Could I end up liking Annie Duke?

I have never been a fan of Annie Duke. If you click on the "Duke" label and look at past posts about her, you'll see my reasons. But after watching "Celebrity Apprentice" tonight, I'm wondering if I'll have to modify my opinion.

I've never watched "Apprentice" before--well, maybe one or two episodes the first season, then I quickly tired of it. But I thought this lineup of celebrities might be entertaining, and Annie was the real draw for me. I thought it would be interesting to watch her move from an intensely individual pursuit (poker) to one requiring teamwork. I was right about that.

First, I think it has to be said that she is, oh, about 12 times smarter than the rest of her team combined. That is both her strength and her problem, it seems to me.

Lemme tell you a story from my own life to illustrate. I was interviewing for a job--this was back in 1994. The interviews were going well, I thought, until I had one of those panel things, and they asked me, "Are you a team player?" Oh, crap! The true answer was most definitely "no," but this was a big, extremely liberal, public university in which individualism was not going to be highly valued. So I had an instant decision to make: give them the truth, or give them the answer they want. I went with the former.

I explained that I tend to get frustrated working in groups, because when there's a problem to be solved, I can usually figure out the best answer fairly quickly, and then I have to waste time and energy convincing others why this solution is best. If I fail, then it's hard to commit myself to contributing to the subsequent group effort that I think is on the wrong track. If you need something done, I told them, point me to the problem, leave me alone, and I'll come back with it finished well and on time. But making me solve the group dynamics at the same time as solving the problem will leave me annoyed, probably get everybody else annoyed at me, and often leave the project undone. That's just the way it is.

I left not knowing whether I had just blown it. But they called me the next day and told me I was hired. A couple of years later, I shared an office with the woman who had led the hiring task force--the one who had asked me that question. One day I asked her if she remembered the question and answer. She did indeed. She admitted that it wasn't the answer they expected, but they admired the honesty and decided that it's probably good to have some people around with that different kind of personality and skill set, even if it wasn't the exact pattern they had set out looking for.

Back to Annie Duke. It looks to me like she's in the same kind of boat. She quickly homes in on what needs to be done and how to accomplish it, and grows frustrated when others less keen and quick than she is can't see it.

Their task this week was to bake and sell cupcakes to raise money for charity. The first conflict with her team arose when they needed to decide on a location for the truck from which to sell them. The team wanted a spot near Penn Station. Annie protested that on the last season, when selling hot dogs was the chore, Donald Trump had criticized a team for using that spot. His reasons (which I won't bore you with) were sound, and besides, you don't want to get on his bad side when he's the show's ultimate judge. Annie's teammates, however, didn't want to listen to her calm, rational explanation for why she thought they were making a big mistake.

The second conflict came in the kitchen. She was put in charge, and was relentless at keeping people on task. Somebody has to do this, because a bunch of people left to their own devices will stall, waste time on unimportant things, duplicate efforts, and leave crucial things undone. At least as shown in the edited tape for television, she was never rude, but she was as firm and direct as the situation called for. Well, the fragile egos of her teammates couldn't handle being told what needed to be done, so she came under a lot of criticism for it. Joan Rivers compared her to Mussolini making the trains run on time. But there was a schedule and a deadline, and they would not have gotten done what needed to be done without somebody assuming the role of taskmaster. Nobody particularly likes being told what to do, but there are situations in which the only way to accomplish the goal is to have a sergeant and a bunch of privates, and the sergeant can't spend excessive time and energy making sure that no private has his feelings hurt.

The final conflict came when they were running low on cupcakes. Another team member seemed to want to sell all that they had left to a big donor. Annie, though, was concerned that that might leave them with none if another big donor came along--and raising the most money was the goal, not selling every last cupcake. She understood, in a way that none of the others seemed to, that people paying $1000 or more for a cupcake weren't actually buying cupcakes; they were just donating to the charity, with the cupcake as a small token of appreciation. If they were actually trying to buy cupcakes, they'd go to a bakery where they could get better ones for $2 each. Therefore, it made no sense to give up the last of the available stock to one donor, because such a donor would probably be just as content to make the donation in exchange for, say, two cupcakes as for the last 24 of them, leaving them more for other donors to buy. Again, her seemingly sound logic on this point was utterly lost on the Playboy playmate who wanted to give away the store.

Finally, Annie was the only one on her team who was shown working the phone. This, to me, was the most baffling aspect of the show. It seemed to me that the whole day they spent baking cupcakes could have been better spent by making, say, 100 cupcakes instead of 1000, and using the time saved for each of them to call their friends and put the squeeze on them to donate. For example, Dennis Rodman was on the men's team. How many multimillionaire NBA stars and Hollywood celebrities does he have on his speed dial? A lot, I'm guessing. Same with Clint Black in country music, Herschel Walker with his football connections, etc. But if anybody except Tom Green and Annie exploited that way of making money, it wasn't shown. Why sell 1000 cupcakes for $5 each (as they were trying to do) when with a couple hours working the phone each of them could get, say, three rich friends to donate a few thousand bucks apiece? Annie called on her old poker friends (Erik Seidel was the only one whose face I recognized), and had them come down to make the biggest donations they were comfortable with in exchange for a lousy cupcake. That's the smart approach.

In short, at every juncture, it appeared to me that Annie analyzed the problem, figured out how to solve it, but ran up against the tender egos of her overstyled, less intelligent teammates, who were all far more concerned about looking good and not stepping on each other's toes than getting the job done. Annie was smart, focused, and driven, far less concerned about diplomacy than winning the competition for her team.

In poker, of course, that's what you have to do. You're there to win the money. If you can win more by being highly sociable and liked, great--exploit that talent. But you can't be a winning player if you let concerns about other people's feelings stand in the way of taking their chips. You have to be focused on the goal, undistracted by lesser considerations than winning. My assessment is that Annie brought that skill set to this very different task in a way that her teammates could neither understand nor appreciate. But I, for one, came away admiring her more for it, not less.

It doesn't make up for continuing to take money from and be an apologist for UltimateBlecch, but it's something.