The Apprentice 4 Corner Office and Mailroom Assignments, Episode 10

It was three versus two this week as Alla, Felisha, and Adam took on Randal and Rebecca. Despite being one person short, Excel still managed to pull out a win, in part due to a stunning move that would make both Sun Tzu and Machiavelli proud. Let’s look at the winners and losers.

Excel

Contrast this week’s team of Rebecca and Randal with last week’s team of Rebecca, Randal, and Clay, and the difference is like day and night, proving once again that if you have a good team that gets along, you’re going to have a much better chance of winning than if you have a divisive team or a distractive teammate.

While Rebecca and Randal worked very well together, Randal seemed to come up with most of the winning ideas on this task. It was Randal who came up with the idea of hiring a “temp army,” Randal who came up with the idea of using megaphones, and Randal who made the final decision as to whether or not to buy Capital Edge’s megaphones out from under them. It was also Randal who decided to order 30 people each from two separate staffing agencies, thereby not relying on just one person the way Capital Edge did. That was very smart thinking.

So what did Rebecca do? It looks like she helped divide up the labor force to cover New York, and she came up with the idea of sending Spanish-speaking New Yorkers to Spanish Harlem. She also came up with the idea of going to get Capital Edge’s megaphones, and actually went into the store to get them, but let Randal make the final decision. Some might say that she was just consulting her teammate, so they could make the decision as a team, and that’s fine. However, it still seems that Randal was the more creative of the two on this task, which means that he gets the Corner Office this week.

As for the mailroom, while Rebecca didn’t seem to contribute as much as Randal, she still contributed a fair amount and worked well with her teammate. She doesn’t deserve to work in the mailroom, thus nobody on Excel gets Mailroom Duty this week.

Capital Edge

During Weeks Eight and Nine, Capital Edge extended their record to 4-6, but the Randalnator terminated their streak by leading his team to a victory this week, thereby extending Excel’s record to 6-4. Upon discovering that Excel had bought out their megaphones from under them, Alla said she was infuriated, but took solace in the fact that “Karma gets people.” What she apparently didn’t seem to realize is that Karma was getting her back for saying in an interview that Randal and Rebecca have “non-existent creativity.”

Take a look at the NBC poll this week and you’ll see that the vast majority of those polled (62% at the time of writing) thought that Excel was not wrong to buy the megaphones, while a significant portion (20% at the time of writing) felt that it would have been wrong for them not to take advantage of this opportunity. These people realize that in business, you have to have the killer instinct. Unfortunately for Capital Edge, Excel had it and decided to use it to their advantage. Objectively speaking, there is nothing wrong with that, although granted one may not feel that way if he or she is the one being subjected to this.

The big problem this week was two-fold: a) Adam foolishly spent 60% of his team’s budget on carriages, and b) Felisha didn’t fight hard enough for more people. Spending $6,000 on wrapping 14 carriages means that every carriage cost the team $428.57. As one of the executives pointed out, that’s a lot of money to spend on something that doesn’t talk. How many more people could they have hired for that amount?

On the other hand, if Felisha knew right off the bat that spending so much on carriages was a bad idea, she should have gone to Alla and made her case to hire more people. Sure, this would have put Alla in the difficult position having to choose one teammate’s idea over another’s, but do you honestly think she wouldn’t have to make similar tough decisions if she ends up working for Trump? We’ve seen this mistake time and time again on every season to date. People don’t go to bat for their ideas and their team ends up losing because of it.

Here’s another interesting question (and if one of the Capital Edge contestants is reading this, maybe we could get an answer to it): When Alla found out that the megaphones she had reserved were already bought (or even after finding out how unsatisfactory her pool of workers was), why didn’t she try to use the money earmarked for the megaphones to hire more people?

Since it was a combination of both Adam’s and Felisha’s efforts that caused Capital Edge to lose this task, and Adam is no longer with the company, Felisha gets to work in the Mailroom this week, where she won’t have to worry about hiring anyone.

For sucking the least this week, even though, as Trump might say, Alla’s stock has gone down a little, Alla is the de facto Corner Office occupant this week.

Week Ten Tally

The Randalnator chalks up another Excel Corner Office this week, bringing his total to four, while his chief rival, Alla, barely squeaks by this week to claim her fifth Capital Edge Corner Office and keep her lead.

Excel

Corner Office: Mark (1), Randall (2, 3, 7, 10), Clay (4), Josh (5), Rebecca (6, 8),

Mailroom: Josh (1), Chris (2), Clay (3), Markus (5), Rebecca (9)

Capital Edge

Corner Office: Rebecca (1), Alla (1, 6, 7, 8, 10), Jennifer M. (3, 4), Marshawn (5), Felisha (9)

Mailroom: Kristi (1), Melissa (1), Marshawn (2), Rebecca (3), Jennifer W. (3), Felisha (4, 10), Jenn M. (5), Clay (6, 7, 8)

Gil Sery is a freelance entertainment journalist who loves watching reality TV, and loves getting email from fans even more. You can make his day by emailing him at movieman26@hotmail.com and telling him who you think should get the corner office or mailroom.

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