Not in my life have I ever gone out for a TV show. The closest I got was a half-hearted attempt in high school in the annual musical. (Ask my wife how “well” I sing and you’ll understand why the call out was as far as I got with that one…) There was that summer camp in my elementary years at the Bloomington Library where I learned to run a TV camera and roll credits for the local government access channel. But that’s stretching…
I enjoy NBC’s “The Apprentice” featuring contestants vying for a job with billionaire developer/entrepreneur/golf course architect Donald Trump. The past three seasons have featured “celebrity” contestants vying for cash for their charity. (They’re fairly loose on the “celebrity” portion there – Rod Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois who is in a heap of legal trouble, was on this season’s show and was fired after he couldn’t even use a cell phone.) Regardless of your opinion of Donald Trump, the show is probably the most entertaining and educational of the reality TV shows around. It’s a good lesson on many of the realities of business.
I’ve watched since season 2 – enjoying the laughs and learning a lot about human nature. Season 2 featured what would have been a dream job for me going to the winner – overseeing the construction of a Pete Dye golf course along the Pacific Ocean. Of course, Mr. Trump took credit for the design of the golf course, but that’s another blog.
Sidebar… I’m fascinated by Mr. Trump’s foray into golf courses. When I was maintaining my golf blog, I wrote several articles on Mr. Trump’s adventures in golf. I received several comments from people on the articles because Trump is just the kind of guy who is able to draw a ton of attention to himself. Some good, some bad, but a lot of attention, which in turn builds his brand and makes him worth more. He’s the ultimate proof of the cliche that it doesn’t matter what they write about you as long as they spell your name right.
I subscribe to the Trump Blog – most of the blogs are not very interesting and I skip a majority of them. However, I did notice the blog on the casting call for “The Apprentice”. Mostly out of curiosity, I penciled the time in to go to the Atlanta call, which was scheduled for April 7th. They said the first 500 who showed up would be seen.
Wednesday morning arrived, and try as I might, I just couldn’t get myself out of bed at 5 AM to drive to downtown Atlanta. I was able to get going at 5:30 AM. I arrived at the Marriott Buckhead at 6:30 AM. $18 a day to park at the hotel? Well, it is across the street from Lenox Square and Phipps Plaza – the two glitziest malls in Atlanta. I figured that there’d be a line out the door and down the block by that point. To my surprise, no line.
After parking, I made my way into the hotel and came upon the line inside the hotel. Apparently the first person showed up at 3 AM. I am not that dedicated. I mean I like the show and working for The Donald would be neat, but not 3 AM neat.
The line starts here
So, there I stood in line with folks of every age – 21 (the minimum because they have champagne in the Trump Tower to sip on while The Donald cans somebody) to a lady that was in her early 60’s. (At least that’s how old she says she was – more on her later.)
I was fortunate enough to have a very nice young lady – a CPA who had managed to negotiate time off during tax season (clearly a worthy opponent) from Knoxville, TN – behind me who was conversational, which helped pass the time of the several hour process.
The Casting Call wristband
The local NBC affiliate, 11 Alive, had their traffic guy, affectionately known as “The Commuter Guy”, there to do spots from the hotel. I assume they were broadcasting for the morning news. At 7:30 AM, they herded us into elevators and upstairs. At 8:45 AM, they passed out bracelets. I got number 84. As luck would have it, that’s not a very exciting number. I digress.
They then sat us in a huge hotel conference room in rows of nine. Turns out this row was pretty important because those nine folks would be who you’d be “auditioning” with when your turn came up. So, there we sat from about 9:15 until 11:00 AM, when they moved our row from the conference room to the hallway. There were any number of characters there – one guy was attempting to sell another guy a bar in midtown. He was wheeling and dealing and more than willing to give commentary on you if you so much as looked at him. We engaged in a lively exchange for a few minutes. He was not part of our row.
Standing in line
About 11:30 AM we were called into another, smaller conference room where a casting director for The Apprentice was waiting on us. They had placed four tables together to form a square and nine seats were placed around the square. I entered the room first and greeted the casting director. We handed over our completed application, which had more waivers in it than the Love Boat leaving port.
We then were instructed to give our name, our age, our hometown, what we were doing before the recession and what we were doing now. (This season is apparently going to focus on hard luck cases as a result of the recession.) Being the good engineer, I did as instructed – in order. Most of the rest of my crowd didn’t do so well. That probably makes them better for TV.
Here’s the group, as best I can remember…
- A lady in her early 60s (she looked like she was in her 40s) from New York who claimed to be in the financial industry once upon a time.
- A lady in her early 40s who owned a small business teaching adults how to dance.
- A guy in his mid 30s who was a regional sales manager for something.
- A guy in his early 20s getting his masters degree.
- A lady who I can’t remember anything about.
- A lady in her mid 40s who was a mortgage broker and interior decorator.
- A lady in her 30s who I can’t remember much about except she apparently looked like a Real Housewife of Atlanta according to other people in the room. (I’ve not watched that show.)
- The CPA lady I mentioned above.
So, that was our group. After the introductions, the casting director explained she was going to throw out a topic for discussion and she’d evaluate us on how we handled the situation.
Our topic:
The Recession and who is responsible for it.
Great. I’m not a big blame guy – I’d rather fix the problem and keep it from happening again. Well, the first person to speak was the Real Housewife lookalike. She throws the bomb in the middle of the table right off the bat, “BUSH!”.
Yikes.
I rolled my eyes and most everybody took her to task, thankfully. Regardless of your politics, blaming one individual shows a complete lack of depth. So, off we went – everybody jockeying to make their pitch. This was a total forced conversation because you were looking to talk rather than listen, something that I’m not used to doing. In a conversation, I like to listen and ask questions. This was the total opposite. Nobody was really listening to anybody so much as trying to weasel their way in to talking in an attempt to make an impression on the casting director. So, we talked and debated for about 15-20 minutes. Finally, the casting director cut the chaos off. She then said we were going to play a game. Good. I like games!
Well, maybe not this one. It was “Who would you hire?” or “Who would you fire?” Casting director lady chooses which question you’d answer. She picks me first. Great! Surely she’s going to ask me who would I hire, right? I mean, whoever goes first should get the easy question, right? Not so much.
“Taylor, who would you fire?”
Now, in my mind, I knew I had to make a quick decision. If you’ve watched the show, a good way to get yourself in the hot seat is to hem and haw on this question. So, I quickly pointed to the interior decorator. Except, that was not who I wanted to fire! Oops! I wanted to fire the Real Housewife Lookalike for throwing the stink bomb. Yet, the ship had sailed on that decision – I had to go with my initial selection less I look like somebody who can’t make a decision. So, I, admittedly, came up with a lame excuse to fire her – something to the effect of her lack of contribution to the group. Everybody else who got that question used the old, “I don’t want to have to compete against them because they’re so strong” excuse for firing somebody. Cheap way out, if you ask me. The poor dance teacher couldn’t make up her mind – she probably took at least a minute or more of hand wringing before she finally came up with the above gem.
After all of that, the casting director sent us on our way. We were told that if we were selected, we would get a call back either that evening or the next day. It wasn’t to be this time, but it was fun and a great experience none-the-less.
