The Apprentice

My wife is obssesed with the show and finally convinced me to watch last nights episode.

I dont understand how these people are meant to be the cream of the crop of young professional business people. They are all compelete plonkers!

Oh and I agree with all you've said badger, well put.
 
Gedalia_w said:
I dont understand how these people are meant to be the cream of the crop of young professional business people. They are all compelete plonkers!
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They're not. The real cream of the crop are already in good jobs earning £100k+. These are the wannabe's.
 
callmeBadger said:
It was a hard choice, Syed and Alexa both were just asking to be fired, Alexa didn't seem to manage atall, it started of well, splitting the team into two groups, the ones with restaurent and food skills in one team, and the others in the kitchen, but 500 pizzas!

If they were the normal 12" or 16" round ones then 500, split into 6 would have been fine, sell each slice for £1 you can be almost £2000 up on the day. How did they only manage to make 94 bases between 6 of them? They were in the kitchen for around 14 hours, the total effort hours in the kitchen would be approching 84 hours and they made 94 bases, just a complete farce.

The thing i think people are still missing, they had 94 bases, 100 chickens, but chicken didn't go on all of them. They said they have made veggie ones, margarita (spelling?) ones, bolognaise and then chicken. I would be surprised if they actually made more than 30 chicken ones but the numbes were not revealed in the show.

With that many chickens, they knew on the previous day, just after the delivery that they had masses of chicken, why didn't they think of what to do with it? They cooked them all as you saw them throwing them in the bins at the end of the sales day, why didn't anyone think about selling chicken wings / thighs / drumsticks to recoup some of the costs? IDIOTS!

Alexa wanted to spend £500 on advertising and branding. What advertising and branding was needed? you need a menu on a big display, branding only matters if your going to be doing something often, make a business out of it. A one off venture like this is just about keeping costs down and maximising profits.

The Girls team, was it Mani the PM. I thought he did a good job. He did upset one of the girls, I think the one who is an event organiser who thinks she would have strengths in this task, asid from that it went well. The team seemed united during the day they were all in the kitchen, as they all thought Mani was off doing easy work and not helping, gave them a figure of hate to unite for. When it turned out the he had got all the props sorted for the eatery, and menu was written up, costs done etc even the Boys team and Alexa noted how good and appealing the area looked. This team deserved to win.

Syed, thinking more on it, what a plonker. didn't he say something to SAS that when asked to do anything he did it 150% (grrrrrr 150% pet hate of mine, stupid comment to make), I recall when Alexa asked him to go and drum up business by yelling (like street merchants) the prices and getting attention, he wouldn't as he thought it was below him. He came up with all these excuses which just showed he thinks more of his personal image than the task at hand. One of the most selfish and arogant moments in the show. Seconded only by the exit.

"Your a light weight, your fired!, frankly I'm in half a mind to fire all three of you."

The only time i was really aware of the contribution of the other guy in the final three, was how assertive he was when he found out Syed had messed up the food order. He was doing the finance for it, and phoning the PM straight away and limiting her further spending was a good thing, but 2 minuets of clear thought don't make up for the other 2 days.

Syed claimed his skill was in negotiation, thats why the food order was messed up, as he couldn't negotiate. Utter rubbish, he might have had the chinken a few pence cheaper per kilo, but the fact that they over ordered topping and under performed making the bases. Bragging about your experience in restaurents and how great you are, then making such an enourmous mistake should have got him fired.

Favorite moment, Syed holds the door open, exit Alexa, exit other guy, syed turns to SAS, "Thank you for this opertunity to prove myself." exit syed.

SAS "Cocky little ***t!"

don't think that appealed to SAS much
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Spot on Mr badger :)
 
HEADRAT said:
Best thing to do in this programme is never be a PM ;)
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Then you get accused (by Sir A) of being timid, and him never seeing anything of you.

The best thing is to be PM, and do a good job. That means planning, anticipating, monitoring, scheduling and most important of all, be able to show why cockups were in the implementation by individuals, not in the managing. After all, the PM can't be everywhere and do everything. You have to be able to see the big picture, and allocate resources to get things done. And if things go wrong, you need to be able to think on your feet and, hopefully, take corrective action.

But some cockups don't permit correction .... like vastly over-ordering chickens. Then, you just need to be able to show (and that means you have to know) who cocked up ..... and that you did anythig that was possible to correct the goof.

At the end of the day, AS is after people who can manage, and can simply get things done. He wants (it seems) to be able to give someone a task to do with braod parameters and a budget, and get results handed back. He doesn't want excuses, cockups, whinging or tears. He just wants things done. He wants someone that will do what he'd do if he were doing it himself. AS has the same problem as any successful businessman - you can't do everything yourself, and finding competent people to act as a General Staff is difficult.

It often strikes me that PMs make a simple mistake - there's far too much running around like (excuse pun) headless chickens, and far too little thought. It's all to easy to get caught up in very tight schedules, but if the result is that you fuss, worry and run around, you won't even see the real problems, let alone solutions. PMs can NOT afford to always be firefighting. Stand back a bit, take a breath and keep an eye on that big picture I mentioned. It is exactly THAT type of person that AS is after, and that pressurised tasks are designed to show.
 
Oh, and when I'm talking about PMs being able to show that cockups weren't their fault, I'm talking about for this show, not in actual jobs.

If I give a task to someone, I don't want them coming back to me and attributing blame for why it wasn't done. I just want it done. If the PM can't either pick the right people for the job, or motivate them properly, or manage the project, they shouldn't be PM. The ONLY acceptable excuses for the PM are factors entirely outside their control. But then, that sometimes means going to another manager, or it might mean coming to me. That I don't mind. I expect for people to seek help when it's needed (note, not 'wanted', but 'needed'), but not to come back with excuses for failure. I don't buy a dog and then expect to bark myself. :)
 
I thought this weeks was the best so far in the show.

for a moment I did actually think SAS was going to fire all three of them but I think he made the right decision.

Syed couldn't negoiate the price food they needed simply cause he had to leave the order on an answering machine - someone didn't check the opening times of the wholesaler.

the whole project was off the rails before then with a base figure of 500 pizza bases anyway and I was surprised the catering guy that was helping them didn't point out that to do that many pizzas in 1 day was unrealstic.

I wonder if he was told to go with ever they said and to assist only.

Tuan suggested 500 but later said it was only a starting 'for instance' figure - at that point Alexa should have jumped in and asked the catering guy if it was:

1. a realistic number
2. how many slices that translated to per pizza
3. roughly how much of each product was needed to be used for each pizza

they started off wrong and things got worse throughout.

the other team did superbly well and though they may have grumbled about chopping veg and shredding chicken it was simply the very basic stuff that needed to be done.

Sharon had her fit about not being happy but as Mani pointed out she was so vague about the problem that he couldn't understand what was wrong (and I don't think anyone else did either).

strong leader meant the team knew where they were going and how to achieve it.

I wionder if the teams will be broken up next week into mixed rather than boys v girls - there are 4 women left now and 6 fellas.
 
Why didn't they just sell fish 'n' chips? It seemed to me at the time the best solution. Easy to make, cheap to produce and everybody eats it. Also ties in with the Thames thingy to a degree. It seemed like they were trying too hard to do something different instead of keeping it simple and making money.
 
It was quite funny how the whole point (I think) of putting a girl in charge of the boys was for them to fail so a boy could get fired, because theres too many boys atm. That plan didn't work.

Oh, and the pizza looked nasty - £3 for that!?
 
Desmo said:
Why didn't they just sell fish 'n' chips? It seemed to me at the time the best solution. Easy to make, cheap to produce and everybody eats it. Also ties in with the Thames thingy to a degree. It seemed like they were trying too hard to do something different instead of keeping it simple and making money.
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the idea wa rejected early as they wanted a more 'world' theme

there was also the problem of how they would keep the fish n chips warm
 
This is going to be one hell of a pitch. I have done presentations, I would be gutted if I expected one or two, but infact there were ~100 there.
 
Unbelievable. Three times now she has got away with it. She had ONE opportunity to prove herself, yet he has now let her have three?

Manni didn't deserve to go in my opinion. It was the same last year though. It's for TV. It doesn't say it for AUK, but for the US, there was a disclaimer that said the producers and Trump did choose the best route for the popularity of the show.
 
Indeed, Jo survives yet again, although to be fair although she was nothing special in this task, she wasn't a disaster either.

I'd not have got rid of Mani though - if the main grounds for having him in the board room at the end was the incorrect info from the fact finding session, then the other guy from the fact finding session sould have been in there too. He was equally, if not more so, guilty than Mani.
 
Mani?! :eek:

Jo is an absolute lunatic and Ruth is just so arrogant she makes me cringe. I think Ruth performed miserably in this week's task, and her attitude in the boardroom was absolutely horrendous. If I were Sir Alan I would have fired her in a heartbeat!

PS: Anyone else notice the large number of Herman Miller Aeron chairs in this weeks show?
 
Argh my first post, been trying to keep quiet but tonights show REALLY got me!

Ruth - What a total waste of space!!

She didn't know what she was doing, she had NO focus from the start of what they were trying to achieve!

Absolutely disgusting attitude not only in the boardroom but also during the task.

Jo - Nutter.

Mani - It seemed to me that others restricted his input into the task, definately didn't deserve to get fired.

Can't wait till next weeks, brings it a bit closer to home for me.
 
Jo's still a nutter....Mani walks the walk but can't talk the talk, and Ruth will Do What You Tell Her To.

Good decision to let Mani go. As a 'management consultant' he should've been able to clearly relay what happened in the meeting, and correct Ansil when he bigged up the concierge side of things.

It was also his idea which was used so he should've been with the TV production team, not hidden away doing a poster, so that's an error on Ruth's part.

Good episode this week, the adverts were hilarious :D
 
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