Group Dynamic - Seinfeld

I have been watching Seinfeld lately and the adventures of Elaine Benes at work feel appropriate for this post on team dynamic. I will give some background as to what is currently happening in the series. Elaine works for the J. Peterman Catalogue that provides the latest trends for its readers. One-day J. Peterman has a panic attack and flees to Burma unexpectedly. The staff have no idea for how long J. Peterman will be out. As a result, there is chatter going on for who will lead the J. Peterman Catalogue. Elaine meets her friends, Jerry, George, and Kramer at Jerry’s apartment. She informs them of what is going on at work, and how she does not have a boss anymore. This leads Kramer to interject and give her the idea of becoming the boss. Elaine is hesitant at first, but Kramer gives her a pep talk of being confident. He uses his own example of how he always wanted to learn Karate was too afraid to join, and now he is the best karate fighter at the dojo. This inspires Elaine to be confident and at the next meeting she declares herself the boss. The staff are puzzled at first, asking who gave her permission. She says that J. Peterman has given her authority until he comes back. The staff is still hesitant but there is no way for them to check as J. Peterman’s exact location is unknown and he does not have any contact information. Once Elaine becomes an authoritarian leader she forces her workers to come up with ideas for the catalogue and demands that they work extra hard by coming up with more ideas and late. This obviously lowers the tram morale. Somewhere after this scene we see Elaine become frustrated with the mail as there is a mishap. She goes to fire the mailman but once she realizes the mailman is a Korean war vet, she changes her mind. She feels guilty and to avoid any confrontation she promotes the mailman to a writer. In the next meeting we see some ideas on the table, and the veteran produces some very gory descriptions for his ideas due to his past.  In the fear of not hurting his feelings she decides to work with him to change the description to something more normal. As a result, she decides to pick his item as the cover of the Catalogue. This is to the dismay of the other writers. The item she chooses is an urban sombrero. The next scene cuts to Elaine on the subway and she notices two gentlemen reading the J. Peterman catalogue. She listens into their conversation and notices that they are complaining about the cover item. As a result, she realizes that she needs to fire the veteran. Hence, the next time she meets the veteran she goes to fire him but due to guilt ends up prompting him to the corporate office. She thinks her idea is genius as he will be in another office. In the next meeting with her writers, one of the writers asks where is the new guy, she replies by saying she promoted him. The writers are furious as they have been working very hard for the same promotion. This causes them to quit, which results in Elaine flying to Burma to get J. Peterman to return. It is later revealed that Kramer was successful because his opponents were children and his whole confidence speech was taken a bit out of context. In this incident I feel the whole outcome of the workers quitting could be salvaged if one of them actually went to the HR department to check the facts. Of course this is a sitcom and that would not be funny. In the real world this would not be possible, as I hope workers are more cognizant of their jobs. It also seems that the whole situation could be averted if Elaine was honest and fired the incompetent mailman. I feel the workers had the right to quit as a form of protest as one of them deserved to be promoted. It would be very frustrating to see an incompetent worker get the job you have been working tirelessly for. In the end the situation came to a resolve when Elaine had to undo her mistakes by bringing back J. Peterman. Its funny to see how one action caused a whole whirlwind of events.