Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The [Pepsi] Edge of Reason
By Miss Alli | Season 2 | Episode 12 | Aired on 11.24.2004
Over at Apex, a guy is working on a computer image of a design where the middle of the bottle contains a "D" and a "G." Kelly is still advocating a hole in the bottle, which the design guy clearly has reservations about. Kelly insists it's a "'wow' factor." Eh. Maybe an "oh" factor, the first time you see it, but not a "wow" factor, to me. The design guy says that they'll do the best they can to deliver that for him. Ivana interviews that Kelly's military background leads him to "try to rule with an iron fist," and as we know, Ivana believes in leadership through puppy-hugging. Ivana suggests that Kelly's iron fist may "bite him in the butt," and that is something I would really like to see, because I've always believed that the next great leap for mankind was hands that had teeth. It would put an end to public-transportation groping forever, I think. Apex goes to the lab to watch its bottle being constructed. In a weird, red-herring moment, Ivana tells the team as it leaves the Pepsi grounds that they're not rushing, so she feels like they must be missing something. I totally expected this all to come to something, but it doesn't. I have a feeling they were fairly desperate for material this week, because...what?
As evening stretches on, however, Mosaic is still hard at work. The design guy is telling Andy that they're still working on the graphic for the upper part of the bottle. Andy interviews that he believed the design team was moving a little too slowly for his liking. And before you know it, he's murmuring to Sandy that he thinks hundred-dollar handouts to the design folks would speed things up. Sandy looks shocked. "Isn't that bribery?" she asks. Bribery? Uh, no. It's not bribery. It's tacky, but it's not bribery, which is more about paying off judges and less about greasing the maitre d'. Andy refers to it as a "tip," and then he goes over and tells the guys who are working that there are going to be "hundred-dollar bonuses for everyone." The guys look a little flummoxed. Carolyn looks on as Andy just goes around and hands out the cash. Sandy interviews that some of the folks seemed to find the graft a little offensive, and she herself finds it too "used-car salesman" for the corporate world. I don't think that's the right analogy; it's just that professional people don't always like to be tipped like bellboys at a hotel. It tends to imply that they're not already doing the best they can for you, and that's a sort of skunky thing to imply to people on whom you're making a lot of demands as it is. I think everybody likes a hundred bucks, but it's a very risky maneuver, in terms of how you come off.
Andy continues to employ unconventional management techniques when he refuses to allow the design guys to eat when the food arrives. I absolutely guarantee you that any goodwill he might have accumulated through the cash payments vanished when he didn't let these people eat, considering that when this all happens, it's 9:00 at night. People do not like being denied their breaks; that is the fastest way to make enemies, as a boss. Give them fifteen minutes to have a slice of pizza, and they'll work better for the next hour. Andy intercepts the pizzas and takes them out into the hallway, interviewing that he withheld the food until the deadline was met. "If you relax on this design team," he says, "they will not meet these deadlines." See? He doesn't have any respect for them. And people can always tell. This vibe he has that they're a bunch of undermotivated assholes who need to be goosed with money and deprived of food because they aren't capable of just being professional because they're professionals? They're not dumb, and Andy's not that subtle; they're going to feel that. As if things weren't bad enough already, when somebody mentions being starved, Andy reminds everyone that he gave them all money. I normally have liked Andy the last couple of weeks, but he handled this atrociously from a managing-people perspective. Sandy tells us that she finds Andy's whip-cracking rather ridiculous, and in case you can't tell yet? I agree.