Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT All up in your grill
By Miss Alli | Season 2 | Episode 5 | Aired on 10.06.2004
In an interview, Ivana complains that Pamela tried to assign responsibility to everyone on the team besides herself (Pamela, not Ivana). She doesn't seem to realize that for a good manager, managing is a responsibility. Particularly when you're dealing with a bunch of women as difficult as these, just being in charge is its own set of headaches. Not that Ivana would know this, because when she was project manager, she avoided managing by pretending she was going to get consensus on everything instead. She also has the unfortunate habit, shared by many of the women on this team, of using the non-phrase "taking accountability," which really does not exist. There is no such thing as taking accountability. There is taking responsibility, but accountability simply is there or is not there. You can need accountability, or there can be accountability, but you do not take it or not take it. It's a great example, although far from the only one, of the way that people who spend too much time around certain kinds of business types start talking as if they're smart in a way that ultimately makes it clear that they're not. The only way you can tell is if you listen really carefully and figure out whether all of the words they're saying belong in sentences together.
And now, the discussion of price. Even though Stacy was asked to think about pricing, what she wants to do first is get Pamela to say whether she wants a high price, a low price, or a price in the middle. Of course, part of "thinking about pricing" would be recommending a high price, a low price, or a middle price, but as you may be figuring out, the one great skill Stacy has demonstrated so far is the ability to avoid responsibility. Ask yourself this: What has Stacy done over the course of this entire game of any significance, aside from being unpleasant, petty, and accusatory? What has she been responsible for that was so significant that if it had gone wrong, she would have taken responsibility for it? She has never been a project manager. She has never made an important decision. She has never made a call on her own. All she does is stand around and blame other people for everything that happens. Considering her endlessly flapping and lecturing yap, it's helpful to keep in mind that she is actually the biggest pussy on this entire team, and I actually don't mean that literally. She talks like she has all the answers, when in fact, she doesn't do anything. I wouldn't hire her to wash my floor, because she would stand there the entire time asking how I wanted it washed, how long I wanted to her to spend washing it, and exactly what steps I wanted her to go through. And if it was still dirty at the end, you'd better believe she would find a way that it was my fault for telling her how to do it the wrong way. The long and the short of it is that Stacy refuses to make a recommendation, except a sort of conditional one, in which she says that $19.99 would be fine if they want "an easy number that people seem to roll with." Now, had they chosen that price and it didn't work, you know Stacy would have gone into the boardroom and said that she took direction from Pamela about what kind of price she wanted, and she only recommended $19.99 because of the parameters that Pamela set. She would never have taken responsibility for that number, had they chosen it and it turned out to be wrong. Never.