I Was Thinking About Something Else

That pretty much sums up my life nowadays. I will be doing something, walking into a room or driving, and I will go askew. Someone will inevitably ask at that same moment, "What are you doing?". Which will confuse me and I can only respond, "Yeah, well...I was thinking about something else".

(formerly A Connecticut Yankee)

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Location: Connecticut, United States

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Sunday, September 26, 2004

One Flew Over (and subsequently got herself kicked out of) the Cuckoo's Nest

Well, it was no surprise that someone got fired. The Surprise was how.

This part is getting tired. None of them play well together. Especially the women. It's more than obvious that they don't even like each other and that comes across even when they are speaking civilly to each other.

There was a song in the sixties thick with social satire called National Brotherhood Week, by social satirist/MIT Professor Tom Lehrer, that had a passage in it:

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Moslems,
And everybody hates the Jews.

In terms of The Apprentice you can cross out "the Jews" and put in Stacie J. It was amazing how she was ganged-up on in the Boardroom. Really. Seriously.

But hey, let's get the regular business out of the way first. The two teams, dysfunctional as they are, were given the task of creating 'buzz' for a new toothpaste that is soon going to be marketed by Procter & Gamble. Each team was given 50 grand for a budget (remember that, it's important) and told to go do there thing. Each team did come up with nifty ideas, but in at least one scenario there were to many uncontrollable variables that could cause the team to briefly crash and burn. Which again was sad, because it really was a nifty idea.

Ok, so it was the men's team. Harvard boy had this idea for a million dollar giveaway (find a million dollars in the toothpaste tube or something like that) and in fact it was fascinating to see how that sweepstakes thing works in real life. They don't actually need a million dollars. What they need is an insurance company to cover them 'in case' somebody wins'. In the eleventh hour the legal department said "NO" to the million dollar giveaway, saying there were too many details to iron out. The team bounced back giving out smaller ($5,000) cash awards and hiring circus performers to perfom on the street.
Apex decided to hire a celebrity (stroke of genius) with an across the board appeal (Mike Piazza) of the NY Yankees, to do an appearance, sign toothpaste boxes and even brush his teeth. Whole thing was a huge hit, and exactly what P&G was looking for!

Remember when I mentioned to tuck away that budget information for a later time. Here it is. Apex went over budget. Not by a little bit either. One item was an extra $5,000. That looks bad for a couple of reasons. They went over budget by 10%. On say a 50 million dollar project, that's 5 'million' dollars. It was also for one thing, not spread out over a bunch of expenses. It was just one item.
As we all know in real life, you can pretty much do anything to anybody (goof off at work, steal office supplies, beat a coworker) and chances are you'll get away with it. The exception to that is when it involves money...
If you caused a money problem, that always beats everything else. Right, Martha?

Even though they had far and away the better day in terms of creating buzz, Apex did the unthinkable as well as unforgiveable in going overbudget.
So the boardroom infighting began and the three choices were whittled down to Elizabeth (bad project manager), Maria (bad financial manager), and Stacie J. (apparently for no other reason than that she is considered, yknow...bad).

They all fight when Elizabeth and Maria in a unified moment drag up the incident that caused them to think Stacie J. was a little wacko that occurred, now three episodes ago during a lunch break. In an unprecedented move, The Donald has the rest of the Apex team come back to the Boardroom to confirm that Stacie J. is crazy in their opinions. They do, so Stacie J. is fired. Truly the only moment so far that the team worked together. Who knows what they're gonna do now without the scapegoat, er uh, Stacie J. rather.

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