The Apprentice -- 3/20/06

Cafe Society
41

Who here cares to take a bet that Brent will be screaming “The editing was unfair!” before the week is out?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

If he’d been able to keep his trap shut, he could have stayed for a long, long time by the ploy of, having been marginalized, being able to rightly claim that he had nothing to do with any loss since he had effectively nothing to do with the task. But wow, I don’t think I have ever seen a reality contestant whose failure to read a room goes as deep as his. Just completely clueless.

I think you’ve got it in a nutshell, Liberal. He sets up the situation and then feeds off it. He figured out young that he was an offensive person, so why not use that to his advantage? It’s a really sad, sad way to live.

42

But he has plenty of people who like him! He said so!

43

What struck me was how marginalized he was, and how he brings out the worst in people. An obvious example is Tammy(?) taunting him with his relatively tiny salary and boasting that she’s a multimillionaire. Childish and petty, IMO, and it shouldn’t be an issue how much money you’ve made in the past, but what you are going to do now.

I noticed early in the show how he was standing behind the group huddled around the PC in chairs–that’s already an exclusionary tactic, though it may have been unwilling.

Not that he isn’t obnoxious, and I’m not sure why he was even on the show, except to be a buffoon. Nobody like that would ever be put on a project IRL, because he wouldn’t make it past the first interview with HR.

He’s obnoxious and interrupts others to try to get a word in edgeways, because nobody will give him a chance to speak; nobody likes him or wants him around, because, well, he’s obnoxious and interrupts people. It’s a vicious cycle, and I actually feel for the guy with regard to how he is going to pick up with his life after displaying his buffoonery on national television.

44

It was Andrea. And I don’t know why this is perceived as her picking on him. What happened was that he was waddling around in his underwear ironing his pants and primping his hair while everyone else was waiting to leave. He started making excuses about why he was making everyone else late, and he blew up at her. The conversation went like this:

======================================

Brent: Normally, I’d have been ready on time.

Andrea: Um, you *haven’t * been ready on time. You were late for the last event because you were ironing your pants.

Brent: Oh, come on.

Andrea: It’s on tape.

Brent: First of all, I was up until four a.m., and I told you that…

Andrea: All right, you know what? I’m not…

Brent: …working hard for you.

Andrea: No you’re not. You weren’t doing what I asked you to do…

Brent: As the employer…

Andrea: You failed on everything I asked you to do.

Brent: Excuse me, I was up until four a.m.!

Andrea: Well, that was…

Brent: Oh, you’re [bleeping] full of it!

Andrea: You did a bad job.

Brent: You’re just so full of it. You did a horrible job.

Andrea: I did a horrible job?..

Brent: I pulled it out of a hat for you! You unappreciative you-know-what.

[In cameo, Brent says that Andrea should be locked up in a prison somewhere.]

Andrea: All right, you pulled it out of a hat for me? That’s why I’m a multi-millionaire and you make fifty-thousand dollars a year? Okay.

======================================

The message wasn’t about lording her wealth over his, but about shooting down his ridiculous claim that she needed him to be successful.

45

Well, for some people, being hated/disliked empowers them. I don’t know whether to admire it or be disgusted. It reminds me of what was said about Omarosa and how she simply didn’t seem to care of people hated. They said that having such a thick shell was not admirable, it was just evil. I never understood why it would be considered evil, but I still don’t know what to make of people who feed off being hated. I guess they just love their own selves too much to change and figure that if others hate them, tough.

Whatever…

46

Don’t you love us any more? Didn’t we sent you enough virtual chocolates and flowers? Don’t you know we have already come to depend on you???

<sigh> Two raters gone in a single season. I fear for the future of the show.

47

Since we seem to be without a ‘Rater’ once again, I’m immodestly pushing my way in, er, make that volunteering. :slight_smile:

I got to thinking this over yesterday. By now, in the fifth season, we’ve gotten a feel for what Donald Trump is looking for in an Apprentice. Not too surprisingly, he wants someone who displays many of the good traits that DT feels he himself has. He wants ambition, competence, business savvy, creativity, and cleverness. On a more personal level, it’s clear that DT despises certain types of behavior. He doesn’t like people who let themselves get out of control. He scorns people who play victim, or shrinking violets, or who cannot stand up for themselves in give and take. He frowns on gratuitous rudeness. And so on.

What I’m wondering is if you can predict how the candidates will fare simply by giving them points for doing things that DT will approve of, and taking them away for things he won’t, and just keep an eye on the totals and, maybe, how they are trending. Maybe not at the start, but as the candidates build a record, will high scores correlate with going far in the game?

Yes, we are seeing a severely edited down version of what the candidates do, but I would guess that DT doesn’t actually see much more than we do. (I can’t picture him pouring over several dozen hours of unedited footage, can you?) There’s also a bias in showing us the losing team more than the winning team, meaning more opportunities to lose points than gain them. Still, that will affect everyone, so the main effect might be to keep the overall scores lower than otherwise without greatly affecting the ranking order.

Here is the scoring method I’m starting with. It’s possible the system will change as more episodes are shown.

  1. Throughout the show, every incident/act/speech that I find striking will get that candidate points, positive or negative. Usually these will be a single point, but really striking acts may get 2, or even 3. Yes, this includes ‘off task’ time, too. I’m assuming DT eventually sees all the footage that we do, and thus those events are part of what he bases his decisions on.

  2. Team members: Simply accomplishing your assigned job is will get you nothing. If you find a way to exceed expectations, or succeed in spite of a obstacle, you can get 1 or 2 added points. Failing at your assignment can draw from 1 to 2 negative points, but zero if it looks like the failure was solely due to something beyond your control.

  3. Boardroom: Major points can be scored here, both ways, because DT obviously witnesses what happens here, and what you see with your own eyes has more impact than what you hear second hand. In brief, acting in ways that cause DT to like you get positive points, doing the reverse gets negative points.

  4. Project Managers only: From 1 to 5 points to the winning PM, depending on how decisive the win was AND how positive or negative the team members felt about his/her management. The losing PM gets from -1 to -5. Usually the scores will mirror each other, but it’s conceivable that a huge win for one side could be due mostly to luck.

  5. Project Managers only: -1 point for every member brought into the boardroom who clearly shouldn’t have been. -2 per ‘innocent’ teammember brought in when the PM doesn’t bring in someone who clearly should have been. (Example: A was the main cause of the teams loss, B was a lesser cause, everyone else was more or less doing their best. If the PM brings in B, C, and D, he gets -4 points for C & D since he didn’t bring A. If the PM brings in A, B, and C, it’s only -1 for C.]
    Yes, this is an arbitrary system, points assigned solely by my biases. I like that. :slight_smile:
    I’m rewatching the past episodes to assign scores – I’ll post the Episode one now, and try to be caught up by Monday night.

SBS

48

Running account of points as they are ‘earned’:

Tarek: -1 for bringing up his Mensa membership. No good ever comes from bragging about your IQ: those who don’t think they’d make it into Mensa will resent you for it, those who think they could have but didn’t bother applying will sneer at you for it.

Allie: +1 for being a grad of Harvard Business School. (Yes, that’s unfair, but DT has consistently shown that he cares about “good schooling”, and this game is all about impressing DT.)

Brent: -1 for suggesting “Killer Instinct” and, from their reactions, having created a poor opinion of yourself in your teammates within the first hour of meeting them. Way to go!

Pepi: +1 for suggesting ‘Synergy.’ Personally I think it’s one of those bland, non-memorable names, but your suggestion was approved by the team.

Tarek: +1 for talking your team into accepting your suggestion of “Gold Rush” – evidence of some persuasive ability.

Summer: the ‘calling restaurants’ debacle. Yes, you were perfectly right that the timing was wrong AND that you needed ‘a hook’ to use as a selling point. Still, you didn’t succeed at your task: -1. And you gave up after a single call: -1 for laziness. And after that you folded your hands and did nothing at all: -1. C’mon. If you couldn’t call restaurants then, how about calling other small businesses? Total: -3

Teresa: -1 for lack of creativity. Tarek assigned you to come up with fresh new slogans, sayings that would draw in customers. Instead you stick with the established “It’s a big deal” slogan.

Andrea: +1 for bringing up point that the team needed to create a reason for the customers to come in.

Brent: -1 for suggesting karaoke. (Trust me, karaoke is NEVER the answer to any problem.)

Tammy: +1 for suggesting the chair massages, which led into the successful course the team chose.

Allie: +1 for having the sense to isolate Brent in the blimp.

Sean: +1 for excellent manner on the PA.

Michael and Sean: +1 each for good salesmanship.

Tarek: -1 for not realizing your should have some central ‘Big Idea’ to use as an opening hook.

Tarek: -2 for going with the idea of handing out ugly empty backsacks. Listen, the idea is to sell something to these people, right? What good is, “Here’s a bag” – “thanks” – gone? You want to hold them long enough to get a chance to pitch to them. How about giving them something that had to be personalized? Or at least make them have to choose between a red or blue or green whatever. Anything to create some opening to talk to them.

Summer: -1 for volunteering that your team might not have done best. Disloyalty isn’t a virtue in any boss’ eye.

Win/lose points: Even though Synergy seemed to be greatly ahead on creativity, the final result was pretty close: 43 to 40. So it’s Allie +1 and Tarek -1.

Lee: +1 for seeing that the lack of a good idea was real cause of loss, and +1 for still saying that in the Boardroom after Tarek threatened to take you in if you brought it up.

Lenny: +1 for the combination of warning Summer to keep quiet AND successfully following his own advice later in the boardroom.

Selecting Boardroom victims: Tarek: -1 for taking Lee in purely for revenge. The reason you gave for Lenny was lame (how could he contribute to selling when you put him in the blimp?) but he may well have shown less enthusiasm for the task than all the other members so I’ll give you a pass on him. Summer was clearly right.

Boardroom showdown:

Summer: -3 for gaping like a fish for loooooooong seconds after Caroline asked what contributions you had made.

Tarek: -3 because everyone laughed at your claim that giving a bag of nothing was a good idea. Being mocked by DT is a huge blow to any chance of winning.

Summer: -5 for interrupting DT when he was closing in on Tarek for the kill. Have you never watched the show?? DT HATES being interrupted, period. And interrupting once it’s clear that you aren’t the zebra that the lion has singled out for his kill? Pure idiocy. Buh-bye!
Scores for the Candidates

Name : points for this episode : cumulative points

Allie : +3 : +3

Sean : +2 : +2
Lee : +2 : +2

Pepi: +1 : +1
Andrea: +1 : +1
Tammy: +1 : +1
Michael: +1 : +1
Lenny: +1 : +1

Bryce : 0 : 0
Stacy : 0 : 0
Leslie : 0 : 0
Dan : 0 : 0
Charmaine : 0 : 0
Roxanne : 0 : 0

Teresa: -1 : -1

Brent: -2 : -2

Tarek : -8 : -8

Fired:

Summer: -12 : 1 episode : -12 pts/episode
Note: It’s early days, of course, but Tarek looks like a Dead Man Walking to me.

49

Play by play account of points assigned:

Michael: +1 for pointing out that some groups use text messagings and others don’t. Unfortunately no one seems to have followed up on this idea.

Stacy: -1 for repeatedly cutting off Brett, deliberate hostility/bitchiness.

Brett: -1 for not being able to express his ideas coherently. He rambles on and on rather than staying silent until he has thought through his idea and can lay it out quickly and cleanly. People will tolerate listening to even bad ideas if you can get them out in a single grammatical sentence or two.

Stacy: -2 for blowing that minor confrontation way out of proportion. She was out to get Brett, and basically was riding him in hopes of making him blow up just so she could play victim. Very nasty. (Wasn’t something similar done by a previous Stacy? What’s with that name?)

Lee: -1 for the enormous waste of time over picking the key word – as Lenny pointed out, the word didn’t matter. Pick anything short and easily spelled.

Lenny: +1 for cutting through the fog and getting himself and two team members to work out on the street.

Lee: -1 for basically losing control of his team. When half your team has revolted and headed off in a different direction you must run to get ahead of them so you can start ‘leading’. What did Lee do? Apparently continued to hold votes and discussions back at the apartment.

Pepi: -1 for indecisiveness. Either buy into Stacy’s story and shut Brett out of the room/task completely OR tell Stacy that this is a distraction, that it can be dealt with later, and get back to work on the task.

Michael: -1 for the bathrobe idea. See, if you want to create a GOOD disruption you must be out of the ordinary in a wild and amusing way. Show up dressed in 18th century costumes, ride in on ponies, shave your head and paint yourself mandarin orange. Stuff like that will pique interest. People in ordinary bath robes? I’d think they were either crazy or some stupid cult, and either way I’d sidle away as quicky as possible.

Lee: -2 for losing control of the project. Yes, Lenny was right about not wasting time coming up to the suite as you wanted (for no good reason) and about getting the rest of team down to the street and to work ASAP but it didn’t come across as you reconsidering based on his arguments. What we saw was you try to give an order, Lenny blew it off, you tried a compromise order, he blew that off and then HE gave YOU an order and hung up. Leaving you to bleat ‘hello? hello?’ into the dead phone.

Leslie: +1 for the pragmatism and recognizing that Lenny had the right of it.

Lee: +1 for getting your team up and out at the crack of dawn. (It was likely Lenny’s idea, but as the group did it, we’ll say it was a decision you made or at least endorsed or accepted the vote or something and I’m starting to pity you. In truth, kid, you’re not shaping up as a leader. You just don’t have enough forcefulness to carry the day in the face of teammembers with different ideas.)

Stacy: -1 for picking the location/time. The team didn’t even start until noon, when people are too busy rushing for lunches to bother with a few nuts in bathrobes. Here’s an idea: remember Michael saying certain demographics use text messaging? Why not split the team up and send them to various high schools? Who is more likely to know how to text message AND have some spare time to do it?

Lenny: +1 for realizing that the theatre area, with people waiting in line, was better.

Brett: for the ‘entertainment’ portion. -1 for playing the buffoon – do you really think DT would use you to represent him, when the other side must be remembering the sight of you doing jumping jacks and ‘dancing’ in your bathrobe in public? – but +1 for at least showing initiative by attempting to do something to draw the attention your team needed. So it’s a wash.

Pepi: -2 for choosing ‘Blade5’ as your keyword. Um, you are mainly shouting at people to text that message…What are they hearing? Blade 5 or Blade Five? And you had to keep explaining it was one word…more wasted time. How many attempts at text messaging actually failed to be counted because of confusion over what to send? (Again, we don’t know who suggested that, but as PM you get the blame for accepting it.)

Win/lose points: Synergy got slaughtered. OTOH, Lee didn’t so much lead his team to victory as get out of the way and let Lenny take care of stuff while Gold Rush played the fools. So: Pepi -3; Lee just +1.

(Wow, that Reward was a real boring stretch. Ten minutes with not a point won or lost.)

Roxanne: +1 for seeing that Stacy was backtracking on Brett’s ‘threat’, and trying to call her on it.

Selecting Boardroom victims: Pepi took the right people, so 0 pts. off.

Boardroom showdown:

Brett: -1 for dropping the ball when Trump asked why he thought Pepi had been a bad leader. Instead of pointing out objective mistakes, he just ranted and insulted him.

Roxanne: +1 for staying out the lynch mob and instead calling Pepi’s leadership the cause of the loss.

Stacy: -3 for trying to pretend she’d really been frightened by Brett; for not putting on a good enough act; and for not realizing that painting herself as a delicate flower unable to deal with a simple confrontation would show Trump she couldn’t possibly handle rough and tumble business dealings.
Scores for the Candidates

Name : points for this episode : cumulative points

Allie : +3 : +3
Lenny: +2 : +3

Sean : +2 : +2
Roxanne : +2 : +2

Andrea: +1 : +1
Tammy: +1 : +1
Michael: 0 : +1
Leslie : +1 : +1

Lee : -2 : 0
Bryce : 0 : 0
Dan : 0 : 0
Charmaine : 0 : 0

Teresa: -1 : -1

Brett: -2 : -4

Tarek : -8 : -8

Fired: Name : Score in final episode : cumulative score : pts/episode

Pepi: -6 : -5 : 2 episodes : -2.5 pts/episode
Stacy : -7 : -7 : 2 episodes : -3.5 pts/episode
Summer: -12 : 1 episode : -12 pts/episode
Note: Two episodes and I’ve still not been struck by a single action/speech by Bryce, Charmain, or Dan. Stealth candidates!

50

Just so you don’t think this is sinking into oblivion, StarvingButStrong, I love your point assessment, and don’t have any real nitpicks with the points you’ve assigned.

But I do have one minor nitpick, since you’ve still got more episodes to score that he’s still in – it’s Brent, not Brett.

51

You’re stepping up to the plate, so that earns YOU some points. :wink:

52

Eeeeesh! :smack: And I had it right on the first episode, so I don’t know what happened.

Maybe I can blame it on the spellcheck? :cool:

53

Thank you to Mama Tiger and lorene for the replies. Silence can be so discouraging sometimes.

Now, on to the episode…
Live coverage of the point assignment:

Andrea: -2 for breaking down in tears because of Brent’s return. First of all, losing control is bad. Second, losing control in a ‘girly’ way is especially bad. Business leaders don’t cry over stuff like this. At least not in public.

Roxanne: +1 for trying to comfort Andrea.

Dan: not a point assignment, but I find it ironic that the very first noteworthy thing you’ve done is take two days off. Your dignified defense of yourself was a small plus, but not enough to garner a point.

Lenny: -1 for riding Dan and Lee over their decision to celebrate the holiday.

Teresa: -1 for the decision to make the event ‘just like an auto show.’ Are you stupid or what? These guys are the ones who PUT ON autoshows. It’s their business! Cars on turntables, pretty models, lots of balloons…those are the standard tools of their trade. They aren’t going to be one little bit impressed by them. In fact, I imagine more than a few found it somewhere between amusing and insulting to have those old tricks used on them.

Tarek: +1 for bringing up, several times, the need for a theme to ground the event. You’d get more points for it, except you couldn’t get Teresa to listen to you, and weren’t persuasive enough to get anyone else on the team to join in on your side. It was a critical point. If you’d managed to make her listen you’d have garnered multi points – but you seem to have given up after she interrupted and ignored you a couple of times.

Teresa: -1 for cutting off Tarek. You claim to have recognized the need for creative thought, assigned someone to the task…and then refused to pay any attention to his thoughts.

Teresa: -1 for settling on ‘experience of class’ as your theme-substitute for the event. You were tasked to create an event for car dealers that would be “interactive, educative, inspiring.” Which of those did ‘experience of class’ relate to???

Andrea: +1 for putting the finding of a theme first, before going on to execution. There’s no point in marching until you have a destination in mind.

Andrea: +1 for fobbing Brent off on an assignment that looked like it mattered but couldn’t cause problems if he screwed up.

Michael: +1 for coming up with the “Nature…refined” tag line.

Brent: -1 for basically sluffing off the meeting and going off to eat while the meeting was going on. Yes, you were frustrated that your ideas weren’t being used, but at least pretent to be a good team member.

??? I’d award points for coming up with the rock climbing and fly fishing events, but I couldn’t tell whose they were.

Lenny: +1 for hard work in setting up tent/stage/balloon arch.

Tarek: -1 for the hideous golf course. Apparently you wanted astroturf to begin with, were originally refused by Andrea, and then she gave in…and you couldn’t find a dealer to do it in the time left. Perhaps you should have checked out the site a day ahead? Located a dealer ‘just in case’?

Lenny: -1 for “not my problem” over the generator. Yes, I, too would have assumed there would be electricity available, but once Bryce pointed out the problem, I’d have stepped up to solve it instead of shrugging it away.

Bryce: +2 - one for getting the generator, and another point for discovering the problem and solving it on your own initiative because you correctly understand the importance of helping your team win.

Tarek: -1 for the banned skeet shooting. He was in charge of it, and checking on whether firearms could be used in a public area should have been a no brainer.

Andrea: +2 for coming up with a great substitute event on almost zero notice.

Bryce: -1 for inadequately instructing the models. True, he had little time, but it was still a bad job.

Teresa: -1 for the stupid horse & carriage rides. Again, have you no idea who your audience is? Buggy rides thrill little kids, and maybe brides and prom queens. Car dealers? <yawn> You’ll note by contrast that Synergy gave the dealers rides IN THE CAR they were promoting! Duh.

Charmaine: -1 over the untrained models.

Charmaine: -2 for hiring a horribly inappropriate comedienne and then paying her $1700 for what appears to have been about a half-hour standup routine. BTW, I saw that there were women among the car dealers, why didn’t you or the comedienne?
Win/lose points: Synergy ruled, Gold Rush drooled. Synergy had a great theme and all their efforts went to interactive, hands on events for the dealers. Gold Rush had one thing for the dealers to do (the golf chipping) and otherwise they were supposed to passively admire the car and models, listen to a comedian, drink, ride in the carriage… Teresa gets -3, Andrea gets +3.

Selecting Boardroom Victims: Choosing Tarek is defensible (for the awful golf course) but Lenny was not. And Charmaine above all should have been there. So Teresa :-2 for bringing Lenny.
Boardroom:

Lenny: -1 for bringing up Dan and Lee’s taking the holiday after DT had already shown he was okay with them going, as well as George.

Tarek: +1 for good self-defense and well-expressed attack on Teresa.

Lenny: -1 for being excessively combative in the board room. Not just defending himself, but attacking everyone else indiscriminately. “Fire them all.” Trump called you a comedian, a funny guy. I don’t think that is high on his list of desired traits in his Apprentice.

Teresa: -1 for blaming everyone else for not carrying through on her wonderful ideas, when her ideas to begin with were horrible.

Tarek: -1 for Trump’s coming back with “Step it up…if you can” after Tarek promised to step it up. It looks to me like DT still has you mentally marked for firing whenever convenient.
Scores for the Candidates

(BTW, in the scores for episode 2 I forgot to set to zero the current episode counts for those who didn’t get any plus OR minus points last time. The cumulative totals were correct for everyone.)

===================

Name : points for this episode : cumulative points

Andrea: +5 : +6
Allie : 0 : +3
Roxanne : +1 : +3

Sean : 0 : +2
Michael: +1 : +2

Tammy: +1 : +1
Leslie : 0 : +1
Bryce : +1 : +1

Lee : 0 : 0
Dan : 0 : 0
Lenny: -3 : 0

Charmaine : -3 : -3

Brent: -1 : -5

Tarek :-1 : -9

Fired:

Name : Score in final episode : cumulative score : # episodes lasted : pts/episode

Teresa: -10 : -11 : 3 episodes : -3.7 pts/episode
Pepi: -6 : -5 : 2 episodes : -2.5 pts/episode
Stacy : -7 : -7 : 2 episodes : -3.5 pts/episode
Summer: -12 : 1 episode : -12 pts/episode
Note: Three episodes and now Dan is the sole remaining stealth candidate. C’mon, DO or SAY something. No one can be THAT vanilla through and through…

SBS

54

Sorry for missing this week guys, I was on vacation, but I’m back for this week. :slight_smile:

55

SBS, your rankings are very interesting. I don’t know how I feel about them yet, you’re pretty harsh. I mean -2 for crying? I agree it wasn’t a good thing, but I think -2 is a bit heavy handed. Especially when you give Charmaine -1 for untrained models and such.

Granted my rankings are purely opinion based and built on relation to prior rankings from earlier episodes, just giving you some feedback :). I’m very interested to see how these results compare with the results of future firings and such.

56

Like your system – pretty much agree with your scoring – but wanted to say this:

totally made me laugh.

57

Hmmm. I think we have an unusually low-scoring game this time, people. Basically both teams worked well together (with a certain notable exception), both accomplished the task to at least a ‘good’ standard, and there were no disasters. Well, let’s see what I found to ding or reward despite that:

In an echo from last week, we started with a future PM in tears and a teammate trying to comfort her. But Charmaine shed only a couple of tears, and took herself off as inconspicuously as possible to privacy before crying, so I’m not going to ding her as badly as Andrea. So:

Charmaine: -1
Leslie: +1

Tammy: +1 for turning down Brents repeated suggestions of using a diet theme calmly, in a business like manager.

Tammy: -1 for settling on the slogan, “Introducing the next generation of Post Grapenuts, Trail Mix Crunch cereal. Finally a ceral for everyone.” Slogan? That’s SIXTEEN WORDS, that’s not a slogan, it’s a paragraph. Allie started it off with the father/daughter idea, and Andrea came up with the Next Generation part, and after that it seemed to turn into a committee botch-up—regardless, it was Tammy who had the final say.

Brent: -2 for repeated, over the top reactions. His resentment and comments towards Andrea and Tammy were far more heated than they reasonably deserved. Sometimes I thought we might be seeing misogyny in his attitude, sometimes I thought it was purely pent-up anger from the way he’d been sidelined all four episodes bursting out. Whatever – he was clearly out of control of his emotions.

Charmaine: +1 for realizing that they needed a simple idea that could be grasped in a ‘split second.’

Bryce: +1 for coming up with the idea of a model guzzling the cereal.

Charmaine: +1 for making a fast decision instead of dragging things out.

Tarek, Roxanne, Allie: -1 each for not realizing they needed an older model for the father. The age gap between the two couldn’t have been more than 14 years, and that muddied their main message.

Brent: -1 for hovering over the graphic artist, trying to usurp Andrea’s assignment.

Tammy: +1 for matter-of-factly telling Brent to butt out with “too many cooks.”

If I knew who was in charge of the photoshoot, I’d hit them with -1. Getting only 4 photographs to choose from is ridiculous. Film is cheap!

Bryce: -1 for getting cold feet and trying to talk them into changing horses in mid-stream.

Charmaine: +1 for holding steadfast.

Brent: -1 for not being ready on time.

Brent: -1 for the nasty fight with Andrea. More out of control behavior, more anger than was reasonable.

Andrea: -1 for the nasty “I’m a multimillionaire and you make 50 thousand a year” crack.

Sean: -1 for the babbling during the presentation. What needed to be said anyway? “We wanted to show this new cereal was delicious so we showed a young woman chugging it.”
Win/lose points: per the Donald, both teams did well. Synergy did a ‘good job’, but Gold Rush did a better one. Charmaine: +2, Tammy: -1

Lenny: -1 for sprinkling pepper around on the chef’s dish. Lenny is starting to come across as very arrogant, cocksure that he is always right and the other is always wrong, even when the “other” is a famous professional and we’re on his turf.
Boardroom:

Andrea: -1 for being in charge of the graphics.

Tammy: -1 for the slogan/general idea. (If you noticed, she couldn’t manage to get the slogan out word perfect herself.)

Andrea: -1 for bristling so obviously when Roxanne said she thought Tammy had been ‘their best Project Manager yet.’ Executives need strong egos, but they’d better not be that thin-skinned or at least be able to disguise it.

Tammy: -1 for apparently creating a too long slide show.

Brent: -2 for jumping in to slit his own throat when no one had even said boo about him so far.

Brent: -1 for saying Tammy had called him ‘fat’ when the evidence showed that was untrue, and Trump said that Tammy’s not using him was reasonable.

Brent: -1 for still being unable to express his points in objective, business like terms. Saying Tammy ‘stank’ was over the top. Trump clearly didn’t like it, as shown by his chiding you for not being ‘moderate’ a bit later.
Selecting Boardroom Victims: since it didn’t happen, zero points.
Scores for the Candidates

Name : points for this episode : cumulative points

Andrea: -3 : +3

Allie : -1 : +2
Roxanne : -1 : +2
Leslie : +1 : +2
Michael: 0 : +2

Sean : -1 : +1
Bryce : 0 : +1
Charmaine : +4 : +1

Lee : 0 : 0
Dan : 0 : 0

Lenny: -1 : -1
Tammy: -2 : -1

Tarek :-1 : -10

Fired:

Name : Score in final episode : cumulative score : # episodes lasted : pts/episode

Brent: -9 : -14 : 4 episodes : -3.5 pts/episode
Teresa: -10 : -11 : 3 episodes : -3.7 pts/episode
Pepi: -6 : -5 : 2 episodes : -2.5 pts/episode
Stacy : -7 : -7 : 2 episodes : -3.5 pts/episode
Summer: -12 : 1 episode : -12 pts/episode
Note:

Interesting. On the immediate level, it was unfair to fire Brent this time. Synergy lost because of the graphics of their billboard were too cluttered and Andrea was in charge of graphics. OTOH, this week the buck stopped on Tammy’s desk. She signed off on the graphics, she signed off on the way-too-complex slogan.

What I think happened is that Trump has high hopes for both of them. Maybe particularly Andrea for her history of creating successful companies AND for the excellent job she did the previous week. To keep both of them, he had to fire someone else – and the obvious candidate was Brent.

In fact, I rather think Brent was kept around so long just for this purpose: a sacrificial goat, someone to throw overboard when Trump wanted to save a ‘favorite.’ I also suspect that Tarek and Lenny are in the designated sacrifices category in Trump’s mind.

And…we’re up to FOUR episodes without anything noteworthy for Dan. I think the guy must be able to turn invisible!

SBS

58

Whoops! Didn’t mean to step on your toes, it didn’t occur to me you might be away from the computer rather than away from the show.

Andrea’s crying especially bothered me because of the cause. It’s okay to cry in pain, or over bad things happening to your loved ones. But merely having a worker you don’t like not get fired – that upsets you so much you burst into tears? It seems to show a lack of control, of being excessively ruled by your emotions.

And, in real life, one of the classic complaints used against women in management is that they take business ‘too personally’ and ‘get too emotional.’ I’ve been there, seen promotions denied to women just for that reason.

Out of curiosity, I just went back and compared my numbers with your ratings for the first three episodes:

Episode 1: The only significant difference is that you put Lenny (my rating 1) into “Found Some Gold Dust” whereas you have all the other people I rated -1/0/+1 clumped in “Got your pick axe”.

Episode 2: Again, my points mostly correlate to your category scheme.

Differences: you had Michael (my +1) down in Panning for Gold, with all the other -1/0/1 people one step higher in Pick Axe. You are weighting being taken to the board room more heavily than I am – I suspect you may be right about that. Perhaps simply being taken in should count for minus points? Or upping the points assigned. What I’d call a -1 mistake during the rest of the show should be a -2 if it happens in the boardroom? Will think on this.

OTOH, you had Lee (my 0) up an extra step. I totally disagree he showed strength in leadership – IME, he was steamrolled over by Lenny who then dragged him to victory.

Episode 3 – again, overall we’re in agreement.

Differences:

Lee is still one step higher than I’d rated him.

Lenny you have two steps higher than my rating would call for.

And the biggest misalignment: Tarek! I have him at -9, you have him tucked in with the 0/+1/+2 gang in the middle. What has he done that you see as rehabilitating him?
Anyway, as you say, the main point of interest is whether my numbers turn out to be of any use in predicting who goes far and who leaves early. My guess is that the people I rate the highes WILL go far, but because of the set up, there will be a lot of variation when ‘middle pointers’ get eliminated.

After all, even if you’re WAY down in the negative points, if your team wins, you are safe.

59

You didn’t step on my toes at all, no worries. I’m always interested in other people’s ratings, and it’s interesting to see what people think.