Americas Toughest Jobs on NBC
Paul in Cannon Beach
4,703 Posts
Anyone watching this show?
13 contestants try their hand at some of the most demanding jobs in America. I don't think HR is one of the jobs but they do have rodeo clown and that's close enough.
13 contestants try their hand at some of the most demanding jobs in America. I don't think HR is one of the jobs but they do have rodeo clown and that's close enough.
Comments
I watched the first episode and it was pretty interesting. I like how they have set this up. Two teams compete at a very demanding job (catching crab in alaska) and then they have the ships captains decide who were the worst four "employees".
The bottom four were sent back out to sea for 60 more hours of crabbing. Finally, the captains decided on who was the worst worker and they got the boot from the show.
In this situation, the bottom four were:
- a tall athletic (but somehow unmotivated) ex jock
- a wild eyed 50 year old sculptor
- a caucasian woman who said "im not used to being called the worst at anything"
- a friendly but not so tough African american woman secretary
The show depicted the secretary as the most inept of the four but I wasnt sure if they would vote her off first. I figured NBC might be uncomfortable about two white ship captains voting off the only African American woman on the show in the first episode.
But, no. They gave her the boot. The cool part though was that she explained to the camera that the experience had really opened her eyes to a more vibrant life beyond working in an office. The last shot was a statement that said that after the show, this young woman quit her job and returned to Alaska to work in the Denali state park.
If you are like me (ok, no jokes please), you will prolly enjoy the show just to watch OTHER people have to deal with employee performance problems.
If you missed this episode you can watch it online at nbc.com
I have to admit it was kind of fun watching people try to step up their performance knowing that one of them would get the boot.
Perhaps we should start announcing in our organizations "One person will be fired at the end of the month. Make sure its not you!"
I thought it was pretty cool that the woman who did get kicked off went back home, quit her job, bought a ticket back up here, and is now working at Denali.
I think you may be on to something, Paul....when we spend so much time trying to figure out what motivates people to work harder (or work at all sometimes) maybe making it a competition to see who doesn't get fired might just be what does the trick!
Lately, I am starting to agree with him. It just takes a few bad apples to spoil the bunch and when you do get rid of them WOW! what a huge improvement in morale!
I thought maybe the blonde gal would get the boot too. She was pretty annoying but she did manage to throw the hook correctly at least one time.
Like the young lady who got fired said "If there was a competition for watching tv and surfing the internet, I would do fine!" Umm.. yeah, we all would.
I predict the blonde is next. She is toooooo high maintenance.
We've had several firings around here in the last month and it's amazing what getting rid of a "bad apple" can do for the rest of the apples' morale. It's very gratifying to see how much more smoothly things are going in a couple of our departments because they can finally get on with business without having to worry about dealing with those individuals. Of course, I'm not such an optimist that I think that new bad apples won't come along eventually to replace those that have gone, but at least for the moment, things are good!
But seriously, that scene made me think of other employee interactions where a simple job assignment becomes an opportunity for the employee to express an elaborate and generally irrelevant reason for why they cannot do the task.
I have this theory that good workers find ways to get the job done no matter what and bad workers find only obstacles.
It will be interesting to see how the crazy sculptor will handle some of the jobs. He seemed to need to tie the knots on the crab pots in his own "creative" way no matter how many times the deck hands yelled at him to do it right.
I say they take the contestants and make them:
- teach a squirmy class of 3rd graders
- drive a new york cab
- work at Mcdonalds
- pick fruit
- coordinate an open enrollment or RIF
I think that would be alot more interesting.
Apparently the Toughest Jobs now include MSNBC news anchor, based on Olbermann and Matthews being demoted today. Gosh, I watched them briefly during the conventions and they seemed like normal network announcers to me.
Sorry if this takes this thread in a wrong direction.....
In the last two episodes I like that they used a more measurable reference to see who is eliminated from the 'worst' four. In the first episode it was more at the discretion of the "bosses" as to who should leave. But I guess, in reality, that is often the way it goes.
And last night I was so surprised when they eliminated...
It wasnt just that "Chris" called his instructor a belligerent ass. He also insulted him and criticized him IN THE MAN"S OWN TRUCK. Then he tried to lie about it when he was confronted. That was the part that felt too much like real HR.
And also like real life, he managed to escape consequences and live to see another day... er... episode.
I think that line was stolen from "Sex in the City"...
Now, excuse me... I have a few seasons of Gilligan's Island to catch up on.