"Who would really do that and still have a job??"

I watched the second episode of Kell on Earth last night, and I'm still loving it, but I also find it unbelievably frustrating to watch sometimes. I guess that's just a trademark of reality television that can't be avoided. Also why I typically don't watch reality television.

The agency staff consists of principle Kelly, two partners (Emily and Robyn), Kelly's assistant Andrew, her former assistant now Junior Executive Stefanie Skinner, and a handful of interns. And everyone who falls below the partners on the org chart come off as completely unqualified. Makes you wonder how People's Revolution could be so successful.

Last week ended with a cliffhanger in preparations for the Chado Ralph Rucci show when Skinner couldn't get the seating chart to print. Seriously? Printer problems?? You don't even have to be in public relations to have had printer problems when trying to meet a deadline. This is the sort of issue that people deal with all the time, and we don't solve it by CRYING. This is why I commented last week that Skinner was SO not a problem solver.

Backing up a bit further, the other blond Stephanie, an intern named Stephanie Voorhes, had already fucked up the seating chart by not checking the RSVP voicemail. Again, SERIOUSLY? How hard it that? So they had all these RSVPs that they were unaware of. So Kelly got pissed and told her assistant Andrew that he was now in charge of checking RSVPs for the Chado show. And he did. And he put them all on the list TWICE.

And the frustrating part of watching this show is when they do the interviews and they make excuses like, "What do I know? I'm new." Really? You're going with that? Because I'm pretty sure even someone who's new knows not to put people's names on the list TWICE. New York must be FULL of qualified people who would kill to have these jobs.

So the list is fucked up and then at the last minute it wouldn't print. End ep 1. Start ep 2: the partners step in, as per usual, to fix things and the list ends up going to the show half-printed and half-hand-written. There's some professionalism for ya.

Fastforward and...the show is a disaster. No, I take that back. The show is good. The media coverage is good. But the seating is a disaster. There are mobs of people at the front trying to get in and blocking the people who actually have invites and seating assignments from reaching the door. So that's a problem but I find it hard to believe that this is more of a problem at Chado Ralph Rucci than it is at, say, Marc Jacobs, or the Project Runway show. But that caused the show to start very late, which is never a good thing, because then your media that's there gets annoyed and decides to leave to hit another Fashion Week show that is actually on time.

Secondly, the people that were allowed in were either seated in the wrong places or moved around to seats that weren't theirs. Then Kelly had to come in and throw her weight around and tell people to move. Which apparently pissed off a lot of people because after the show, the client fired People's Revolution. And Kelly felt it was because of something outside their control — the crush of people at the front door — but it was apparent to me that everything that went wrong was a direct result of something they fucked up.

So they turn their attentions to their next Fashion Week show — Genetic Denim, who's doing an installation rather than a runway show. (This is where the models are "installed" into show-window-type poses and people walk through the rooms to see them and photograph them.) They should be good at this, right? No seating charts.

To invite the media, Kelly is sending editors' gifts. Now this is a very common PR tactic. We all do it. When we opened a new cafeteria at St. Jude, we sent cookies. We put them in the little to-go aluminum pans and printed the cardboard tops to look like a cocktail napkin with coffee stains, and the Who, When, Where info scribbled on it. It was very cute. So they're sending some jeans or something, right? And Kelly comes in and there are rows and rows of plain white gift bags (not even glossy) with names, titles and affiliation SCRAWLED ON THE SIDE IN BLACK SHARPIE and a pair of jeans thrown in. No tissue paper, no tags, no catchy design.

This has to be made up for TV, right? Who would really do that? More importantly, who would really do that and still have a job?

And again, with the excuses, this time by Skinner: "No one gave me any direction." To which Kelly's reaction was, "From now on, no one makes any decisions about my company but me." And that's unfortunate, because she could have used this as a teaching opportunity to explain to the moronic interns how to prepare proper editors' gifts. I wouldn't have thought that someone with an actual job in PR would need that explained to them, but there you go.

God, there's a lot of italics in this post.

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Okay, pop quiz:

1. You've been asked to mail invitations for your clients show. The envelopes are square but not oversized. The only stamps you see are 62-cent stamps. You:

a. Look for the 44-cent stamps.
b. Ask someone else in the office if they have or have seen 44-cent stamps.
c. Go buy some 44-cent stamps if you have to.
d. Just use the 62-cent stamps because who cares.

2. You've been caught by one of the partners using 62-cent stamps inappropriately. She tells you to peel them off and replace them. You:

a. Look for the 44-cent stamps.
b. Ask someone else in the office if they have or have seen 44-cent stamps.
c. Go buy some 44-cent stamps if you have to.
d. Call the junior exec while she's getting her roots done to ask where the stamps are because this is all just entirely too much work.

3. You've delegated the job of intern scheduling to an intern under you. Once you do this, you:

a. Follow up with said intern to determine that the job is being done.
b. Check with said intern occasionally to ensure she can handle the assignment.
c. Ask said intern for a copy of the schedule she created.
d. Never worry about it again because it's no longer your problem and you have your own job to do.

SCORING: If you answered a, b, or c, you may be ready for a job in public relations. If you answered d, you may be ready for a job at People's Revolution.





UPDATE: Stefanie Skinner sent me a tweet saying that I'd confused her & Voorhees on my blog. "BIG mistake," she said, all Pretty-Woman style. And so I repeat: What I said is "the OTHER blond Stephanie," which clearly indicates that there are TWO of them. I even indicate that one is an intern (Voorhees) and the other is a Jr. Exec (Skinner) so I'm not sure what is confusing about this post. Her "BIG mistake" comment leads me to believe that some sort of doom is coming to Voorhees, though. A firing maybe?