Seize The Time: Let’s Fight Back

The night of the long knives approaches. You can feel the tension in the broadcast centre in Toronto. Every unit wonders if they will be hit, and whom among them will have to go?

It’s at times like these that the Tea Makers have a role to play. Forget rumours or gossip, how about alternative ideas, rants, and entirely unplausable scenarios?

Look, you might be gone within a few weeks, so why not write an anonymous bridge-burning tirade that helps release all that tension? Allan can only do so much from the outside. Fiscal year ends in two weeks so you know the clock is ticking.

There must be a clerk or sympathizer who was in on the board meeting who can dish something here. Ouimet is unable to help since she was transferred to Alert, Nunavut.

Even CSIS casually advertises their presence in OhLaLa. I remember a time when I was younger and working at the Journal and we would have gone ape shit about such a thing. Of course we also smoked weed on the job all the time.

Yet even at my age, I’m surprised at how much I agree with this comment from Allan’s post:

The combined salary of Don Cherry and Ron MacLean is close to $2 million. Add to that some of the salaries of other geezers who are past their prime, and you could make up the budget shortfall. That’s right. Fire the Geezers. We all know the youngins work for far less. A generational shift at the CBC can and will save the budget crisis and the identity crisis. Eject the entrenched elite and let a new crew get their hands dirty.

What say you? Time for something new? Here at the Tea Makers we’re always open to something new, don’t slag the authors, become one.

How about introducing a bit more disruption to the work space.

The CMG won’t do it, but Tea Makers calls for a work-to-rule campaign in which we all start fucking shit up. In a good way of course. And one of those ways is to post the dope shit right here. Alphonse may be way up in Alert, but she can still set you up. So drop her an email, address is in the header, and if she digs your jib then you’re in!

Heck, InsideCBC is dead, and Tod Maffin wants to run a Credit Union, so really, it’s on you. Seriously. We need you grrl.

9 Comments

  • Anonymous says:

    >> Fire the Geezers. Radical, man. Don't trust anyone over 30, man. Work to rule, man. We'll take over the prison. Free the slaves! Hell, fire all the freelancers over 25 and hire interns! Yeah, those kids will work for even less than you guys. There we go. Mission accomplished. Keeping fighting the good fight. Man.

  • Anonymous says:

    Somewhere at home, I have a cracked copy of MS solitaire that runs on only 51 cards.(Hmmmmm).

    But I respectfully disagree that insidethecbc is dead. If anything it has improved and has been generally productive.It’s also more likely the Top Brass will read you there nowadays.

    -Monk

  • Anonymous says:

    Wow … you guys are hard core over here. I’m going back to insidethecbc.com. They seem less radical there. You guys are scary and seem very angry.

  • Anonymous says:

    Geezers need to go. If CBC is to survive, I can’t continue to be “run” by the sick and the old. If you answer yes to any of these questions, you are a geezer:
    a/ fall asleep in meetings
    b/ brazenly play solitaire at your desk
    c/ you don’t know the difference between ‘inspiring and empowering creative people’ and ‘letting your staff do whatever they want’
    d/ You want all information to pass through you for approval, but you never contribute to it in any meaningful way.
    e/ you sit on more than 12 working groups (so you may as well sit on none)

    what else am i missing?

  • Aigle says:

    Anonymous 9:26PM. As a fellow inmate PLEASE, don’t!

    Anybody who has been here since the beginning knows I am one of the front-line grunts in IT TBC. “Aigle” is a portmanteau, no an anonymizer.

    Who do you think you are hurting if you compromise the network? The first few levels of desktop and network services are near collapse from setting up the flood “refugee camps”, The e-greeting virus, end of fiscal “use it or lose it projects” (smaller than usual) and our usual support jobs.

    The powers won’t be affected, they’ll just commandeer our services to repair them first and everyone else will get postponed and even grumpier.

    I never swear at work, but trust me, I was yesterday. And I almost snapped back at a Client “do you want me to show you to dial a phone, while I am here?”.

    We get IT problems every time there has been a cut. Joke is, I’m pretty sure that your repair people will be cut early and walked out of the building. You’d probably just be shooting yourself, and all the other productive people in the building.

    OTOH, the more I learn about the exec’s salaries and the CBC “average” wage, the more I seethe. I always figured it would be in the 45-60K range for average. My manager deserves more, he is working his Ass off and I seriously fear for his health but some of the other well-appointed, ergonomic-up-the-wazoo offices…..wow!

    And I also have to agree with the “geezers” even though I am probably in that age group.It’s not always a product of chronological age or years of service, but man, it’s easy to spot.

    Perhaps I too, reek of that disproportionate sense of entitlement, I hope not, but if I can spot it at 100m, I am sure others could see it in me.

    Gratuitous ellipses… to prove… it’s really me ;)

  • Fake Ouimet says:

    Kev, you again underestimate the number of voodoo dolls in your likeness. We’™re brainstorming here.

  • Anonymous says:

    I don’t know if this fits in with your challenge, but how is that no one in the Canadian media will stop talking about the CBC during the past week, yet we know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about Michael Ignatieff’s views about the CBC? Or about the view of the Liberal Party, for that matter.

  • Kev says:

    Yeah, good luck with that. Nobody worth their sub-par salary is ready to rip the mag-accelerators out of the old girl just yet, especially not for the likes of ye.

  • Anonymous says:

    One suggestion might be to do the opposite of what the following memo reminds:

    Reminder – Security Policy: Connection of personal devices to CBC/Radio-Canada network

    We'd like to remind you that all mobile devices, which aren't owned and managed by the Corporation, must not be connected to the CBC/Radio-Canada network as they pose a real and legitimate threat to it and, consequently, to our production environment. For more, see https://io.cbc.ca/io/content/content.aspx?pageid=contentarticle&contentid=45533&locale=4105&prov=GW

    Jean-Francois Thériault
    Director – IT Architecture (interim)

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