There was a lot of drama this week centered around Elise and her management skills. Last week Jim more or less reached his breaking point, causing a lot of discord in the team, and Tamara seemed to take notice. She attempted to have a one-on-one with her, but in usual Elise fashion, she was incredibly defensive and unprofessional. I simply don't get this woman at all. She seems to flip out over things that she should just smile and nod through. If I were running a company she's the last person I would want on the ground level managing my team.
Then when she came into the office to discuss the clients, she was completely normal. No yelling, no blaming, just a smile on her face and being completely nice and complimentary to everyone. Nobody really was buying it, especially not Jim. I don't know what happened to make Jim her biggest critic, but he has become so outspoken the last few weeks and it didn't let up here one bit. During their discussion of the new clients, the idea of bobsledding was tossed around, and Elise thought it would be a great team building exercise. Sounds fun right?
Wrong. While their clients had a great time, the team didn't. By the time the clients were done they only had time to do one more run and could only fit three people. Jim, who has bonded strongly with Kendra over the past week, decided that he and Kendra were definites, meaning there were only two spots left. The obvious thing to do would have been to let Bobby and Char go, but Elsie was dead set on getting in the sled. Bobby stepped down (reluctantly) to let Char go, and the entire team building effort was ruined in the eyes of everyone but Elise.
The guests this episode were really inconsequential. I mean a good portion of the later half of the episode was all bout the guest experience, but so much drama happened during the down times that it hardly seems notable. Kendra and Jim were put in charge of the couple that came through, which were given a horseback riding experience and the bobsledding. Bobby and Char were put in charge of the high maintenance group of friends. They seemed to be a bit of a challenge at first, but high maintenance is Bobby's specialty whether he likes it or not, and the guest left happy.
Back to the insanity of it all, Bobby was not happy with Elise in the least. His incredibly distaste made Char by proxy hate on her too. Now most of the team was against her, with the rest soon to follow. Things really aren't looking up for the manager are they? She's made an ass out of herself in front of her boss as well as all of her subordinates. If there was ever a list of things not to do, I'm sure she has done all of them. Unfortunately for her, it looks like things aren't going in her direction at all.
Proof of this comes when Jim takes the risky move to go straight to the top and talk to Joey, the owner of the company they work for. While it may be a bad move as far as Elise and Tamara are concerned (work with the chain of command), it certainly looked like it was the right thing to do. Joey is very approachable, and he took everything he said into consideration without making too many promises. I really wish that Joey was around more because he seems to be the most business savvy of them all. Perhaps he should take a more hands on approach to this business.
It's worth noting that my new fave Lyndsy is again missing for this episode. Her mother was in a bad skiing accident back in her hometown, so she took off to see to her family. I wish we could see more of her, as she's been absent for two of the five episodes that have aired so far, but at least this excuse was far better than her just galavanting off to snowboard. If the reason had been anything else I could see her head on the chopping block as she's not been the most productive member of the team, but thankfully Tamara and Joey are very understanding bosses who will let her take some leave at her unconventional job.
We did get to see a bit more of Lyndsy at the end of the episode when she met Jim for lunch. It's unclear at this point if the two of them into each other, although they do hint in their interviews that each of them senses something there. It's probably only a matter of time before they hook up. I really hope it doesn't ruin the cute budding friendship between Kendra and Jim, although Kendra's intentions seem purely platonic. Jim filled Lyndsy in on the drama that was happening. She asked if he thought he would be a good fit to manage the company, and he was a bit shyer answering her than he was Joey, who, by the way, he flat out said yes to.
Speaking of Joey, he did hold his end of the bargain by talking to Tamara about the entire situation. Understandably Tamara was pissed as hell to learn that one of the concierges went over her head. On one side I really do feel like this was a matter he should have taken to Tamara, while on the other, it has been brought up to her before and nothing has come of it. Joey seemed to really just want the team to be cohesive and said that any weak links need to be removed. It was kind of vague as to whether he was intending for Tamara to fire someone or not.
The last bit of this episode was another disastrous team dinner. I honestly don't know why they keep having these. They stayed on topic of the guests for all of three seconds before turning into a grip fest. Tamara sort of stated it by asking if anyone had something they needed to say, and when Bobby stepped up to speak his mind about how Elise should have stepped down during the team building exercise, all hell broke loose. Elise kept crying saying she was being attacked and Tamara finally got to see the insanity of it all. Elise even went as far as to blame Kendra, causing a distinct break between the two and more or less ruining what little friendship they had remaining.
Worst of all, sweethearted Lyndsy stepped up to try and calm the situation by hugging Elise. She was quickly denied and given a retort that she didn't want a hug from someone who was attacking her. Uhh newsflash. Lyndsy is the quietest of all of them and is the only one who hasn't come for you outright. She was the last person even remotely on her side, and she went and ruined that, too. Looks like Elise is pretty much done.
Things took a weird twist for the worse this week. Not as far as entertaining goes, but if you think about it in a business sense, Joey really needs to step in and either get a new manager or a new team. This group cannot function together. While it makes for a good TV show, it makes for horrible business, and if he doesn't do something quick, he may be out of a concierge service for good.
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