The Apprentice

Ah, he's back. Alan Sugar and his gravelly voice, shiny boardroom, greying comrades and inevitable 'you're fired' is back on the TV.

The Apprentice is my favourite reality show. I love watching the competitors start off by being friendly and then descend into what I've been dealing with most of the week: political shenanigans designed to upset the applecart for their team members. They're all after the one job – to sit at the right hand side of Sir Alan at one of his many companies.

There's always the troublesome opinionated one, the posh one, the good-looking one, the timid one, the earthy one, the loud one, the nutty one, the quiet but effective one (who fails because of their lack of oomph) and so on. A great mixture. Like any workplace in fact.

Last night, Nicholas (number one in the picture) was fired. He reminded me of the preacher in There Will Be Blood. Not for preaching (though he did do a bit of that, on and on about his qualifications), but it was his face. It's scarily similar and kept making me laugh. Great film, that. Daniel Day-Lewis was amazing.

Yesterday, I was on the phone and became a bit Alan Sugar-esque. I've been dealing with people who simply cannot get on with their jobs without me spoon feeding them. I've lost sleep this week over having to pick up after people who really should know better, and should be working much harder. And, as any regular reader will know, me and my sleep take strong measures to keep our relationship healthy.

So, having had just a few hours kip the night before last, having made the silly move of looking at emails at 11pm, I was not happy yesterday morning. As I explained the situation to the big boss, expletives, to which I hardly ever resort at work (in anger, at any rate), flew out of my mouth. It certainly got the point across.

I'm well and truly done with putting up and shutting up. Those days are gone. I have no patience with being messed around, workwise and otherwise. People have expected me to accommodate them and I've gone along with it for too long. I know I let it happen, so it has been my own fault. But people that persist in taking advantage of me now should consider themselves well and truly fired.