The Cleveland Cavaliers have been on a decent run, ending their regular season strong and getting off to a fast start in the post season (thought that’s recently changed). A playoff team is exactly what fans want and deserve. 

What they don’t want is the runs. 

Yet the Cavs’ social media team unintentionally suggested fans should embrace a highly contagious bacterium that causes diarrhea. 

The team recently posted the meme “Be the Diff” to call on fans to make a difference by loudly backing the team. The phrase is a play on the Cavs’ jumbotron graphic highlighting the scoring difference during games, referred to as “The Diff.” 

But the meme’s graphic included a poorly placed Cavs’ script-style “C,” making the message read, “Be the C DIFF.” 

The phrase is shorthand for the scourge of hospital infections known as Clostridiodes difficile, or C. difficile, for short. It’s highly contagious and hard to fight. 

When Cavs fans noticed, they started running at the mouth. 

“Cavs gotta google C Diff real quick,” one fan wrote. 

“Ain’t no way the Cavs mantra this playoffs is be the C. Diff, this is one of the funniest marketing mistakes of all time,” wrote another. 

The “C” appeared to get benched pretty quickly, leaving the intent of the well-meaning message intact. 

The mishap likely didn’t go unnoticed by one of the Cavs’ biggest sponsors, the Cleveland Clinic. It took crap (no pun intended) in 2015 from a Consumer Reports story for having a C. difficile rate above the national baseline at its main facility. 

The lesson in all of this? 

It doesn’t matter who the Cavs are playing. The internet always wins.

Teachers’ union steps on its own message

The Cleveland Teachers Union has accused Cleveland Metropolitan School District CEO Warren Morgan of cutting teachers and other classroom aides – which make up the bulk of the 300 district positions being eliminated – before considering other options. 

The union has been particularly vocal about the axing of the 70 school employees known as navigators, who help students prepare for college and careers after graduation. The cuts represent the entirety of that department and come at a time when the district is putting a greater emphasis on increasing college and career readiness, the union says. 

What the union is less vocal about is that its contract requires the district to lay off all the navigators before it cuts any teachers, Morgan told Signal Cleveland. 

“That was something that we were reminded of from the teachers’ union, one that we were not intending at first to do,” Morgan said, noting the work that the navigators provide through the school libraries is highly regarded. 

Errol Savage, the newly elected president of CTU, told Signal he did not personally support the provision of the contract that required the elimination of the navigators as the first line of cuts, but “the language was voted on by the membership.” -– Franziska Wild 

Unwanted foot traffic

Some shoppers at Dave’s Supermarket at Shaker Square may have noticed some uneven floors that appear to be in need of repair. They caught our attention because Cleveland City Council signed off on a $250,000 forgivable loan for the store in 2024 to improve its floors, among other issues. 

The loan went to Shaker Square’s nonprofit owners – Cleveland Neighborhood Progress and Burten, Bell, Carr Development Inc. – to cover some of the $700,000 in planned store improvements that are a  part of a deal to keep Dave’s at the struggling shopping center. (Signal reached out to Dave’s corporate headquarters for details but has not heard back.) 

Cleveland Neighborhood Progress CEO Tania Menesse told Signal she talked to store owner David Saltzman and he said the company needs to make internal flooring repairs a few times a year because of problems with the building’s subfloor. She said that repairs are expected soon and that the store is planning to make $350K in improvements that “will likely address the underlying issue.”