The Apprentice

I don't watch this show, but I've heard about it a lot from friends that are truly addicted. For those that don't even get that much exposure to it, it's a "reality" show that pits two groups of people in working at various tasks for Donald Trump. At the end of each show someone gets fired, and Trump utters his new catch-phrase, "You're fired."

It occurred to me today, as I was talking with Stephanie at a local furniture rental store, that there may be a valuable societal side-effect to the show. We were discussing the recent sale of my house and how it seems to have been a good thing I fired my first realtor and put Steve Saftler on the job. Stephanie mentioned that after we'd had our first discussion about this four months ago, when I was last in the showroom, that she'd heard a lot of people talking not only about how they weren't happy with their realtor, but that they'd fired them and found someone better.

Frankly, I think most people are too nice when it comes to bad service. You arrange for a realtor, an accountant, an insurance company, a plumber, or even a babysitter, and then, when you get lousy service, you make endless excuses for the person and do no one any good. You continue to have poor service, they probably don't even realize they are giving poor service and certainly have little incentive to care, and people who are willing to do a better job don't get your business. If you fire the poor performer, sure, it hurts him in the short-term, but you do him a favor in the long-term as he learns to do better for his next client or switches to a line of work to which he's better suited.

To bring it back to The Apprentice, though, I suspect (without a shred of empirical evidence) that the show is teaching people how to fire those poor performers. This is a lesson many people need to learn and will overall help our economy. It's a good thing I've already learned this lesson, since I'm not going to start watching the show anyway.