The Apprentice 4 Corner Office and Mailroom Assignments, Episode 1: One, Two, Three, Sweat!

It’s the start of another season of The Apprentice. Everyone is on an equal footing as the game begins, but it doesn’t take long for some people’s true colors to be revealed. Who knew how to handle the task and thus got to spend time in the company’s corner office? Who blew the task so badly that they were sentenced to spend a week sorting and delivering mail in the company mailroom? Let’s find out.

Excel

Cool name for a team. I just hope Bill Gates doesn’t sue them for copyright infringement. We didn’t really get to see a whole lot of the men’s team this week, since there was more drama on the women’s team. That said; let’s see what happened.

Mark got his team off on the right foot by winning the advantage of location choice in a close foot race. Brian also helped get the team off to a winning start by helping to pick the location for his team.

Josh seems to be the resident whiner on the team, having complained about Markus’ frazzled leadership, and the way he kept asking for feedback from his teammates. For whining, he can spend the week sorting out first-class from priority mail.

Markus, on the other hand, is more complicated. True, he led his team to victory, but his team’s victory was in spite of his leadership, not because of it. He was reticent to accept the Project Manager role, and only did so because he never wants to be seen as shrinking from a challenge. He couldn’t decide whether to have six classes or seven and he was way too talkative with Trump on the phone. Someone needs to teach this guy how to get his point across in 30 seconds or less. Yes, I know he wanted to build a rapport with Trump, but he needs to remember that actions speak louder than words. Amy on Season One built a great rapport with Trump by constantly being on the winning team and constantly working hard, so it is possible to build a rapport with Trump without resorting to verbal diarrhea.

The one thing I liked about Markus’ performance is that he asked his team for feedback while there was still a chance for him to put the feedback to good use. I understand Josh’s opinion about seeing this as a weakness, but by comparing Markus to Trump he’s comparing apples to oranges. Trump isn’t competing against 17 of his peers for a job. Trump isn’t being evaluated on his performance during each task. Also, if Markus wants his team to vote for his exemption, he has to get them on his side, and this is as good a way as any of doing that.

To be honest, I’m really torn. I actually think nobody on the men’s team deserves the corner office this week, even though they won. If I had to award it, it would probably go to Mark for getting the team off to a winning start, but that seems like such a little to do to qualify for such a great reward. On the other end, Markus did step up as the first Project Manager and did win, but he floundered as leader, so I think I’ll let him linger somewhere in the middle for another week.

Capital Edge

Another cool name. When I was in college, I took a technical writing course where the class was run like a corporation. We had to come up with a name for the corporation, and we eventually settled on Edge Communications, so I can somewhat relate to this name.

Since we saw a lot of the women’s team, it’s easier to judge their performances. Most of the women (Felisha, Toral, Rebecca, Marshawn, and Alla) worked as a team, doing market research, helping to come up with the concept, and handing out flyers.

Rebecca seemed to work the hardest. Not only did she leave the rest of her teammates in the dust when running for the helicopter, but also she was a good team player and never caused problems. So Rebecca, the corner office with the view of Central Park is all yours.

The two remaining women made the biggest mistakes on their team, which is really bad considering that one of them was the project manager, Kristi (who looks like a cross between Kristen Bell of Veronica Mars fame, and Reese Witherspoon). Kristi designed the flyer choreographed the workout, and decided to focus on street marketing instead of in-gym marketing. Well, she got one out three right (the choreography).

If she had some teammates focusing on in-gym marketing in addition to street marketing, that would be a different story and a wiser choice, but I’m going on what we saw, and that was that she decided the team should concentrate solely on street marketing. This was a mistake for exact reason that Chris on Team Excel mentioned – the people in the gym like coming there, so half the battle (getting people to the gym) is already won.

Perhaps Kristi’s worst mistake was the XXX on the flyer. Maybe she’s too much of a goody-two shoes to associate this with pornography, but the rest of her team aren’t. Either they didn’t say anything to her and only mentioned it to the camera in interviews (something I find hard to believe), or they mentioned it to her and she made an executive decision to ignore it. She claimed in the boardroom that’s not how she designed the flyer, but then she should have done something about it. So for this “triple threat” of mistakes, Kristi gets to choreograph how the stamps will be applied to letters in the mailroom.

Now we get the fire and brimstone portion of the column, also known as Melissa’s antics. About the only thing she did right was get a good solid price while doing market research. However, the fact that she kept insisting that as a Hispanic she knows better than anyone what they should charge, instead of letting it go after her teammates disagreed with her, shows just how “postal” she can go. As Toral noted, the way Melissa expressed her point of view was not the best way to go about convincing her teammates.

Then there was the fact that she started badmouthing her teammates to Carolyn, and claimed to be doing everything herself, which was not true. Melissa also took the time to take Toral aside and tell her explicitly that she (Melissa) doesn’t respect Kristi, without giving an adequate reason. However, she really sealed her fate by telling Trump, George and Carolyn, that she doesn’t work well with women because her beauty and brains intimidate them. Right there, she just alienated a large chunk of Trump’s employees, and effectively served notice that she wouldn’t be a good fit for any of his companies. For that alone, she belongs in the mailroom where there’s nobody who would be intimidated by her.

Week One Tally:

So what’s the tally after Week One?

Excel

• Corner Office: Mark (1)
• Mailroom: Josh (1)

Capital Edge

• Corner Office: Rebecca (1)
• Mailroom: Kristi (1), Melissa (1)

Gil Sery is a freelance entertainment journalist who loves watching reality TV. You can email him at movieman26@hotmail.com with your suggestions on whom you would have picked for the corner office or mailroom.

Be sure to sign up for our e-mail update so you can stay informed about new articles on the site! And take a look at the rest of the site. You can find all of our recent articles on this show at our The Apprentice page and take a look at our sections on The Amazing Race 7 and Survivor: Guatemala. You can even buy reality show stuff at our Reality TV Store!

For more news about The Apprentice, be sure to check out SirLinksALot's Apprentice page!