Deep Green Crystals

So the task is to manage Planet Hollywood in Times Square for a night. Again men against women. The team that gets the largest percentage improvement on the daily top line gross as compared to the same day the year before wins. At the outset again I pick the women. It is simple, they just need to unbutton their shirts and sell booze, the highest margin deal in the place. That turns out to be exactly what they do! They work it. They come to this realization about half way through the night after trying $5 off coupons and prowling the line for half price theatre tickets, but people receive so much of that crap in Times Square that none of it works. So they fall back to sex which has worked well for them in the past. In fact they start drinking with patrons. And the REAL manager sees the girls drinking on the job and tries to say something about that not being up to "planet hollywood standards" but hell, the money is flowing in!

The men have half the team members and again start off trying to do all the work themselves. I am totally surprised that none of the teams have figured out the basic idea of management called delegation. What about management leverage? Where does it say that only your team can work? Why not hire people? Or you in fact have a complete staff or the restaurant. Why not leverage them with management skills? Donald wants a President of his company out of this, not a waiter or a shooter girl! I get a glimmer that the men may be on the right track when they institute an hourly incentive program for the wait staff. But they don't go far enough. The goal is only top line. Old Don didn't say nutt'n about bottom line. So I personally would have gone hog wild on expenses to blow out the top line. Alex and I agree that a free food buffet with drink specials would have been the ticket. After a long day and the first part of the night, the men realize they aren't getting people in the door. Nick ckecks out and looks bored. He complains openly. Troy has the idea that Kwame should sit at a table and sign autographs. Not that Kwame is famous, but people are stupid. And they are. LOTS of people line up when they have no frigg'n idea who Kwame is. Bowie is in charge of merchandise, but doesn't sell much. Finally he resorts to interrupting people during dinner. Now where would you spend your money for a dinner interruption? A chick with cleavage who will do a shot with you? Or a chubby guy with a southern accent and a $20 Polaroid? You get the picture.

Of course the men loose. They make something like 4% more than last year, but the women are more than 30%. They are off to play golf. While there Don and the mega bitch manager take them to the woodshed a little for relying too much on sex to sell. Some women are pissed that "Donald has a problem with me being beautiful". They are missing the point. You need beauty AND brains. So far they have not shown much brains beyond their breasts.

So the men go to the board room. Kwame as team leader and he brings Nick for being a slacker and Bowie for not making merchandise sales. Kwame did a passable job as team leader with a plan and a good understanding of where they screwed up (not selling enough booze and merchandise). Nick whines about how he didn't like the plan and would have done better and how he just didn't want to put his name on the lame efforts. Bowie just says "awe shucks". Bowie gets fired. Not so much for doing anything totally wrong, but for not being special in any way at all. He is a happy go lucky guy who is just happy to be there. That is not enough. You gotta have guts and got to make some hard decisions. Don says he wants to see Nick be team leader next week. I would have picked Nick to go this week. But again, Donald shows that he is a bit of a cowboy and likes to give big talkers the chance to put up or shut up.

I called the fact that Don would have to re-order the teams and the promo calls for a "corporate reshuffling". It should get more interesting now.