The Rooster
by Corinne Purtill
The prize was a plastic rooster, about six inches tall, with molded feathers and a proud, curling tail. Each week at staff meeting an editor presented the rooster to a reporter who had distinguished him- or herself in the last seven days – you know, done something to “crow about.” The rooster was corny like that. Winning the rooster meant you got to keep the rooster on your desk, amid your photocopies and coffee-ring stains, until the next staff meeting came and it was time to pass the rooster along. That was it. No cash prize accompanied the rooster, no company-wide email announced your win, no report of your performance passed on to people who could give you a promotion or a raise. Just a plastic rooster, on your desk.
We liked the rooster. We worked at a daily newspaper in the first decade of the twenty-first century, and morale boosts were hard to come by. We could not make people renew their subscriptions, or stop reading our stories for free online, or assure ourselves that we’d still have jobs in two years, but the rooster’s presence was a cheering reminder that however long it lasted, this job was still more fun than most.
One man’s plastic rooster is another’s golden calf. There were complaints, all anonymous. The rooster seemed to favor younger reporters. Copy editors were ineligible for the rooster, and this was discriminatory. The rooster was placed on a shelf, to be enjoyed by “everybody,” in the tepid, unsatisfying manner of those children’s teams where everyone gets a trophy. And readers just kept canceling their subscriptions, but that wasn’t the rooster’s fault.
