(no subject)

Could someone please tell me when the term "deadline", as used in the publishing industry, came to mean "The time at which we'd like to have your final approved materials if you don't mind; but if you do mind it's okay, later will be fine, or tomorrow, or even after we've put the papers out on the racks - it'll be no problem to pull all 30,000 of them and fix the phone number you couldn't bother to double-check..."

All of our advertisers and salespeople seem to have been told about this change, but none of the production staff. Weird, huh?