Underscoring how living conditions at home can impact the ability to cope and succeed in life, an NBC-TV "The Apprentice" candidate, real estate investor Michelle Sorro, 34, of Los Angeles, became only the second contestant to quit during the hit reality television program's six season history.
Sorro specifically cited "living in tents" rather than the show's grueling competition for her choosing to tell program host, 60-year-old real estate magnate Donald Trump, "I quit!"
She was one of four other contestants with real estate backgrounds vying for Trump employment this season.
Nicknamed "The Closer" for her successful $50,000-in-sales-a-year real estate entrepreneurship, Sorro had lived in a backyard tent through all three of the first episodes of the show's sixth season after her team repeatedly lost money-making competitions.
The competitions define the show's premise. The last man or woman standing after a host of competitions becomes a Trump employee.
Season Six, dubbed "The Apprentice Los Angeles" is the first time the show wasn't filmed in New York City and it began with a haves-and-have not spin on the punishment doled out each week to the losing team.
In the first episodes, after each competition, the winning team not only enjoyed a lavish victory celebration, but also crashed in the 14,000 square foot, 9-bedroom, 12-bathroom mansion compound overlooking the City of Angels.
The losers, one of whom was eventually fired by Trump in a boardroom showdown, were forced to live in a small "tent city" in the backyard, until they got another shot at high-end living in the mansion.
In previous seasons, both the winning and losing teams retired to a posh hotel suite in Manhattan. This season, the swanky mansion is furnished with opulence. Tent city offers outdoor plumbing which, by episode three, was beginning to backup.
The spin became more twisted in episode three when the previous episode's mansion-living winning team got the day off to spend in a lavish hotel, with no chance of winding up in the tents.
The losing team members, all of whom had lost all the previous competitions and were forced to lived in tent city since the season started, were unceremoniously split into two smaller teams. After episode three's competition, even the winning half was remanded to the squalor of tent life.
Studies have shown a solid roof over your head goes a long way toward success, especially when coping with just the day-to-day grind of making a living.
Granted, temporarily living in the back yard of a mansion on an NBC television set, is a far cry from true homelessness or the life of an indigent.
However, living conditions in "The Apprentice's" tent city apparently took their toll.
In episode three, Sorro was the reluctant leader of the team that lost the latest competition to create, virtually overnight, a bus tour of Hollywood.
In the boardroom, after her team received a consumer approval rating nearly half that of the winning team, Sorro, in real life more comfortable with remodeling high end homes, had had enough of slumming it.
"In light of the circumstances and the fact that what I signed up for originally is not what I'm dealing with now ...," began Sorro.
Trump interrupted, "What are you dealing with?"
"Just living in the backyard. It is more than I bargained for and it is certainly not what I signed up for. I don't feel like I want to come back to the boardroom" said an obviously dispirited Sorro, before Trump could lower the boom on anyone.
As a member of the losing team, she was certainly doomed to continued exile in tent city. Also, given her waffling as team leader developing the bus tour, she was a likely candidate for Trump's terse "You're fired!" edict.
Trump, 60, suggested Sorro would later consider herself a "quitter" or a "loser" and explained she was giving up "a major opportunity, a major life time event." He also suggested, rather than quit, it would be better for her psyche if she put up the good fight and then took the pink slip -- like a woman.
Sorro insisted uncomfortable living conditions forced her to pack her bags.
"I would not have ever signed up for this had I known I would be living in tents in the freezing cold weather and working in the rain. It's not how I want to spend the next however many weeks," she explained.
In season three, Verna Felton, 33, now a motivational speaker and marketing communications expert, was the first contestant to walk out on Trump.
She went on to write "I Quit!: A Commonsense Guide to Taking Back Control of Your Career." (Xlibris Corporation, $20)
With a Renaissance-like background infused with charm and aplomb, Sorro likely isn't finished with her brush with fame. In addition to real estate investing, remodeling, and writing and publishing, she also has on-air television experience as a host for educational programming and as a soap actor.
Sorro was one of five other "The Apprentice" contestants with real estate backgrounds in season six. Another, "Martin, The Philosopher," 37, a senior assistant city attorney for Atlanta, GA, was the first this season to hear "You're fired!"
Only three remain.
