I was reporting for a North Carolina TV station and my election night assignment led me to the big city of Charlotte. I was working in a smaller TV market, so as silly as it now sounds, I envisioned a night of standing side-by-side with the big boys and girls delivering live shots.

My efforts to embody the young, future correspondent were contradicted by my reality. I worked at a station with ratings so low, a sports coach might as well have delivered the cliche speech about playing the rest of the season for pride. That night, I worked with a photographer I hung out with on weekends. My everlasting image of him that evening is him relaxed back in the driver’s seat with one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding a gigantic sandwich. He was the happy-go-lucky, let’s-eat-and-be-merry one sitting next to the nerd in the passenger’s seat. While he chewed, I figured staring a little bit longer at my notes might give me the edge to make my night special. Even our car sucked. We weren’t headed down to Charlotte in a Tahoe or Explorer or some other SUV that might portray a scent of journalistic testosterone. We and that sandwich squeezed into the type of hatchback you might see a Steve Carell character in on the way to his first date. To anyone watching, we appeared as the TV news version of Dumb and Dumber.

When we finally arrived at that big Charlotte hotel, I’m sure I was sporting my long, London Fog trench coach that took my game up a notch. We eventually found our position on a platform where reporters deliver live shots while rubbing elbows. While other reporters cruised around the ballroom as if this were familiar territory, I paced, wondering what interview I might grab to make myself shine. I weighed the risks and moved our position to a hallway, figuring I’d increase our chances of catching the candidate for a sound bite or two. But all I remember from that brief side adventure is some punk telling me I didn’t look like a news reporter. I wanted to believe he meant I looked smarter then some of my Ken doll colleagues. However he probably implied I needed to get a haircut and stop looking like a fresh face right out of college.

As the night wore on, something unfunny (but funny now) began to develop. Our newsroom took live shot after live shot that night and even took our candidate’s speech live from a podium directly before us. But the station took those live shots from a national feed, not once turning to us to appear on air. That night taught me a lesson that repeated itself before my eyes time and time again. Some of the most disastrous and unrewarding nights for a journalist can come election night. That’s when stations throw all they’ve got at the TV. They pre-plan like crazy for a series of spontaneous events that eventually turn everything upside down within minutes. And that’s even before the avalanche of technical problems.

On the way home that night, I was the calm one. Election night was over like the roller coaster you once feared to ride. But Mr. Big Sandwich was now the angry one, ranting and raving about the illogical plan of shipping us out of town to ultimately not use us. Sometimes it just doesn’t make sense. It’s just another ridiculous moment in local TV news.