously mentioned hieroglyphs, but I shaped it up and sent it on to JAMA. Where it sat. And sat. And sat for 3 months. It was finally (and cordially) rejected, so she sent it back to me with a request to reformat it and submit it to a different journal. I looked at the journal’s specifications and noticed that they have a strict word limit of 3, 500 words. DM’s paper was at 3, 858. I informed her of this and she said, “Oh that doesn’t matter, let’s submit it anyway!” Because rules? They don't apply to everyone! So I submitted it.

The very next day she receives an email stating that due to the high volume of papers they receive they are unable to review papers in excess of 3, 500 words. I can admit this here (because she will never read this blog—in all probability) but I laughed until I cried. It is a small sort of vengeance for administrative assistants when they know more than the people for whom they work. I took a sort of evil delight in the enforcement of this regulation…I know. I need to get out more.

So, Monday. Yesterday! She brings me her revised paper for me to trim down and shape up. Which I do. And I checked the word count. Exactly 3,500 words. I went in to her office, chuckling about the odds of this. She sheepishly pulls out a sticky note. She had kept track of every word she cut! (And people think that I’m anal.)

So, yesterday I resubmitted. Frankly, I’m hoping it gets published; it seems I can’t get rid of this paper until it does. And just remember, kids, the rules--they do apply!