The Apprentice 2011: Episode 10 by shoutingatco.ws

The teams take an early morning jaunt to Enfield, and a giant tat warehouse.  They’ll be selling a palette of stuff worth £250 wholesale (£1,100 retail) picked out by Sugar, and then re-investing the profits in the bestsellers to make even more cash.

The teams are jumbled once again, so Natasha leads Venture’s Susan and Jim, while Helen, Project Manager Melody and Tom make up Logic.

Jim and Natasha head out to Covent Garden, and try to flog giant umbrellas to tourists on a day that’s grey but definitely not raining.  Susan heads door-to-door in “fashionable West London”, and gets absolutely nowhere.  For some reason, everyone is at sodding work. Or they don’t want to answer the door and barter with a stranger over cheap bed linen.

Melody and Helen try selling £25 watches to a place called Poundstar, but it doesn’t fit their pricing bracket, amazingly.  To Karren’s annoyance, they’ve not realised that shops already buy from the bloody wholesaler.  To piss on Karren’s chips, they sell nine £10 duvets to a shop, with him offering to take another 30 the following day.

Tom, sent out on his own, charms some kids into handing over £7.50 for his nodding dogs.  They’re selling like hot cakes.  Hot dogs, if you will.

Natasha tries to get hold of Susan, who had managed to sell bugger all door-to-door, but she’s asleep.  After waking up, she goes to a cheap jewellery shop, and buys a stack of beaded bracelets.  The rest of her team do a bit better in the wholesalers, picking up a bunch of nodding dogs and umbrellas.

For the other team, Melody buys a load of gimmicky electronic alarm clocks and phone chargers. She manages to ignore Tom, who told her to buy his best seller of the previous day, nodding dogs.  Helen attempts a leadership coup, but Melody believes that she’s a strong enough leader to carry through the second day.  Tom should really be more pissed off and actually kick off with her over the dogs, instead of just nodding along politely… like a nodding dog.

Jim’s sales patter – handing out hugs to the old ladies – wins over Nick for the first time.  Some gullible kids buy Susan’s bracelets for a huge mark-up, which annoys non-selling Project Manager Natasha into some petty bickering over nothing.

Helen gets ready to cash in on the duvet order from yesterday, but the wholesaler has closed.  After asking Project Manager Melody for advice, Helen decides to make the four hour round trip to a different warehouse, just to make a couple of quid on the sale.  She calls the shopkeeper on her way back, and finds out that he’s given up and gone home.  Brilliant.

Natasha is reluctant for Jim to reinvest, despite Jim pointing out that Alan, Nick and co have said “smell out what sells” about a hundred times so far.  He’s got very little stock, but Natasha, yeah, has a whinge at him, yeah, about taking it to the boardroom. Yeah.  Jim goes to reinvest, and has less than half an hour to get rid of 23 umbrellas.  Still not raining, and now it’s dark.  By the time he gets to his destination, time’s up.

THE BOARDROOM

Alan asks Logic whether Melody was a good or bad team leader.  “Terrible,” replies Helen.  Tom talks about how he stepped outside his comfort zone and gave selling a shot, and sold all the nodding dogs within half an hour. “And I take it you bought more?” Helen can’t wait to jump in: “No.”

Jim talks about how he sold brilliantly, before Natasha admits that on the second day they reinvested the massive sum of £22.  Alan explained at the start how they needed to reinvest, in words so simple that even he understood it.  He fines them £100.

Logic finished with total assets of £728, but Venture, even after the fine, still win with £751.

That spoils Alan’s shitty little game, doesn’t it?  As a treat, he cancels their treat.

Helen discusses her strategy, if she had managed to take over.  She’d have continued to sell to retailers, missing the point by a mile.  Tom runs down Melody and Helen’s failings, from not buying dogs to the four hour round-trip to sell no duvets.

Because there are only three of them left, there’s no deciding who to bring back.  This means there’s an awkward bit where the Apprenticees are asked to leave the room midway through the discussion.

As soon as the slightest criticism is levelled at Melody, she looks to be on the brink of tears.  At 26, she’s had 13 years’ experience in her industry, and has two sentences edited together to make it sound like she was responsible for setting up the United Nations.

Lord Sugar isn’t having any of it, and Melody… is fired.

Thank God.  She goes from 0-annoying in 2.5 seconds, and we’re glad to see the back of her.

Next week:  The Final Five Flog Fast Food

Comments

1. Tim says:

   July 7, 2011 at 10:25 am

   Both PMs were useless, with Natasha being the worse of the two. Melody had no idea what she was doing. Natasha had no idea what she was doing and stepped on her team’s attempts to bail her out by insisting they stick to her strategy of having no idea what she was doing.

   Helen made her first big mistake in 10 weeks. Jim the salesman excelled in a selling task (as well he should). Susan the market trader excelled in market trading (and took a risk that paid off and essentially won the task for Venture). Tom was ignored AGAIN. Will they never learn? It was a bit unfair of Sugar to label him the Nodding Hindsight Man. The reason it comes across as hindsight is because he keeps telling them really clearly and they keep ignoring him. What’s he supposed to do – keep banging his head against the brick wall that is Melody?!?

   Still, at least Melody can now go back to setting up Robert Mugabe’s democratic government or whatever it was she was blathering on about. I’m sure she’s good at what she does, but here’s the thing: if she really is as brilliant and has achieved as much as she says she has, then why is she looking for a relatively modest investment from a shyster like Sugar? Where are her mates Gore and Lama, eh? (Not that I’m suggesting the old Dalai is HSBC, but you know what I mean.)

   http://slouchingtowardsthatcham.com/2011/07/07/the-apprentice-a-tale-of-sound-and-fury-is-finally-exposed-as-bluff-and-bluster/

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