The argument continues as Raj snaps at Elizabeth, Elizabeth snaps at Raj, and finally, Kelly steps in. He tells Raj to shut up and listen, and tells Elizabeth to "stop acting like a dictator." It's so hard when your dictatorship is subject to the veto authority of your boss. Elizabeth allows that "dictator" was the "wrong terminology." She apparently didn't mean "dictator," but the slightly less absolutist "co-lackey." Kelly asks Raj and Elizabeth both to please be a little more pleasant and take each other's thinking into consideration before they get into one of these stupid things, because frankly, he doesn't have time to break up fights all day. Kelly interviews that doing this felt partly like a mediation and partly like disciplining children. Well, exactly. I don't know if I would have been able to resist finishing it off with a smack on the back of the head. In his office, he tells the three people on Team Under-Motivated that they each have something to be in charge of, so he would like each person to concentrate on what they're supposed to be doing, and defer to each other in their respective areas. In other words, he's delegating at least a small amount of management authority to each of them in their particular area, which is a fairly good solution, since leashes and muzzles are probably out of the question. Elizabeth and Raj semi-hash out their fight, and Elizabeth turns to Kelly and says, "And we'll elevate any issues to you." Kelly hesitates. "Or talk about the...solution stuff," he says, thinking that he doesn't mean to leave the impression that he wants these jerks to come and tell him about it every time they can't get along.

In an interview, Raj says that he gives Kelly credit for doing a good job with the mediation: "He understands, to an extent...human beings." I liked that line. I think I might well like Raj if we didn't discuss politics and he left the bow tie at home and I only had to hang out with him for fifteen minutes at a time. Kelly dismisses the quarreling knot of doofuses from his office, and undoubtedly rolls his eyes and goes, "God," as soon as he closes the door. I know I would.