Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Office space
By Miss Alli | Season 3 | Episode 13 | Aired on 04.20.2005
The next morning, Alex and Bren go in to look at their product. What they have designed, basically, is a big, bulky side table. It has a wood top with two rectangular holes in it, and there are two wire baskets hanging through those holes. There's a Plexiglas lid over the whole thing that's on hinges, so the idea is that you'd put crap on the top of it, and then you'd have your in/out baskets hanging there so that you could see them. Alex is all kinds of excited when he sees the desk, because he thinks it is incredibly awesome. He interviews that an enormous "burden was lifted" when he saw it, because he was so blown away by his own brilliance. "We have knocked the ball so far out of the park," he says, and then he tells Bren that he desperately wishes he could really have the rights to sell the thing. "You could make a million bucks," he says. Here's the thing: It's a cart. On wheels. It's a wheeled cart. Basically, what it does is multiply your desk. It doesn't really solve clutter to just have more horizontal surfaces. But Bren and Alex are positively wetting themselves over the awesomeness of this design. Bren says that despite his usual pessimism, he finds that he's optimistic about this. "I fear the lashing that Magna Corp will take in the Boardroom over this," he tells Alex. It's like he's having a premonition, but he's looking at it upside-down.
Magna's desk organizer is being fabricated. Tana explains that it's being painted and finished up, and she thinks the presentation will be fine, but Kendra still seems to think they're going to use "those damn files." Heh. Indeed, Kendra now has some vertical folders, and is wondering, apparently, if they can use those. "I want to make this as realistic of an office scenario as possible," she says. "And what you find in offices are folders." Craig gets on his favorite fucking obnoxious jaunt, saying, "Now, you have to watch how you do your generalities. I do want you to know that I'm very much more experienced than you, 'cause I've been around a little longer than you." Kendra has now had enough. "You're very condescending to me," she says. "And you talk to me like I'm six years old and I 'haven't been around.'" Craig tells her, essentially, that if he seems to be talking down to her, it's because he is. "If I sound like I was talking to a child, that's how I'm going to talk to my children when I have to continually repeat myself." I don't suppose it might ever occur to him that it might be inappropriate to talk to colleagues the way you talk to children. Too easy? Kendra leans toward him. "Well, maybe you're just not an effective communicator," she says. "It's you that is always going to be condescending." And then Craig creates some kind of weird hole in the universe when he's like, "You don't know what that means. You really don't know what that means." It's like, "Oh, little cupcake, I would never patronize you." The irony is eating itself. Kendra, I think, is probably right in seeing no purpose in going any further. "I don't want to have this conversation anymore, because you're being condescending. This conversation is over." "No, it's not, because I'm still talking," Craig says. Well, you can talk all you want, dude, but if she's not talking back, it's not much of a conversation.