They had a pretty big guy last season, fellow name o’ Bowie Hogg. (Yes, really.)
They wear their own clothes, I believe.
What costumer would dream up Raj?
It’s time to break out a new feature I plan on calling the “Raj Ratings”. Each candidate clearly falls into some category based on ships that shows where they are at and where they are going.
Edmund Fitzgerald - or, Gone with no hope of returning
Bradford, Stacie J., Rob
Titanic - or, Dead in the water, just waiting for the cargo class to drown
Elizabeth - Once you are branded as a bad leader (especially in week 3) you have no shot. Staying around 5 more weeks shouldn’t delude anyone into thinking she has a chance.
Ivana - Indecisive, poor leader, and flighty.
Bismarck - or, probably sinking, but it will take a couple more blows
Andy - The young thing + the dweeb thing will equal the fired thing. But, not without another misstep.
Jennifer C. - 1 really poor boardroom performance. 1 really bitchy attitude. Needs a good round as project manager to have some repairs and soon.
Maria - Trump is all about money so Trump is all about budgets. Your lack of positives to outweight this big negative better change or you will start listing to port a whole lot more.
Wes - You haven’t done anything obviously positive and the one thing you had true responsibility for (selling ice cream to distributors) was a big 0.
Stacy R. - No positive coups to offset a general incompetent feeling.
Stuck in dry dock - or, Who are you? Are you on this show?**
Chris, Jennifer M., John, Sandy
HMS Pinafore - or, Some singing, some dancing, some tragedy. Overall, not too bad.
Pamela - You captained a losing task, but survived. You boldly stepped up to lead which is good. You don’t quite fit in with the guys, but you really wouldn’t with the women. Not a great seller, but Trump wants a leader which you seem to be.
Kevin - You won the challenge but drop down here because it was a subjective and not objective win. Methinks Trump really respects a win that can be more accurately measured. But, you lead a task overcame some bumps, contributed well on another, and haven’t had any oddball moments.
Queen Mary II - or, Leader of the Pack, vroom vroom
Kelly - Led a fairly dominant, monetarily judged task that was pretty smooth with minor hiccups, all while knowing little about your people. Showed the ability to lead with authority without being dictatorial. The buck stopped with you, and you helped out a charity.
Raj - Quirky? Yeah, but not so quirky to mask a pretty strong intellect, ability to interact well with everybody, and understand that having humor and common sense will carry you far. Based on extra footage your team recognizes your abilities. You, however, will rapidly drop if the first leadership task has any issues.
leaps to feet to lead standing ovation for Mullinator
What annoys me the most about Team Apex is that I think they’ve been playing Survivor: New York. Hey ladies! The game is Trump’s Apprentice! It’s not about voting people off the island of Manhattan – Trump is deciding whom of these 18 candidates is best qualified to run a business. Bradford and Stacie J. got fired not because of their performance on the task, but because they each had one incident of unfit behavior. Trump has been firing the person in the board room that he judges least qualified to run a Trump Corp. company. From what I’ve seen, Apex has not shown me anybody who’s well qualified.
Pamela made a good call on day 1 – I think she’s better off on Team Mosaic, away from the backstabbing and sniping on Apex. She strikes me as being far more competent than any of the Apex women.
My guess is that after the first corporate reorganization (team shuffling), every week one of the original Apex ladies will get fired, until they’re all gone.
They definitely had to provide their own clothes last year. Troy, from last season, didn’t have many dress clothes, so he had to borrow some from Kwame, another person on the team.
I can’t really remember exactly what happened during Stacie J’s outburst, but I could have sworn that not all the women were totally on board with firing her until the little meeting they had while she was out of the room. Is this correct?
Trump got it right. Stacey J had to go. She completely alienated herself from the group by her outlandish behaviour. The team will perform better in all the challenges without her. The fact that Stacey wasn’t responsible for the specific mistake with the budget that lead to the team’s loss is overshadowed by her many personality flaws.
I remember in 9th grade English class when we were reading and discussing “Lord of the Flies,” one of the topics thrown out was whether the novel would have ended up the same if the castaways had been all girls instead of all boys. The girls in our class insisted that it would have been very different with girls, and I seem to remember reading something by Golding admitting that he would have had to write a different book if it were about girls.
Last night, I saw the beginning of the female version Lord of the Flies.
Stacy J was going to be fired. Eventually. George had already concluded that she doesn’t play well with others as early as last week. But we didn’t see anything that indicated she should have been fired last night. But there was no way she was ever going to be a PM.
Trump’s philosophy seems to favor hands-on micromanagers over those who take a step back and delegate. Maybe it’s a real estate development thing, where there’s a lot of detail work and people to manage. I didn’t necessarily see that Elizabeth was that awful a manager - she delegated responsibility for the budget to Ivana and for the printing negotiations to Maria. Both of them screwed up, and, more importantly, never reported it to Elizabeth. Their failure doesn’t necessarily make Elizabeth a bad manager, but she may very well be a bad manager for Trump.
So far, the girls’ team has been remarkable for its lack of any front-runners. Contrast this with the guys, where both Kevin and Kelly seem to have earned the trust and respect of their teammates. The only others who have made an impression so far in that group are Raj and Andy, but not good ones. Andy won’t make it to the end - he may be subject to a Troy-style “you don’t have the credentials to run one of my companies” firing. But his naivete over the insurance policy thing over-occupied his team. I don’t think Raj is going to command much respect as a PM if and when his turn comes up. But so far, he hasn’t actually screwed anything up.
I wonder if we’re due for a reshuffle - Trump may sense that the girl’s team is just poison right now, and that splitting them up may be the best thing.
Question for everyone: how much was Maria really at fault for going over budget? Correct me if I’m wrong, which is entirely possible because I was confused at points, but didn’t it take until the middle of the night for them to decide what they were going to print? If so, how was it Maria’s fault that when she called at 2am, the team had to pay overtime charges? Whose decision was it exactly to go with Alliance for the flyers? Elizabeth’s, as the PM, or Maria’s? That was unclear to me.
I think Maria’s only clear (to me) mistake was not getting a dollar amount for the total cost of the flyers, because even if she’d gotten the $1850 price quote for the job in writing at first, I’m sure there would have been a stipulation about how much lead time the printer needed to get the job done at that price.
If I were Apex, I’d have dropped the flyer idea entirely, OR I’d have gone to Kinkos and made copies myself on the color copier. They could have made 2000 color copies at an all-night copy center for about $2000. I don’t see why they had to outsource this task in the first place. How the hell could they ever agree to pay nearly $7000 for photcopies? My god. Ridiculous. Whoever made that decision is a moron, but it’s not clear to me who exactly that person was. If anyone remembers, please fill me in.
Those women have no idea what the word “schizophrenic” means.
I too hate the colloquial use of the word “rape.” As if it weren’t already a loaded word, let’s apply it to printing costs. Ivana is an idiot. Can’t wait until she’s gone. I’m really hating the women in general.
Well, this is just not true. I clearly recall that footage, and Stacie J was flipping out. She was shaking the 8 ball and saying, “We’re going to win! Hey, look over here. Why isn’t anyone looking over here?!? No one is paying attention to me! What is going ON here?!?!?!” It started out flippant, maybe, but then it got freaky. She was definitely losing her shit. If I were working with her, I would have reacted exactly as Bradford did: “My god, you’re driving me crazy! Take it easy, will ya?”
OTOH, anyone who said they were afraid for their lives, or terrified, or had to hide in a corner, is either a sissy mary or a liar. It was annoying, weird, and possibly disturbing, but she wasn’t a threat to anyone’s safety or well-being. I wouldn’t want to work with someone who behaved that way, and whether or not she was nuts or just really weird and aggravating, if she can’t work with the team, then she should be fired.
I agree with the people who said it looked like a hatchet job, though. Now that Stacie J is gone, everything at Apex should be perfect, considering what a drain she was on their managerial energies. :rolleyes: I wonder who the next scapegoat will be.
I don’t think that’s fair at all. Stacy is no more behind this than anyone else. What they don’t realize is now that Stacie J is gone, they have no more excuses for not being the mean, lean business machine they claim they’d be without her.
Anyone else think Mosaic was drunk off their collective asses when they were singing the National Anthem on the deck of the QE2?
Actually, I think Raj has left a good impression as well. He’s been called a “genius,” and the others have said that they genuinely like the guy. This clearly surprised Trump. While I doubt that Trump is enthusiastic about him, I also suspect that he now views Raj more favorably.
It was Elizabeth’s responsibility to follow up before they were on their way into the boardroom. If you don’t know what your people are capable of, you need to keep a closer eye on them. That’s not micromanaging – that’s managing.
“It was the scariest moment of my life”?!? WTF? If I were Trump, I would’ve smelled a rat as soon as I heard that. He should have demanded to see the footage while they were all in the boardroom, then made his decision. He could have seen the women for what they were–scheming, manipulative, catty bitches. That’s not to say I think Stacie J was completely innocent, but they blew it way out of proportion and used an incident of slightly odd behavior to convince Trump to fire her. Disgusting.
Am I the only one who was offended on behalf of the other Stacy when someone called her “Little Stacy”? I would’ve been pissed* at that. She’s short, very young-looking and probably struggles to get respect in the workplace. That’s the last thing I would want to hear from my colleagues.
*For the British dopers, I mean “angry”, not “drunk”. 
I disagree. You can only go on the information you are given. If Maria gave her false information, that’s not Elizabeth’s fault, it’s Maria’s. If Elizabeth has to go behind everyone and find out if they are doing every little task correctly, that’s micromanaging. In that case, you may as well do every task yourself. Elizabeth can’t hold everyone’s hand through every task.
I do agree that she should have found out the final tally of the money well before going into the boardroom. But getting “raped” :rolleyes: by the printer was not her fault.
[sub]Could I have said “task” a few more times?[/sub]
My recollection is that she gave her no information – which would make it Elizabeth’s responsibility to follow up. I could very easily be wrong about that.
If Maria lied, it’s one thing – if Maria was incompetent, it’s another.
One thing I missed. Why was the call being made at 2:30 in the AM to schedule the printing job. Wasn’t Mike Piazza onboard by the morning or afternoon? Did the ad proof for a simple event take that long for get done?
Don’t forget, Raj is a Real Estate Developer, just like The Donald. On one level, they share some commonalities. If Raj doesn’t win this thing, I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to hook up with Trump on some partnership.
As for leadership, I hope he gets his chance and makes good.
I agree, she must have led an extremely sheltered life.
Favorite moments: Maria trying to keep her composure after hearing the cost of the printing, the fluttering eyelids gave away her panic there and in the boardroom. Trump telling her “you’ve said quite enough”, then scurrying out to get the rest of the team.
And did I miss something? How did Apex eventually get the toothpaste into Manhattan? And wouldn’t common sense tell you when that you are talking to a printer at 2am and that he’ll be up all night printing, that it would be prudent to ask about overtime charges?
I don’t know about overtime charges specifically, but anytime you call an outside vendor and you have a budget, you get a firm quote for the specific job. In this case, “I need X number of these fliers by X time tomorrow, what will it cost me?” A written quote probably wouldn’t have been a bad idea. Doesn’t matter if it’s 2 AM or 2 PM.
If that’s the case, then you’re right. I’m watching Saturday’s rerun, so I’ll have to see how it happened.
BTW, if Saturday’s episode has 15 extra minutes, how come my on-screen guide says it’s an only an hour? I wonder what they’ll cut out of the regular show.
We unfortunately don’t really have a sense of the time lapse. It wasn’t until after the launch was completed that Maria and Ivana found out about the higher charge. We don’t know if it was a matter of minutes or hours between the time that Maria and Ivana found out and the meeting with P&G in the boardroom.
There’s a fine line between staying on top of everything and micromanaging. From what I saw, Elizabeth delegated the task of negotiating with the printer to Maria and the overall budget to Ivana. That’s a perfectly fair thing to do. My sense was also that she was told that they would be getting the printing for $1850. So, if prior to the task, she had asked “what are we getting the printing for,” she would have received the answer “$1850.” Hindsight is always 20-20, so it’s easy to say after the fact that Elizabeth should have gone behind the numbers and verified that yes, in fact, they were getting it for $1850. But that would assume knowledge that Maria botched the negotiations and Ivana botched the budgetary oversight. And a level of micromanagement that may not be the healthiest in terms of use of the leader’s resources and the morale of the followers.
With the benefit of hindsight, the real solution becomes clear - Elizabeth should have required all invoices and vendor quotes to be submitted to her for review and approval. At that point, Maria’s apparent failure to get a quote would have been obvious. That was a mistake, but I don’t know that I’d agree with Trump that she’s such a bloody awful manager for making it.