You're so fired!

So you'd think I wouldn't have applied for the sixth season of NBC's "The Apprentice." That's because you don't realize just how much I like people to see me on television.

Because this is the first "Apprentice" filmed in Los Angeles, it's the first one I have had a shot at. Instead of being required to rent out real estate or create ads for a private jet company, like the previous Manhattan apprentices did, I figured I'd just be walking up to people and asking them to give me 10% of their salaries.

At 10 on Friday morning, I went to the Globe Theater at Universal Studios Hollywood, where I joined more than 700 other capitalists waiting to be interviewed by Donald Trump -- 25 of whom were so excited they had been there since 5:30 a.m. I instantly realized I should have worn a suit. And brought a resume. And gone to business school.

I was put at a table with eight other applicants, only two of whom had been Miss Beverly Hills. When Trump sat down to interview us, he asked us to give our names and say something about ourselves. I told him that I was "Joel Stein, a street-walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm."

Nobody reacted to this. The business world, I was learning, was one tough place. Either that or it's even more solipsistic than the media industry.

The guy to my right, Ryan Smith, told Trump he had made $60 million during the Internet boom and lost it all, keeping only the Rolex on his wrist as a reminder of his past success. It was perhaps the closest Trump had ever come to crying.

Then the Donald asked us to discuss whether a business should have a rule against dating in the workplace.

Heidi Androl, a sales manager for a company that sells inlet barrier filtration systems for helicopters and is a costar of the film "Playboy Wet & Wild: Slippery When Wet," said she believes that dating co-workers is wrong.

"If you meet some guy you're really attracted to, can you say you wouldn't do anything?" Trump asked. "Do you have that much self-control?"

Androl assured him that she did.

"Even if his name was Mr. Trump?" I asked.