Flipping Off! – Take 8

Things are all going to pot on the jobs, so Jeff responds as he does best: by attacking his staff.

One thing we’ve all learned about Jeff Lewis is that he just can’t tolerate mistakes. Mistakes by others that is. His mistakes — and there are plenty — are just fine and dandy.

It’s a Bravo show, so all design work on the design show was shoved aside to provide plenty of time for petty drama.

At the breeders’ house, things are moving along so Jeff decides to “help” out. His “gift” to his clients is to go into their home when they aren’t there and throw away cherished mementoes because they don’t have nostalgic meaning to Jeff. If this wasn’t TV, he probably would have been fired.

At Casa Vega, Jeff’s biggest job to date, things continue to be behind schedule and poorly executed. The front door is still all wrong and now the stucco is improperly installed so it’s cracking badly before the place is even finished. Exasperated, the client fires the contractor Jeff recommended. Jeff tell the camera that this reflects poorly on him, then tells the dismissed contractor that he won’t hesitate to use him on his next job. If this wasn’t TV, he probably would have been fired too.

It’s confusing to me how the office is structured, as none of the projects seem to be assigned consistent dedicated staff like in most offices. Instead, I’m often shocked to see Jeff attend job sites with his entire office in tow. Who does that? He seriously needs to go to delegation classes, because he just doesn’t know how to have help.

Zoila sums up 4 seasons worth of mayhem by sagely announcing: “Jeffery is not professional.”

And this, my friends, is the heart of the matter.

Jeff Lewis should have it all: he’s charming, does good work, is on TV and really at this point “famous.” He should have a line around the block of staff begging to get in.

Instead, he has the uber-loyal Jenni (who’s really more of a best friend than an employee at this juncture), a part time student intern, and his sister-in-law. Yup. When you can’t get anyone but inexperienced family to help you with your booming business, red flags should go up.

But perhaps Jeff needs to stay small, because then he won’t be subjected to as many labor laws, most of which he seems to break on a regular basis. Family doesn’t sue, right? Well, not usually.

All of the “crazy” seemed to focus on Jeff blowing up at Sarah, so we’ll just review that for a moment: Sarah is Jeff’s brother’s wife’s sister, thus family. Perhaps this is a reason why Jeff steps over the line and gets all up in her personal life like no boss with a brain in his head would ever do. Sarah seems to think that they can separate their work relationship from their personal one. Poor naive Sarah. I’ll humor her for a moment and just focus on all of the ways Jeff mistreats her as an employee.

Nope, you don’t have to be an aging woman from Guatemala to recognize “unprofessional behavior” when you see it.

The crux of the problem is that Sarah wants added responsibility. Jeff is probably freaking out about this because he thinks she wants more $$$. Whenever she is given real responsibility, like when Jeff went to NYC, all seems to go fine. The “mistakes” that Jeff keeps harping on endlessly (taking his credit card home at night, not putting a client phone number in the file, not writing his instructions down,etc) are all basic “assistant” issues, not design project management, so his argument loses a lot of weight. Like keeping back a grade a child who’s too bored to focus.

My favorite part was when Jeff took Sarah along to a job site, and then told her she shouldn’t have come. Sarah showed a bit of smarts when she described her situation for the camera as “a lose-lose situation.” You got that right, sister!

In the end, an entire afternoon is ruined with no work getting done. Jeff blows up, Sarah cries in the bathroom for 26 minutes, and the whole office fluctuates from nervously pretending to work to soothing the two injured parties. Consumed with guilt, Jeff can barely concentrate for almost two days, which sucks because the whole thing was caused by him not being able to concentrate properly on work.

Vicious cycle, brought to you by Bravo.

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