Friday, December 17, 2004
Why I Needed to Watch The Apprentice
I’ll admit it: somehow I wasn’t getting my RDA of office angst so I got myself hooked on The Apprentice this year. For those who are smart enough to avoid the subject, TA is a reality show in which 18 aspiring brownnosers compete for the chance to work for Donald Trump for a year. The competition consists of a series of business tasks, like developing and selling a new flavor of ice cream, producing a catalogue for a clothier, or staging a special event for a corporate-sponsored charity. And I haven’t understood till today why I was putting myself through a weekly hour of television that’s basically like a bad day at the office writ large. But now that the whole season is over, I think I finally have a clue.
When I watch Survivor, I enjoy seeing how human nature bubbles to the surface despite our best efforts to the contrary, how personalities are eventually revealed to be abrasive or sterling or septic or actually vacant - it’s a show about sociology and psychology. When I watch Amazing Race, I enjoy seeing how the two-person teams work, how people treat each other and the “outside world,” but also the cool locales they visit and strange feats they must complete. But I didn’t know why I watched TA. I’m not a big fan of The Donald, and I would not want to hang out with any of the people in the competition, who are all basically manipulative backbiting aggrandizement-monkeys. I didn’t learn much about how to do any of the tasks they completed; it was more about how to manage relationships with co-workers and managers. And maybe that was what hooked me.
The show features two suits who serve as The Donald’s “eyes and ears,” since presumably Don has a handle on the rest of his own anatomy; the suits watch the two competing teams at work and report on who did what, how well, and to what effect. At the end of each episode the losing team is brought to the board room where Donald and the suits grill them on why they lost, and then they’re sent out of the room so the honchos can confer about who should be fired - kicked out of the competition. In each case, I found that people’s words and actions came back to haunt them to a certain extent, but that often a person could hide his or her misdeeds and actually come out smelling like a prickless rose by saying the right thing to the right suit at the right time. Good contestants were scapegoated; bad ones harrangued their way into the finals. And then Donald would ask each of the suits whom they thought should be fired. Each would make a suggestion, backing it up with plenty of reasons. Then Donald calls the contestants back in and fires whomever he wants to. Often it is not someone that one of the suits has suggested, but as the show ends you hear Donald and the suits discussing the decision and the suits invariably support the choice that was made, even if they were strongly opposed to it just a few minutes earlier. They go from, “He’s the strongest candidate, I’d hire him in a heartbeat,” to “Good choice, boss, gotta cull the deadwood, what a loser and I bet he’s inadequate in the genital department too.”
And maybe that’s why I kept coming back to this damned show week after week - it taught me how to deal with unpleasant relationships at work. Watch what I say, to whom I say it. Express my opinion, then back up the boss. Learn to keep my mouth shut so that others can stick their feet in their own gaping maws. And this has been of real interest to me, mainly because for the last 18 months I’ve had a real problem in the workplace with someone who I was supposed to work with very closely but with whom I could not manage to form a healthy working relationship.
I really try not to use this site as a forum for venting my spleen and saying bad things about other people, especially since this situation started for me at my office. I’ll tell you frankly, though, it’s had a real toll on me. This person has soured my days and embittered my nights for a year and a half. And for the record, I am not the only one to have had this problem with this person. Everyone in my department - other than my boss - has had problems with her; I understand that people outside my department have also had problems with her and even outside agencies have told me they’d rather deal with me than with her. I was in very good company.
The thing is, I didn’t say anything about it. I let others complain, let them expose themselves to my bosses disbelief and “constructive criticism” about how they were mishandling the situation. When I finally brought this issue up during my annual review I was seen as a team player because I had done nothing to exacerbate the problem, while others who’d taken steps to address the problem were seen as part of the problem themselves. I was careful not to disagree with the boss - simply to present my own concerns and then to support the bosses decisions. I think in the end, that strategy, though painful and stressful to implement, helped me professionally and politically in this office.
However, as of the end of business today, the problem is going away to work somewhere else. I am deeply, utterly, entirely relieved. It was hard, during those long months, to remain silent, but doing so minimized the unpleasantness I faced and maximized the benefit to me of enduring it, as far as my standing in the office is concerned. And with the conclusion to this dark chapter in my employment history, I’m going to break my silence and share a little ditty I wrote some months back in a fit of frustration at keeping my lips locked:
It doesn’t matter what you say
it will be misconstrued
And if you try to fix the mess
your treatment will be rude
But if you let your passions rise
and snap off something crude
Or take your time and keep your cool
and try a comeback shrewd
You’ll see the angry storming clouds
as they her face occlude
The hissing words she spits at you
with venom are imbued
So basically just hold your tongue
for he who speaks is screwed.
And not in the good way, either.
Next monday: life begins again.
