If I’m going to be writing this blog, I’d better insulate myself from assholes early on.
I have an apparent conflict of interest with CBC. More accurately stated, I had a recent experience with CBC that, critics could falsely allege, predisposes me toward bitterness and vengefulness.
You probably know that, in years past, I carried out a few piddling contracts for CBC. I mean, who hasn’t? But recently I read of a job opening. I asked around about the job. I was told it pretty much involved getting yelled at by Stursberg. I queried the boss in question, who said that wasn’t exactly what the job entailed. We had double espresso one afternoon. It started out fine, but eventually I was told to my face, over and over again, that the job involved wrangling angry managers from other CBC “business units,” many of whom had a tendency toward raised voices, profanity, and ashtray-heaving shitfits. (My assessment.) How would I deal with those managers, I was asked, given the personal diplomacy that people who’d never met me had told him I completely lack?
Needless to say, I filed a complaint about being insulted to my face. In it, I stated that the problem is not how any employee would deal with short-tempered, unprofessional managers; it was CBC’s de facto authorization and cultivation of a hostile work environment. The Corpse has a legal obligation to protect its employees from on-the-job abuse, I stated.
But how did I answer his question? I told him I couldn’t guarantee how I’d handle angry managers. Sometimes I’d be calmly rational and point to facts and figures, other times I’d yell back. This is an honest answer, and you could probably have answered it the same way were you as habitually honest as I am. (It would be your inference, not mine, that honesty and “personal diplomacy” are viewed as mutually exclusive.)
Should I mention that I was also told to my face that I had excellent qualifications for the job? Couldn’t the CBC use a few assholes at this point? Didn’t Stursberg admit in the Globe that he pretty much is one?
Now, whoever had previously held the gig barely lasted eight months. It was taking the Corpse almost as long to find a replacement (only a mild exaggeration). Somewhat to my surprise, I was granted an actual interview, one of six candidates to be interviewed over a two-day period, I was told. I did OK. Not fantastic, but OK. They’d be deciding within the subsequent two business days.
They didn’t – apparently. Even more time passed. I decided CBC needed to shit or get off the pot, so I mailed the PR chick (incidentally, why are they all Indo-Canadian?) and told her I needed a yes or no by close of business the next day. Whaddya know: They’d already hired somebody, I was almost instantly informed by top-posted reply E-mail.
I asked her: When were you going to tell me this? Never, right?
So I didn’t get the job. I don’t know who did – some poor sap, possibly an “academic.” (Start the clock: They’ll be out of the post by springtime.)
I object to only two of the foregoing events: Being insulted to my face and not being told I didn’t get the job. You’d object to those, too. While I am oversensitive, while I take the weather personally, while I remember everything, while I hold grudges easily, the fact remains that those two objections are not sufficient to inculcate a thoroughoing ethos of resentment and vidictiveness against the Corpse, despite what some might expect. I feel exactly the same about the CBC as I did before this whole thing happened. I’m a supporter of public broadcasting and I want CBC to stop fucking up. Go ahead and quote me on that. (No grawlix!)
My adoption of the persona of Fake Ouimet, and my writing and editing of this blog, coincidentally arrived shortly after the whole experience. One did not lead to the other. Writing this blog is not a reaction to my non-hiring experience or any kind of comeuppance or retribution. One event followed the other; one event did not cause the other. If anything, I felt freer to write this blog because I wasn’t incarcerated inside Fort Dork.
Just so you’ll know.