We’ve all been there. You need a certain item at the store only to realize that the store closed an hour or more ago. Either you wait until the store reopens or you find another store to find the item.

That’s the way it is with our copy and ad deadlines. We set deadlines so we can finish the print product and not hold up the printer. Holding up the printer might cost us and them more money. We don’t set deadlines to be mean; we set deadlines so we can do our work efficiently.

This week we received two letters to the editor supporting local candidates past our deadline of 3 p.m. on Monday. This is not the first time that it has happened, letters or otherwise.

As is written on our websites under Contact Us / Who We Are … “To send us calendar events, press releases, letter to the editor, obituaries, news or photos, email news@boothbayregister.com / news@wiscassetnewspaper.com The deadline for submissions is 3 p.m. Monday.”

Ad deadline, according to our veteran and esteemed ad salespersons, Sarah Morley and Kathy Frizzell, is Mondays at 4 p.m.

I write this because it is a good reminder and because of the great number of candidate endorsement letters we usually receive this time of year. We do our best to get letters online and printed but in order to do so, we must have a deadline. There is only so much space in the printed product, and this week, with the candidate profiles taking up a page and half of that space, it was difficult.

Admittedly, we do stretch the obituary deadline a bit into Tuesday mornings as sometimes services must be announced.

Regarding our policy of no political letters the week of the election (“Letters regarding elections or candidates will not be published in the issue immediately preceding the election.), we did stretch this for this week due to the fact that there are five days before the May 1 Boothbay election – and technically it is the next week. Because Boothbay changed its town meeting to a Monday, we have been struggling to decide whether or not to include political letters the issue before. We wanted to be fair so we went with our decision. It may be time to reword our policy in regards to the Boothbay voting day.