The next time I complain about the dress code at work, I’ll keep this tidbit in mind: the Japanese town of Isesaki has banned civil employees from having facial hair. Beards and mustaches were deemed “unpleasant.” But here’s my favorite part of the article:
It was announced as part of annual casual office dress rules, which allow male staff to work without jackets and ties in summer in order to cut down on air-conditioning and reduce global warming.
The next time my boss gives me shit for wearing something low-cut I’ll just say that I’m doing my part to prevent global warming. Everybody wins!
Following in the footsteps of Kanye West, who did a faux-internship at Louis Vuitton and folded T-shirts at the Gap for an hour, Lady Gaga is reportedly jumping from music to fashion by taking an internship with hatmaker Philip Treacy. Gaga and Treacy collaborated on two headpieces for Gaga’s recent tour, and she apparently applied for an internship in the traditional way rather than just asking her friend to hook her up. I think it’s really cool that she wants to start at the very bottom and work her way up in order to truly learn about the industry, but it also kind of bugs me to see a celebrity – who doesn’t need it – possibly take an internship position away from a student who could really benefit from the experience. I don’t have a problem with someone like Gaga taking on a vanity internship, but there is a part of me that’s like “you get to play at having a job while some people actually really need this gig in order to launch their actual careers? I’m going to give it three weeks of “interning,” max, before she’s designing her own line of hats. It’ll be the quickest promotion ever.
Cross posted from TheGloss.
I may not know much about the upcoming Smurfs movie, but I know two things: Hank Azaria is playing Smurf-hater Gargamel, and now word is that Tim Gunn will be in the movie as well! He will be playing an executive assistant at a cosmetics company. In other words, everything about this is amazing.
Ever wondered how they pick the people who end up on reality shows? Phil Wallace, a recent USC business school graduate, independent sports consultant, and founder of AwardsPicks.com (also, full disclosure: he’s my cousin), made it through several audition rounds for the next season of The Apprentice. After doing several celebrity seasons, the show is returning to its regular-people format next year and will focus on people who have been affected by the recession. Phil sat down with STA and talked about his experience auditioning for the show.
- I heard about the show from a couple of people, and someone contacted me about auditioning. The Apprentice is totally my guilty pleasure TV – I watch the regular and celebrity editions, and I always thought I could do really well on the show. I spoke to a casting agent on the phone for ten or fifteen minutes – she asked about my work history and my salary history. She told me that I could either do a home video or an in-person interview next, so I decided to do the in-person tryout. It was at a hotel in L.A. near Universal. She told me she would put me on a VIP list so I wouldn’t have to stand in line. She also said that I was trying too hard to impress her and to remember it’s a recession-themed show, so you need a downtrodden story.
- LA was the fifth city they did auditions in. One of the other cities was Detroit, so I am pretty sure they wanted a laid-off autoworker. They also did New York, Atlanta, and Las Vegas.
- The application was pretty short, just one page. It asked for work and salary history, and a proudest accomplishment. There was also a part where they asked you to tell something embarrassing about yourself. It also asked why you thought you would make a good Apprentice.
- I got there at 7:30 AM, and auditions were supposed to start at nine. The line was down the street. I’d guess there were 400-500 people there. There were people who had camped out overnight or arrived early in the morning. Because I was on the list they moved me to the front of the line. I was with some people who arrived at 5 AM. There were a bunch of people in the VIP group from Pink Slip Mixers – they’re a networking group for people who just got laid off. Most of the people in my group were from Pink Slip Mixers.
- I was in a room with six other people. They had us fill out our applications in advance, so you handed the application to a casting agent, who then put you in a boardroom-type setting. The agent’s name was Gina. She sat on the other side of table from us, and asked, “Why are we in a recession?” Everyone started talking over each other. No one was moderating. It was a mess. Because our group was all from the VIP group, people who really wanted to be on the show, it was insane. Everyone recognized they needed to speak up and everyone realized they needed to shine, so it was bound to be just a giant shouting match.
- It was six of us guys and one woman. She has her own online talk show, and was able to take control of the room a couple of times. There were moments where one person talked and everyone listened and some where we [informally] split into smaller groups of three or four and just talked with the people near us. We naturally retreated a little bit and talked to people who were sitting close by, since we were all talking over each other. One guy decided to be “the questioner,” so he just started to ask questions. It actually really helped, because we were disorganized. The casting agent ignored us and read our applications the whole time.
- Most of the people were middle-aged. One guy was in his 30s and had been a franchisee for a fast-food chain and said he just got a job at McDonald’s. I don’t know if he meant managing another franchise or flipping burgers. He and I went back and forth a bit because he wanted to blame the recession on Bill Clinton and I wanted to blame it on Goldman Sachs.
- This went on for about 20 minutes. Then Gina stopped us and asked some people who they would fire and some who they would hire. The Clinton guy said he would fire me. She asked why, and he said “I didn’t like his points.” She asked which points, and he finally admitted he couldn’t remember. When it was my turn, I said I wouldn’t fire the other guy just because we disagreed politically. I was sort of trying to defend myself in case the casting agent actually thought there was legitimacy to the other guy wanting to fire me. I said I would fire a guy who was also named Phil because there couldn’t be two Phils on the show. In seriousness, though, I said that he was the guy who had a lot of experience – probably the most experience, he had been a VP of Operations somewhere – but didn’t speak up that much.
- Gina wrote some numbers on our applications and said she’d call within the week if we were chosen for an individual interview. I never got a call, so that was the end of that.
