The black sheep

[floozyfloozle]

Not particularly related to working in France but just work in general.

Was wondering what other members of the forum here think about the situation below.

Was watching "The Apprentice" tonight and I must

admit I found it rather disappointing to find that the project manager

was not given a warning on the discrimination or I guess rather the

disintegration she sort of encouraged in the team.

Basically apparently there is this girl who is of an Indian

descent, at least South Asian descent who had been disliked by the

other team members except one (let's call her B) cause of her

disappointing performance previously, let's call her A. Even though I

can't tell for sure since I didn't see the show last week.

She was trying to make it up by promoting herself to be the

project manager for the current task at the team's hand at that time,

but the way she put it as she doesn't have the experience in marketing

which is what the task was related to, she would like to take the

challenge if nobody else is going to step up.

One other team member seemed to support her, which is B actually.

But then another team member stepped up (let's call her C) to

suggest herself to be the project manager, claiming that she did have

experience in marketing and advertising so the first girl, A didn't try

to make a strong case and instead stepped down.

So then the team went to have a discussion on the mascot to create.

The task is to create a mascot for a certain brand of product.

After some brainstroming, the project manager, C divided the team

into 2. Interestingly, the one who were sort of left behind are A, B

and another girl whom I see not to fit the profile of the other team

members, let's call her D.

One other thing to note is that B at that time was still injured

and so it seems she was considered not to be useful to the team at that

time, and most likely was excluded also because of her support to A.

After the mascot was created, the ones who went with the project

manager had a little discussion among themselves that A should be the

one to wear the costume.

These 4 ladies, including the project manager went back to the

first meeting room to gang-up against A to pressure her to wear the

costume. She declined basically by reason that since it looks silly,

she thinks it would undermine her image as a businesswoman in front of

her employees and also embarrassing cause of the mascot's cartoon

image.

Basically, the team lost as the logo was thought not to have enough

representation of the company's brand nor the image the executives

would like to project nor to cover a wide range of customers.

And so later on, when the team was called to the board room to have one member to be fired, the decision was to fire A.

The reasons that were mentioned were: that she didn't step up to

promote herself to be a project manager and that she didn't make a

strong case to refuse to wear the mascot's costume which was seen as

her not contributing at all to the team's task.

I must admit it went quite ugly when A later mentioned about

religion reason to refuse wearing the costume which she didn't mention

when she was "asked" (to put it politely, I must admit I really despise

this kind of attitude especially that seems to be quite common among

girls, even though shockingly they are professionals who are supposed

to be professional...) to wear the costume. So it was later seen by

others that she lied thru her teeth to sound that her reason is strong

enough. Even though it might be true, the fact that she didn't make it

clear, was indeed a big mistake. Although, I suppose some people are

rather uncomfortable about mentioning religion understandably, even

though it is the reason for something.

But the way I see it, it doesn't seem to be the reason why the team lost.

And it seems that even later B, agreed to fire A, and the

reasons she stated were that the team wouldn't work with her in it (and

implicitly I guess cause obviously the others don't like her, at least

the 4 who seem to stick together and the others wouldn't want to go

against them) and cause she didn't make a stronger case to be the

project manager.

And I found it disappointing that the fact it was very

unprofessional of the team leader/project manager nor the other 3 to do

this seggregation/separation of the team which is still at the

beginning of the show and to obviously gang-up agains a particular

member to put her in a difficult position to be able to find her fault

to get rid of her basically.

Then again, I guess especially in a working environment, this kind

of injustice would not be mentioned for fear of going against the

majority?

[Dog]

It is TV - it is all in the editing.

I thought the first US series was the best.

[Iceni]

If this is a precis, we are glad we missed the programme.

John and

[tmto]

If it was on TV, why the need for anonymity? Or were they called A, B, C and D in the programme?