The Apprentice LA - Episode 10

Before I dive into the hideous drama you all witnessed on Sunday, I’ll rehash a scene from the airport last night. I was on my way back to LA from a brief trip to Chicago, and naturally I was late to the airport. I typically arrive at the airport 32 minutes prior to departure, which leaves me 2 crucial minutes to get my boarding pass from the kiosk before the system shuts down for that flight and refuses to issue a boarding pass. I’ve learned that arriving 29 minutes before departure is an infinitely more stressful and gross experience than arriving 32 minutes early. (Arriving 34 or more minutes early is bad too, since I end up getting my boarding pass with 2 or 3 minutes to spare, and so it doesn’t feel like a huge, dramatic victory when I get my ticket—plus, I could have done something fun or productive in those 2 or 3 minutes instead of standing there in the airport killing time. So 32 is really the only reasonable option.)

Anyway, this time I was there 31 minutes early, which is less than ideal. Worse still, it was late in the minute, so by the time I started working with the kiosk, I was in the 30th minute, and had about 45 seconds until the system would shut down access and deny me a boarding pass. As long as nothing went wrong, I’d be okay. But when I swiped my credit card, the machine explained that it couldn’t find my reservation. Fucking hell. So I got the ticket lady’s attention, and needed her to print my boarding pass immediately—and just as I was about to skillfully walk the fine line between being too rude and too casual, she said, “You’re on The Apprentice!”

Not a good time for this. The rest of the interaction went like this:

Me: Yeah (forcing a smile). Haha. The thing is, I really really need help getting my boarding pass before it cuts off the check-ins.
Her: So what’s it like being in those tents??!
Me: I didn’t mind the tents my flight leaves in exactly 30 minutes and I need my ticket and I really need your help.
Her: Okay, let me see your ID.

So I give her my ID, and instead of using it to print my ticket immediately, she held it in her hand, and asked me, “So are you still with Nicole?”

Me: Yes she’s great I really really need to get on this flight please help me with my ticket.
Her: Okay, so when does your flight leave? Can you tell me who wins?
Me: (most forced smile someone can make) No ha ha I’m not allowed to tell you ha ha my flight leaves in 29 minutes now this is a disaster.
Her: 29 minutes?! Oh, you won’t be able to check in. Should I book you on a later flight?
Me: (all face muscles simultaneously tight) Can you really not get me on the flight? Did this really just happen?
Her: No, sorry—you’re a business person you should know haha! You should get here earlier! Within 30 minutes of the flight you can’t check in! So what’s Trump like? Is he really such a jerk?!
Me: (sorrow)

I swear this is basically the exact interaction we had. Usually I would have made a scene, but I’ve been trying my utmost to avoid making scenes since this show started. So I had to contain my fury. Bad times.

Anyway—I’d like to keep procrastinating from getting into the monster that is episode 10, but I just have to make myself start. So I’ll back up to the last day of task 9, after Schwarzenegger and our interviews.

So James goes to the boardroom while Muna gets fired, and Nikki, Frank and I sit outside next to the pool, as you saw. Nikki refers to us as the 3 muskateers, and says how cool it would be if we were the final 3. The 3 of us had had that conversation multiple times before, but this time it made great TV, because of what would follow.

The way things happened in the episode in these first scenes was very accurate. While we were sitting out near the pool, the phone rang, and James summoned us inside. We all knew what the call was about.

And that scene was as tense as it looked. James narrowed it down to me and Nikki and chose Nikki.

Clearly there are a few things we need to get into here.

The first is James’ motives in choosing Nikki. Now I’m not going to pretend I know his true motives—I still don’t. But there are two possibilities: 1) James is being honest, and looking at everyone’s strengths, and making a decision based on keeping the team as strong as possible, and 2) James is being strategic as an individual trying to become the next Apprentice. It may have been one or the other or a combination—your guess is as good as mine. But here’s an explanation of each:

1) In the first case, James reasons would be that Frank and Stephanie had each carved out a very specific niche for themselves, and losing one of them would leave us needing to replace their role. Frank built stuff in a lot of episodes and often got banners and signs, and Stephanie was often the accountant, and kept timelines, and usually did the presentation when there was one to do. James then grouped me and Nikki together as “creative”. This isn’t exactly right. I was definitely under that umbrella—I was a prominent part of every brainstorming session. Nikki, though, was more difficult to classify. She was definitely valuable to the team, but her value was not as easy to pin down as some of the rest. I’d say her most consistent strength was her sales/people skills, which were a huge part of our El Pollo Loco and Lexus task wins, and came very near to winning us the Honey task. Her creativity was the main reason we won Softscrub, her constant positive energy lifted the team every task, and she was one of the few that didn’t think at all about the boardroom during tasks. Looking at all of that, she’d be one of my first picks if I were picking a team based on hindsight.

But her strengths weren’t as well-defined as Frank’s or Stephanie’s. I had found my own niche in the brainstorming sessions, and Nikki ended up being the odd man out (James was a lot like Nikki in that he had no niche and did something different in every task, but he wasn't about to send himself over).

2) In the second case (individual strategy), the picture looked like this—you had an obvious Tim-Nikki alliance, and a less obvious but strong James-Steph alliance (which still stemmed, I believe, from the Arrow “civil war” task 3). Frank, on one hand, was one of the “3 muskateers” and had very strong friendships with both me and Nikki, but on the other hand had become buddies with James through 5 tasks of mutual Surya-bashing.

As we’ve seen, try as Trump might to say that he doesn’t have to listen to a consensus in the boardroom, this show is a lot more like Survivor than he’d like to admit. So far, the majority was against Frank in episode 1, then Carey, then Michelle, then Marisa, then Surya, then Aimee, then Jen, then Surya, then Muna, and then Angela. Only Frank in episode 1 and Surya in episode 5 overcame a majority. And those were weak majorities (Frank was down 6-3, and Surya was down 3-2). 8 of 10 boardrooms had gone in the way of the majority, and every consensus attack had ended with Trump siding with the consensus.

So, allies being as crucial as they are, you better believe James was aware that Steph was a full ally, Frank was half an ally, and Nikki and I were no ally to him. In this light, it was an obvious strategic move for him to choose me or Nikki. (Further, Nikki and I had both attacked him in previous boardrooms.)

Again, I don’t know which of these two motives played a bigger factor, but both possible motives lead to Nikki going to Kinetic.

Now, from my point of view, this was terrible for two reasons—

1) For the same reasons it helped James, it was a huge blow to my position of strength within the team to lose Nikki. With her there, even if Frank went against me in a boardroom, it would never be a consensus, and Frank would be more likely to show loyalty if he’d be joining into a 3-2 majority.

2) We had been living this weird life for a month. A game of monopoly goes on for 3 hours, and that’s a long game. This game was in its 700th hour—that’s a long fucking game. And as I mentioned in episode 1, it felt more important than a game—it felt like it mattered a lot in real life. And after a month of being on Team Arrow, against Team Kinetic, all I knew in the world was that James, Steph, Frank, and Nikki were on my team, and those fucking girls were on the other team. It was so black and white in my mind, like Red Sox vs. Yankees. Losing anyone to the bad guys would have seemed earth-rattling.

Then, add into the equation that Nikki was by far my closest friend in this process. James and I and Steph and I were close by this point, but there was a limit to how close we could get, considering that deep down, we knew we’d probably have to be attacking each other at some point. But Nikki and I didn’t have that twisted element between us—we were 100% teammates, team-wise and individual-wise. It’s rare that anyone on this show can say that.

For most people, filming The Apprentice a lonely process—sure, you have a team and you make friends, but deep down, everyone is in it for themselves, and everyone on both teams is an enemy in the end. But with me and Nikki it wasn’t like that—I wouldn’t have attacked her in a boardroom under any circumstances, including a situation in which it would lead to my own firing. So I didn’t have to be lonely—I had someone I could actually, 100% trust. As a result, we’d tell each other when we felt vulnerable heading into a boardroom, and when we were exhausted with the process, etc. And there was nothing we bonded over more than our hatred of Kinetic—I always felt like she actually hated the other team more than anyone, since she was so ultra-competitive.

So—all that said—her leaving was not good news for me. I lost my secure power position within the team—only two tasks ago, I had had two people in Surya and Nicole who I knew had my back (Surya because he hated everyone else on the team so much, and treated me as his only friend), and suddenly, both he and Nikki are gone and I’m suddenly a typical vulnerable, solo Apprentice cast member. And, after a month going through every aspect of this alongside Nikki, I had lost my best friend in the process—and not to a firing. I lost her to the other team, which is far worse. Suddenly, she was the enemy.

Now—I know how ridiculously over-dramatic this must sound. But remember, I wasn’t living in the real world at the time. I was 4 weeks deep in a competition with the same people, to the point that I could hardly picture anyone from my “previous” life—this game was everything.

So, you ask—if it was so horrible to lose her, why, oh why, did you just stand there when James called her name out?

Unlike James’ motives, which are unknown in these circles—this one, I can answer.

To be honest, it didn’t even cross my mind to say something at that moment. I wasn’t standing there restraining from saying something, or trying to gather the courage to speak up and failing—it didn’t cross my mind at all.

This was how I saw it: after a month together, Nikki and I had drifted into somewhat of a relationship. But we were also both completely aware that if we were not very careful, our relationship would doom us as far as this process goes. In a game in which everyone has a keen sense of smell for blood—this was a wound ready to burst open. But we were both being very smart about it—we never put in anything less than 100% on a task, and never let our focus turn toward each other while a task was going on. We didn’t go off alone for hours on interview day and alienate the rest of the team. And though it seems like we made out liberally, we had only kissed that one time, and no one had seen that. Because of our efforts, the wound was not gushing hypothetical blood—it was always ready to burst open, but it hadn’t as of yet. And by golly, we might just make it to the end without the whole thing biting us in the ass.

Now, we had never had an actual “what if” discussion with each other, because the answers seemed obvious. The main “what if” would regard the boardroom—what if it came down to Trump saying, “one of you two will be fired?” This wasn’t discussed because it was obvious. We’d refuse to attack each other and let him decide. If I was feeling particularly chivalrous, maybe just maybe I’d sacrifice myself, but I didn’t think this was implied in our mutual understanding—the natural move would be to refuse to attack each other and let Trump do what his big yellow head felt like doing.

There was the other version of this “what if”—what if one of us was the obvious consensus firee? This one was easy too—if she made a ghastly error and everyone was attacking her, I’d defend her, period.

And there was that one other “what if”—what if we end up on separate teams? This one seemed just as simple to me—we take it in stride, and hope that we’re both the last two people standing in the finals. The thought of attempting to openly prevent this circumstance from occurring never crossed my mind. In fact, I would have equated that to taking a romantic walk with her while the rest of the team was brainstorming during a task—both, in my mind, would be double suicide. Jumping in and dissenting against James’ decision to transfer Nikki would have been, in my mind, tearing open that fragile wound, and giving the rest of the team the scent of blood, and the ability to say to Trump, “Tim and Nikki are more concerned with their relationship than a) the well being of the team, and b) their mission to get a job with you.” Call me crazy, but in this game, that strikes me as a death wish.

And so, when James kicked Nikki to the curb, it seemed like a no-brainer to do exactly what I did—refrain at all costs from allowing my emotions and personal feelings to spill out into the open and poison both of our chances to win.

Two other incentives to keep quiet: 1) being on separate teams, as frustrating as it might be, would prevent us from having to ever end up in a boardroom pitted against each other (which would realistically end with us both being fired for refusing to attack), and 2) speaking up would have done nothing to change the situation—Trump specifically told James to make the decision. My trying to change that process to a vote or a drawing of straws would have been no different than my suggesting that I should be PM for task 10 because James already his chance in task 9, regardless of the fact that Trump declared that the winning PM would stay PM. In this game, Trump’s word is the rulebook.

If the situation were switched (James picks me), and she had spoken up, I would have thought in my head, “What are you doing?” knowing that she just let go of the fragile defense we had crafted for ourselves—namely, the ability to say in the boardroom, with conviction, “We never let our relationship affect the team or interfere with a task.” And the second we can’t say that, we’re in big trouble.

And since her feelings regarding my reaction to this situation only came up for the first time 24 hours later, I didn’t have an ounce of doubt during or after the fact.

So Nikki packs up her stuff, gives me a hug, and gets really angry at James on her way out. On one hand, it’s hard to say James should be criticized for what he did—he had to pick someone, everyone was strong, and someone had to get hurt. On the other hand, it’s easy to understand Nikki’s reaction—he had kicked her off the team she had been on for a month. Trust me on this—that girl does not consider herself the weakest link in any situation. In her mind, James had personally insulted her, severed her ties with me and Frank, and left her in a suddenly vulnerable situation across the hedge, as the outsider.

But once she departed, she handled her new situation beautifully. Within 20 minutes of disappearing from the house, we could hear her forcing shots on her 3 new teammates, and when Frank and I went over to see how she was doing, she had her arm around Heidi and they seemed like they had been friends for weeks. She didn’t go crying in a corner—she said “fuck it—this is my new team,” and acted accordingly. And as frustrating as the situation was for me at the time, seeing her laughing and doing fine over there, it made me feel better too—maybe this wasn’t as upsetting as I was making it out to be. Maybe this wasn’t that big of a deal.

So, when I woke up the next morning, I tried to get into “Nikki and I are really competitive with each other—this is all a big game, and we’re just having fun, and we really want to beat each other” mode.

But to be honest, that was mostly a front. I hated knowing she was on the other team. In the van ride to the task announcement, I looked at James, Steph, and Frank, and felt what they had been feeling this whole time—I was in this solo. Suddenly I could trust no one fully. The one person I had been able to trust was now putting all her energy into beating me. It was hard to pretend everything was fine, and put on a smile, and say “let’s fucking win this one.” But I tried my darnedest. I remember thinking, multiple times, “Suck it up, for fuck’s sake! She’s not even upset about it—what the hell’s wrong with you! Get over it!”

So it was obviously hideous to arrive at task announcement and see her standing there with the evil Kinetic girls. It was the exact feeling I had when I first saw Adam Vinatieri in a Colts uniform, only more real and more personal.

So we sit there, and Trump says how surprised he is that we “let Nikki go”, and then told Nikki to “kick our asses.” He was openly rooting for them.

So we’re gonna sell special passes at Universal Studios. Not the regular $59 tickets—we’d only be selling annual passes ($69), “front of the line” passes ($35), and the regular ticket + a “front of the line” pass package ($94). We’d each be serving as a walking cash register, because we’d be wearing “Ad-Walker” suits, a new technology that would allow us to swipe a credit card on our suit.

Because of the time allotted to the Tim-Nikki saga in this episode, a lot of this actual task was neglected by the editors. But it was a) packed with strategy, b) the most intense battle all season, and c) by far the most difficult, grueling “gametime” (sales period) we’d be a part of.

We left Trump and headed to Universal. Frank and I took a walk outside to survey the area. We both determined that the only place to be the following day would be in the big open area in front of the grand entrance. These people were on their way to buy tickets already, we’d just have to get them to buy from us. We noticed where the most central spot was, and chose that as our location.

We finished our observations, and headed to the war room and met the other two and began brainstorming. I was big on the idea to have a physical station—a base where we could get people to aimlessly walk over, thinking it was an official Universal ticket counter. The idea was that everyone there was already sold on the park, so we’d just have to convince them of two things: that we were as legit as the Universal ticket booths, and that it was a good idea to spend extra money on either the annual pass or the front of the line pass. If we couldn’t convince someone to pay more than the typical $59 day pass, we’d be out of luck. Finally, we’d be on the same sales floor as the other team (assuming they chose the same obvious location in which to sell), so if both teams could successfully sell, it would come down to who worked harder. So, my thought was that a station could do two of these things—it could make us seem like a legit Universal booth that people would mindlessly walk over to, and it could give us a crucial edge over the other team, if they didn’t do the same thing.

We kept thinking—how else could we get an edge over Kinetic? Someone thought of the idea to spend some of our seed money on water, and hand out free waters to people who bought from us, since it was the middle of the summer and people would be hot and thirsty, and water fountains were hard to come by there.

We’d get a bull horn to advertise what we were selling and to tell people to come to our station for a free water. The problem with that idea was that it could help Kinetic almost as much as it could help us. So I suggested we all wear the same color shirts, so we could yell into the bull horn to “find someone in a green shirt to get a discount.”

We’d make big signs. We’d get a tent to cool the customers from the heat. We’d make banners.

I thought of the idea to hire people to work for us, who we could pay to walk around and bring customers to us, and also to try to mess up the other team’s sales.

So, with all these ideas, our next step was a scheduled meeting with two Universal Studios executives. This was one of those times when the executive meeting could be really important, because the limits on what we were allowed to do were hazy, so if we were smart we could gain advantages over the other team. We were pushing the limits, asking what we were allowed to do. We asked if we could hire people to work for us, and they said yes. We asked if we could give stuff away, like water, and they said yes. We asked if we could wear Universal uniforms (which would give us instant credibility)—they said no. We asked if we could have a physical kiosk and a tent—they said yes, as long as it was classy and didn’t have a “carnival” feel. Then, as a long shot, I asked if they’d let us sell the three tickets at a slight discount, since it was a special event. To my excitement, they paused, and actually discussed it! And then they said that we could sell each of our three passes at $5 off! This was huge. Talk about an edge—if Kinetic’s prices were higher, we’d publicize that fact to everyone through the bull horn all day, and we’d demolish them. We all looked at each other, giddy, realizing how huge that was—there was a chance Kinetic asked for the same thing, in which case we'd again be on equal footing—but either way it was huge. If we didn’t ask for it and they did, we’d get killed, and now we were safe against that. And on the other hand, if they didn’t ask for discount and we did, we’d win. We asked if we could make that privilege exclusive to our team, and they said no. So we’d have to hope that Kinetic didn’t think to ask for it.

And for the rest of the day, we had two game plans—1) how we’d proceed if only we had the discount to offer, and 2) how we’d proceed if they asked for that same discount and rendered that edge moot.

So we left the meeting, and started getting these things together. I went with someone (I forget who) to try to recruit our “help.” After trying a few people and failing, I went in a Universal Studios Gift Shop, and asked the manager if he’d let us recruit his employees, and he said he would. So we found 6 employees who were willing to do it for our offer of $75 each for the 5 hour period (later on, we’d run into budget problems, and have to call them to tell them only 4 people could come). The sales period would run from 9am to 2pm, so we told them to meet us at 8:30am the next day outside the grand entrance.

We went back to the war room, and James and I stayed there while Frank and Steph left to get the tent, banners, etc. (Ladies and Gentlemen, Frank’s niche!). James made the video that would play again and again on our chests (something we all decided not to dedicate too much time to since no one would have time to watch it), while I tried to make a bulk sale. I called tour companies, trying to get them to buy 50 or 100 tickets, using our discount as bait.

After a few calls, I reached the owner of a local tour company, who said he had worked with Universal before. I snapped to get James’ attention—this could be huge. I said we were selling packages of 50 for normal price and 100 at a discount. And he sounded interested! He asked us what the discount would be for the bulk sale, and I proudly declared that he’d get five dollars off each ticket. To which he got mad rude, and replied that Universal typically sells tickets to tour companies at 50% off. And that was the end of my bulk sales attempts.

James and I hung around there until about 10, kind of killing time, since the other two weren’t back yet. James perfected the video, while I typed up a list of potential sales pitches for the team to look over that night.

Writing that just now, I thought I’d go into my pile of Apprentice memorabilia, and see if I can find that printout. I didn’t find it, but I did find my notepad from this task, and I thought I’d type up everything I wrote in it during this task. I have no idea if this will be at all interesting to read. But I’m kind of interested in typing it, so I’m going to. I think it will give you an idea of how much work actually goes into a task vs. how little is shown. Obviously, feel free to skip over this if you’re not interested (incidentally, while searching through the bag, I found few other gems: the Softscrub wedding ring, a Sue Bee honey bottle, an “Arrow” sign, a pad from Lexus filled with pages of product knowledge notes, and a typed up “product knowledge summary sheet” that I had given my teammates which summed up and categorized 12 pages of notes into 2 typed pages—then I remembered that all they showed on that task was me snuggling on the couch with Nikki, and I cursed some anonymous, unknown editor. I also found a stack of computer printouts that would have served as my notes for the disgusting tour bus task had the microphone not broken. The first thing in the pages of notes? A little blurb about the Chateau Marmont, and how it gained its fame when John Belushi died there “as a result of overdosing on a speedball full of heroin and cocaine.” And sitting there, I died a little bit inside).

So anyway, here are the contents of this pad, verbatim (I don’t know what half of it means):

Page 1:

-bulk → tourbus company
-bull horn – colored outfits, same color for everyone
-2 people on mobile force, 2 people stationary in tent
-get help??
-location
-kiosk
-trolley
-Universal coach line

Page 2:

Meeting with Executives
-Larry Kurzweil, Pres + CEO
-Mark Mears, Sr. VP of Sales and Marketing

-when have you used AdWalker?
-details of four packages we can offer?
-when have you sold to tour companies?
----children

world’s largest movie studio/theme park
-"entertainment capital of LA"
-best of Universal Pic’s, NBC, largest cinemas, amphitheatre
-415 acre property

peak time?
Children?
AdWalker?
Tour companies?
Biggest sellers?

Studio tour + theme park

Single day ticket- $59

25,000 guests during peak time
-can buy multiple front-of-line add-ons

Page 3:

-# of sales channels
-pre-sold tickets?

3 major parking facilities
Lankershim-1/3 of cars
All converge at front gates

2 hotels: Sheraton, Hilton
--sales relationships
--people there are already sold

***$5 off annual
***$10 off front of lines

4 products:
-single day ticket –60%
-annual pass- 20%/20% - $69 --$64!
-front of the line + single day -$99.95= $89.85!
-deluxe annual pass upgrade (no black out dates)- $30 --$25!
-add-on - $40 - $30!

-more of a sales pitch than adwalker fine!
-tent is okay

25,000 people
40% local
25% international
35% for rest of US

peak sales period: 9-11:30, 10-11 sweet spot
sales flow at front gate
pre-ticketed = later

Page 4:

-12-2 on citywalk
--re-visitors
--employees
-lots of employees on hilltop
no product like that

within park, a couple of current facilities
--Hollywood ticket outlet, next to waterworld = one of our competitors

“state fair look” vs. “world class theme park”
→no carnival look (tents)

hats + shirts – bright?
-new rides—fast + furious – extensive revamp (first since 96)
---waterworld
---wetter than ever Jurassic Park—80 foot plunge—best water drop on planet

-#1 rated attraction- Revenge of Mummy rollercoaster ride - 0-60 in no time flat- exhilarating
#1 often visited attraction is Studio Tour—45 minutes—but not just a tour

waterworld feels like you’re in a movie

[end of executive meeting]

Page 5:

Tour buses
-tour buses
-2 hotels
-blowhorns
-4 mic’s
-canopy
-locations
→inside for tent, outsent for tent

-green shirts
→$5, $10 off
“discount tickets”
yellow banner

Sheraton 818 980 1212
Hilton 818 506 2500

1-day park

-Hard Rock
-Fountain Court
-Globe area of Universal

single 54
annual 64
deluxe add-on 25

Page 6:

989-5732
-fannypacks for cash

Concerns
-audibles: -move: Jurassic/Mummy lines – Hollywood ticket counter
-nix discount
-help stand in front of them
-if both have a constant flow, discount loses, less money overall
-can Kinetic change their price in the middle?

Tent, help, signage, giveaway(s), coupons, bullhorns

Galadesign888@hotmail
James 818 400 5649

Page 7:

-video
-phone calls

[diagram of grand entrance]

Page 8:

Bulk Sales Log
Hollywood Tours – 800-789 9575 – message
Los Angeles Sightseeing – 310-458-0257 – Angela—till 11
Starline Tours – 323-463-3333- Manager Gwen – in tom. @ 8am
VIP Tours
LA Tours – 323-460-6490- 9am-5pm- message
Dearly Departed Tours – 323-466-3690- manager Scott in tom. morn, left message
LA Tours + Sightseeing – 323-937-3361- guy said he’d call manager, manager in @ 9am
Bestway Sightseeing Tours – 323- 939-8315
A Ju Tours Inc- 213-388-7000 – Henry, manager
Take My Mother Please Tours – 323-733-0870 – message
Wonder Bus Sightseeing Tours – 323-469-9860
Di Amore – 213-624-2422
Redline Tours – 323-462-7400, 323-402-1074


Printer: 818 415 8255

Page 9:
Deluxe Pass: $25 –30
Annual: $64—69
Annual Pass w/ Deluxe: 89—99
Single Day + FOL: 89.95—99.95
FOL: 30-40
Annual + FOL 94-109
Deluxe Annual + FOL 119—139


So that’s my pad from Universal. I also found a small yellow flyer I had made up, which says:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Universal Studios
S P E C I A L D I S C O U N T
***TODAY ONLY (6/30/06)***

$20 OFF!! Annual Pass with Deluxe Upgrade + Front of the Line Pass
$15 OFF!! Annual Pass + Front of the Line Pass
$10 OFF!! Single Admission with Front of the Line Pass
$10 OFF!! Annual Pass with Deluxe Upgrade
$5 OFF!! Annual Pass OR Front of the Line Pass
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Typing all that just now was incredibly, incredibly tedious.

Anyway, since Steph and Frank are still out, we decide to meet them back at the house. On the ride back, James and I had a nice heart to heart, and I said I was envious that he was so happily married, and he was saying it’s the best thing that will ever happen to me, etc. etc. (I’m actually surprised that they didn’t air any of that). James and I have little in common and probably would never have been friends had we met in the real world, but after a month, we were actually buddies. And Steph was basically my mother, Frank was fully my brother, and Nikki was my girlfriend. What a weird month.

So we get back to the house, and have a “meeting on Frank’s bed” (a line of mine that made the episode that I could have done without). I gave them my type-up of sales strategies, and we talked about how this is the first time both teams would be on the same sales floor simultaneously, and how intense that would be, and I said I’d fight dirty as long as we won.

And under all this competitiveness, Nikki was definitely on my mind. I wanted to go out to the hedge and say hi to her, but again, remember that fragile wound. This was mid-task. I was thinking, whatever you do, don’t do that mid-task. So I didn’t, and I went to bed.

The next morning (day 2 of task 10, day 29 overall), we woke up around 5am and headed back to Universal. We set everything up, and around 8:30, Kinetic arrived. We were hoping that they would be dumb enough to deploy 2 of their people elsewhere, but alas, all 4 were there. And they were wearing rollerblades. This was surprising. And I thought they looked hot—which didn’t bode well for all the doofuses on our team. But the biggest piece of info was on their sign—did they get the discount? And we studied their sign intently, as they studied ours, and both teams were let down—both teams had the discount. Oh well. But they were noticeably shaken up when they saw our whole huge set-up.

At 8:45 our 4 helping hands that we had recruited the day before arrived. I brought them aside and told them they had two duties—1) sell people on what we were selling, and then bring them over to us so we could make the actual sale, and 2) annoy Kinetic and try to mess with their sales. I went so far as to assign each of the four of them to their own member of Kinetic. I told them to stay within 20 feet of their assigned Kinetic member, and try to convince potential Kinetic customers to buy from the normal entrance, or even better, to buy from us (if they broke up a Kinetic sale, it was equivalent to us making one sale—if they broke up a Kinetic sale and brought them to us for the sale, it was equivalent to two sales). I also told them that under absolutely no circumstances were they to physically touch a Kinetic member or say any profanities or say anything mean or inappropriate. (In the end, these four were awesome. They worked incredibly hard for us for 5 straight hours, and if you ask anyone of the 8 of us, that was one of the biggest factors that separated the two teams. Kinetic hated them. And after we won, we started talking about how great they were, and we almost all started crying thinking about how much effort they gave us. I may start crying right now just thinking about it).

We were then trained quickly on how to use the AdWalker suits. It was a bit overcomplicated, and it hit me that these things fucking up would be a huge factor in this task. Also, it was a very very hot sunny day, and huge, heavy, black vests were not ideal.

Then, at 8:58am, literally, one of the executives came over to us, and told us we had to take the tent down, since it wasn’t enough in the spirit of Universal.

This was infuriating.

First, we had been told we could do this, and it had no carnival feel whatsoever—just a simple white canopy. Two, they waited until now to tell us?? 2 minutes before the task starts?? So we frantically take the tent down, and end up getting a late start, while Kinetic was selling. Miserable. This, if you ask me, is the work of the producers, adding drama.

So around 9:10, we started selling. With James manning the kiosk, I quickly decided my time was better spent walking around. And so, in the blazing heat, the 8 of us sold, non-stop, for five hours. It was all about will power. If one team is selling just as hard and fast in the 4th hour as they were in the 1st, and the other team slows down a bit, the first team wins. So we had to keep up the adrenaline and smiles and clever sales pitches for 5 straight hours. Plus, we were all aware that the individual cash registers would allow Trump to bring out the individual sales totals in the boardroom, which added to the stress and offered even more incentive to sell as hard as possible.

Selling well for such a long time in such shitty conditions is so hard because not only do you have to spend the whole time standing and walking around fast and not taking any breaks, but you have to remain smiling, and friendly, and charming as well, even though your body is in severe misery. (I remember at one point feeling like I was about to collapse out of dehydration and exhaustion, and then I found out that we were 1.5 hours into the task, with 3.5 to go. Yikes.)

Anyway, I began to fine-tune my sales pitch, and realized quickly that by far our best sell was the front of the line pass, which I could get anyone to buy by saying that without one, you’ll be waiting in 45 minute lines all day, and with one, the lines will be 5 minutes, so you’ll do 4 times as many rides with one. No one could resist that sales pitch. Not even you.

And more than once, I messed up one of Heidi’s sales pitches, and I messed up Angela and Nicole as well (you saw this one). Not only do I not regret this tactic, but I find it completely hilarious. The funniest way I kept messing Heidi up is I’d walk over to her and pretend that she and I were working together, and I’d hear her selling a front of the line pass, and say to her in a voice the customers could hear, “Don’t sell those anymore, I heard that so many people inside have them that those lines are just as long as the normal ones.” And then she’d lose the sale. That’s funny. I’d also see the help standing 10 feet away from one of the Kinetic girls during a sale, yelling, “NO! NO! DON’T BUY FROM THEM, IT’S THE SAME PRICE FOR THE GUYS WITH THE GREEN SHIRTS BUT THEY’LL GIVE YOU A FREE WATER.” And the Kinetic girls wanted to kill those four people. Again, funny.

Quite simply, Arrow had a better game plan and was more competitive on this one. The editing focused on our dirty fighting approach, but there were a ton of reasons we won this task.

Anyway, as I mentioned, this was far and away the most grueling 5 hours of the month for all of us. Nikki has permanent scars around her angles from the rollerblades digging into her. I had blisters on my feet for weeks afterwards. And when we finally took off our adwalker vests, we were soaked in sweat (and they were very adamant about labeling whose vest was whose, which confirmed my belief that they were going to bring up the individual sales).

So we had a long lockdown after the task, during which Frank kept sleeping with his eyes half open. He does this a lot, but I remember that time being particularly disconcerting.

And eventually, we head back to the house for the boardroom. We go in and Trump gets into the whole “how did you let her go?” thing again about Nikki, but this time it’s directed at me, not the team. Since in that situation I can’t explain the whole weird fragile wound idea that I explained to you, I tell him that it was a PM decision and it was not in the spirit of the team to put my personal feelings in front of the team, and that I wouldn’t have wanted her to say anything if it had been the other way around, and that I wouldn’t have sent her if it were my decision, blah blah blah. And he seems to understand, saying, “I guess I just think it’s a nice-looking couple” and shrugging. Ivanka announces the results:

Kinetic: $24,XXX
Arrow: $31,XXX

HUGE. I was so immersed in my own world during the task I didn’t have much of a sense of how anyone else sold, so I had no idea if we won or not.

I also wasn’t worried for Nikki (though if I had known the rollerblade thing was her idea at the time I would have been) because it seemed to all of us that Kristine had sold horribly. Every time I saw her she was trying half-heartedly and customers were not responding to her. And Nikki and Heidi both seemed to be selling well.

Then Trump admits once again that he’s surprised we won: “What’s going on here??” he asks. We had talked about this as a team earlier in the day and decided it was frustrating that he still seems to think that Kinetic is 2-0 and Arrow is 0-2. In fact, we had won 4 of the last 5 and 5 of the last 7 tasks. We were dominating Kinetic. And so I voiced that, saying it was time to reevaluated who the real stars were. Kind of an awesome line, I have to say. This wasn’t really a shot at Nikki, since I referred to the 5 of the last 7 stat, which includes Nikki. It was mainly a shot at Heidi and Angela, who Trump praises constantly.

Then, Angela brings up the fact that we were slimy car salesmen all day.

A note about fighting dirty—I’ve seen this show enough times to know that Trump loves fighting dirty, and would not criticize this tactic. If it’s within the rules to hire people to annoy Kinetic and mess up their sales, why the hell not? Suggesting that there’s some moral code that we should have all been following is like suggesting that a good, moral baseball team should never steal bases, and those that do are embarrassing the league. If we hired people to physically assault the other team or something over the line, that would be a different story. But we never broke a rule—we simply took the competitive spirit all the way to the edge. Angela later commented that if it were a qualitative task, they would have won. A dumb thing to say—if it were a qualitative task, we would have approached it completely differently.

So I left that boardroom feeling strong as a team, strong within my team, on fine terms with Nikki, I was looking good in Trump’s eyes, and I believed that Nikki was safe boardroom-wise. Hell, this whole team switch wasn’t even that big a deal. I’d get to talk to her that night.

Now take every sentence in the above paragraph, and say the exact opposite, and that was the reality of the situation.

We went back to the house, and had a drink, and Frank was yelling to the girls how he wanted them to come over to our side and party, and then Nikki called me and Frank over to the hedge, and we talked about the task. They made it look like she called us over to confront us, but that didn’t start until a few minutes into the conversation. When she first started with the whole “I’m disappointed that you guys didn’t stand up for me when James kicked me off” thing, she was almost saying it in a joking manner, but as we talked about it, it became clear that she was actually upset about this and really confronting us about it. And she began to direct the comments more at me than at Frank, and it soon escalated into her fully calling me out for not sticking up for her, and how hurt she was, and the whole time, Kristine and Heidi were standing at her sides.

This caught me completely off-guard.

My first thought was, “I can’t believe she’s starting a fight right now, with one week left in the filming.” But then two far more infuriating thoughts came into my mind:

1) After spending 4 weeks with me, and a day and a half with Kinetic, she was calling me out in front of those girls. It was hideously disrespectful. To make things much worse, Heidi and Kristine were saying things like, “She just wanted you to stand up for her,” and “You sold her out.” Imagine, for a second, how enraging that would be.

2) She wasn’t mad at me at all when it first happened, and only now, after Trump got the idea in her head, and then she found out she lost, does she start in with this. It was like being a sore loser times 10—she had lost the task, so she’d defeat me in this way instead.

Now—after 9 months of dating Nikki and 40 cumulative hours of talking about this task with her, I a) understand her point of view in the whole thing better, and b) actually believe her when she says that she was mad at the time it happened, and that her bringing it up had nothing to do with Trump saying something. The only thing I still hold her to is the fact that she did it with her little gang of middle school girls behind her.

But at the time, I was really fucking angry. So I walked away and sat there next to the pool, and James and Frank sat there with me and said they agreed with me. Then they started getting drunk and wanted me to play some fucking game with them rolling a grapefruit around the house, and I was in no mood, and I went to sleep.

Not a pleasant night.

Early the next morning, we went on our helicopter ride. This was no fun because 1) I was 100% preoccupied with the fucking Nikki thing and didn’t want to be there, 2) it wasn’t an especially great reward, and 3) it was 120 degrees in the cabin (something went wrong with the air conditioner).

You know those times when you’re in a fight with your boy/girlfriend, and part of you is mad and wants them to know that, and part of you sees their side and feels bad and wants them to know that too, and all of you just wants to talk to them about it?

This was like that. Except we were on fucking national TV. And we were on different teams. And we were separated by a hedge. And it was impossible to talk without teammates around, let alone cameras.

And normally, you can give it some breathing room, and talk about it in a day or two. But here, I knew we’d be on another task the next day, and I was anxious to have a chat about things.

[Quick note to self: getting involved with someone on a reality show may have a downside]

So I got back from the helicopter ride, and went to the hedge to see if she was there. Of course, Kristine tells me happily that Nikki just left for her 3 hour formal interview. Then Kristine says, “I don’t know what you did—when she got here she liked you, but she hates you now.” If I could have wished for a huge fucking gorilla to charge in and maul Kristine, I would have.

So I hang around, and talk to Frank’s head, and when Nikki gets back I head out to talk to her. You saw the beginning of this interaction, where I’m saying that I was mad last night, but that I want to put this behind us.

What actually happened was, after talking for a bit, Nikki said she understood my point and realized why I hadn’t said something, and I acknowledged her side, and told her never to fucking do that again with those fucking girls standing there, and we ended up laughing about it, and that was that. Then we talked about the boardroom, and she said that she had thought of the rollerblades idea, and I started to think she may be in trouble after all.

What they showed, though, was the very beginning of this interaction, and then they cut to Nikki’s long interview, where she said how angry she was and that she didn’t want to talk to me, and then they showed me walking away with my hand on my head.

Editors 1, Tim 0.

This week’s webisode shows a more accurate version of the whole absurd drama:
http://apprentice.tv.yahoo.com/trump/06/candidates/tim_videos.html#1643915

So I went in and we had dinner, and the conversation turned to what James would do in the boardroom. They didn’t really make this clear, but Stephanie and Frank were persuading James to completely go after Nikki, saying that she was the strongest on their team.

This was gross. Frank and Nikki were best buddies, and she would have been 10 times more hurt to hear this conversation than she was two days earlier. And my thought process was that all four of those Kinetic girls are strong players, and I don’t really understand why it really affects Arrow who goes home. Frank and Stephanie were treating Nikki like a stranger, and I said fuck it, and decided to give Nikki a little tip to help her in the boardroom.

They showed it as if I left in the middle of this conversation, and Frank was like, “what the fuck?” But actually, before this happened the conversation between me and Frank took place in which I said I was indeed not being rational and wanted James to defend Nikki. Frank said that was ridiculous, that she was on the other team now, etc. etc. Then I went out to talk to her, and Frank was like, “what the fuck?”

Now I understand that it’s difficult to find a defense of me here—plain and simple, that was stupid and unnecessary. After all of my “fragile wound” talk, I really should have just called it a night and gone to sleep. What can I say? It was a long fucking two days, and let my emotions get the best of me.

That said, Frank was criticizing me of being disloyal to the team. And he’s right. But I was showing actual human loyalty—we had spent 9 tasks with Nikki, and game show aside, a truly loyal person would have a hard time just suddenly rooting for her to get fired.

What a silly TV show.

Anyway, watching the boardroom, I knew I’d be seeing Trump slander me to no end (from people there who had told me), but it still made me angry. Trump had no idea what he was talking about.

As for Angela, she fell victim to a consensus attack—in hindsight she knows she should have attacked Kristine, because she’s since learned that when they were sent out of the room, both James and Ivanka said Kristine should be the one to go. Plus, they did bring out the individual sales totals for the 4 of them. Heidi was the top, and Kristine was the bottom, but not by a large enough margin to warrant an automatic firing. But Angela went after Nikki instead, and it didn’t work for her.

Then, at the very end, Nikki did that weird thing where she asked Trump to ask me if I wanted to go to Kinetic, to “see what my response will be.” This seems like she’s doing some odd test, but her explanation is that after talking to me earlier that day and hearing my point of view, she felt really bad hearing Trump trash me, realizing that I was suddenly out of Trump’s favor because of it, and wanted to show Trump that I was still loyal to her. A bit far-fetched, I must say.

So that’s how we end. I managed to wrap up these three days with Arrow accusing me of being loyal to Nikki over them, Kinetic accusing me of being loyal to Arrow over Nikki, and Trump accusing me of basically being Hitler.

Great job, Tim.

We’ve got a lot of work to do.