Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Water, water, everywhere, and yet it costs a lot
By Miss Alli | Season 1 | Episode 8 | Aired on 02.25.2004
Later that evening, they all file into the Boardroom. Carolyn eyes them with particular disdain, which I love. Enter the Trump. "So, what happened?" Trump says. "We lost by $2000," Ereka says in a way that she means to be smooth and unruffled -- unlike most of her shirts. (Rimshot!) She stresses that although this is a bad loss, they did really well with restaurants and bars -- they just totally struck out with the distributors. Trump asks Nick what he thinks. "We lost and it stinks, and I'm tired of it." You know, you can get away with spitting out that kind of no-nonsense answer when you're not the main guy who fucked up the task, but when you are? Yeah, that's a tough road to travel. Trump says that Nick has lost quite a bit. Yeah, Nick acknowledges, he's lost the last two. Trump points out that before that, he lost four in a row with the men. "We've made six trips in here together," Boyfriend Bill says wearily. "Carolyn," Trump asks, "what do you think?" "I think you did poorly," Carolyn says. She declines to single anyone out, but she says that she thinks the entire group performed poorly. Trump asks George what he'd like to add. "Oh, boy, I got a lot," George says. Heh. He says that he's shocked at how little they've learned, and specifically mentions the failure to learn about the customers. Ereka is thrilled that he brought this up, because she thinks that this is how she's going to skewer Nick. She points out that she asked Nick to peruse the ABC web site, and he wouldn't. Nick, to her surprise, says that he did, actually -- he looked at it the next morning, and didn't find it too valuable. On the one hand, I suspect he's lying. On the other hand, I didn't find their site incredibly illuminating either, so who knows? Furthermore, when you ask people to do things at 2:45 AM on the night before they have an appointment at 10:00, you're not exactly showing exemplary leadership under the ideal conditions. Good leadership should not involve amphetamines, I always say, although there are certainly late-night radio stations that would tell you otherwise.
George then moves on to the bigger problem, which is that Nick had absolutely no rapport with any of the people he was trying to sell to. That surprised me, too, I have to say -- if he's really such a good sales guy, I have to think he's normally better at relating to customers than that. He had absolutely none of Troy's, or even Bill's, ability to get people to smile, or get them on his side, or get them interested in what he was saying. Nick, rather than accepting this obviously true criticism, says that he disagrees "wholeheartedly." He talks about how much charisma he has, and Trump puts in, "If you do say so yourself." Heh. Asked who he thinks did the worst job, Nick says it was Ereka. He specifically talks about how she lost it when they were trying to put the paperwork together. "For her to behave like that at the end of the day, at crunch time, is in my opinion unacceptable." Ereka turns to him, very nearly trembling with rage. "I was fixing your mistakes," she spits. Nick says that even so, "once you unnerve the troops, who are we to believe in?" It took me a long time to figure out what Nick's weirdly affected speech patterns remind me of, and then it came to me -- Damon Runyon. He talks like he just got here from Guys and Dolls, and just lost all his money in the oldest established permanent floating crap game in New York. Trump asks Ereka if she was frantic, and then she says -- apropos of absolutely nothing -- that "numbers speak for themselves," and she pushes a sheet of data at Trump, insisting that it shows Nick's poor performance.
"Bill, who did the worst?" Trump asks. Bill says he thinks none of them are proud of how it went. Yeah, especially anyone who was there during the horrifying "buzz" pitches. He acknowledges that there was poor planning and poor execution. "It was a mess," Trump offers. Asked again who did the worst job, Bill hesitates, saying that the only person he worked with was Ereka. Trump asks if Bill thinks she was good, and he says noncommittally that she "held her own out there." Ereka nods, as if this is some big compliment. Yeah. "Held her own." He's practically holding a parade in your honor, sweetheart. For some reason, Katrina very foolishly gets involved here, and snots that Ereka isn't being given enough credit for how awesome she was. "I think you're very smart," Trump says to Katrina, "because you don't want to be picked, and you're probably going to be the one..." "Guaranteed," Boyfriend Bill puts in. "Oh, you think it's already done?" Trump says. Ereka, as if she's got the weight of the world on her tiny shoulders, says, "They asked me to tell them who I'd bring in, and I upheld my word." Nick laughs heartily. "Nobody asked you anything! In fact, I prefer to be surprised!" Hee. Trump asks her whether she told them what she was going to do, and she confirms that she did. "I'm not a chicken; I'm a leader," she says. I am totally putting that on a t-shirt. Wouldn't you wear that? "I'm not a chicken. I'm a leader." And it would have a picture of a chicken on one side with a red circle and line through it, and Trump on the other side, and the word "LEADER" under his name would be underlined in what looked like a red scrawl. I'm going to get rich off that shirt. Katrina, having already failed her required course in reading the room, decides to go for a negative score by leaning forward and indignantly saying, "I don't want her to take blame for not choosing me. Because they are going to try to turn this as our friendship." Ereka puts a hand out, as she does whenever she needs to briefly control the universe, and says to Katrina that "it's not going to happen that way, don't worry." Trump asks if they're friends. Katrina says that they are, but that's got nothing to do with it. Really! Nothing! Trump says, "You played it very smart. You said she's a genius, she's unbelievable, she's great -- making it almost impossible for her to pick you." Katrina emphasizes that "Ereka is one of the best women here." And boy, that's saying a lot. She's better than...Omarosa? You mean she sold sixteen dollars worth of water?