I'd say that was a slightly different situation - the tour tickets was a not very clearly thought through gamble at best - the desks however clearly had a good resale value and even if you did pay for them there was a definite profit to be made.

But even so in business a lot of ultimately good business decisions get made without a demonstrably logical thought process - there's a sort sixth sense to it all - and it can seem like good luck. But the real world is often like that.

I think the point is that the pitches laid on by Lordalan as part of a gameshow are highly artificial, and trying to apply real world logic to them is pointless. Regardless of whether it was accidental or on purpose (and the presumption it was accidental is absed on the edit deliberately holding back Chris' thought processes so it could be a SURPRISE in the Boardroom that an odd-sounding deal had worked), Chris Bates' deal was a great deal because it meant that the other team didn't have a dedicated ticket office selling on their behalf, and his team did. So long as the dedicated tourist office sold a decent margin more tickets than two amateurs running round Leciester Square in costume making everyone sign releases every time they talked to them (and it did) it was a good deal profits-wise as well, not that it needed to be, because primarily it was about blocking the other team from having a resource.

The Apprentice isn't about making the most money possible. It's about making more money than the other guys. Normally the teams can't hurt one another, so it's usually irrelevant, but in the case of these really artificial "how low can you go?" auctions, it absolutely is.

Jesus.....

I see all those years spent at the Oxford Debating society have served you well. Care to elaborate why you feel my point deserves to use the Lords name?

Again, that's simply not true. My company has does exactly what you describe as not being worthwhile and turned a nice, tidy profit.

But, then, you're describing furniture that the candidates sold for £300 as being worth £50.

Well they only got £300 because they were helped with a place that would buy it and would buy it straight away!

To charge, or not to charge......that confused me to......Susan isn't an Idiot.

Exactly. I think some people are too focused on the end result of 300 quid. When actually it could have gone horribly wrong either way.

The point is that Susan just assumed they had to pay him when actually what was required was to weigh up what was there, what it was worth and what price they could offer the guy in order to secure the deal and make a profit.

Susan didnt show any of that, she just was happy to blindly pay the guy £150 with no reason stated as to why they should do this, and how much money they could make on resale.

Even if Helen had got it wrong, she still would have been right because she verbalised her reasons and stated she was taking a risk. Susan on the other hand was just blindly walking along and just happened to follow the right path. That doesnt make her a genius.

So I say again, EVEN if Helen had lost it, she was still the better person because her idea and reasoning was much better.

The belief that Zoe and Edna (and Melody) had, that, regardless of what the 'rubbish' was worth they should demand a fee for transport and labour costs, is a flawed one.

They were directly bidding against the other team, so the winner woud not only get the contract but also deprive the other team of that contract. Also, to use an anology, what if I said that I had a lump of gold worth £1000 and a bag of cement in the garden that needed clearing, and one guy told me he wanted £100 to clear them out. I'd tell him to eff off. Sometimes, it makes business sense to forego some income (money for removal costs) if that means gaining greater income as a result (sell on value of the removed goods) - something the girls mentioned all failed to understand.


How does that make her wrong? They were outbid because Zoe demanded a fee. It was Susan that argued against doing that.


Really? So why do you think she was in favour of giving them money to remove the 'rubbish' if she didn't think there was profit to be made elsewhere? I would guess she didn't mention her reasoning because it was so evident.

Susan's biggest problem here was in not having the courage of her convictions.

I can clearly explain this. When Zoe said to her, why should we pay the guy Susan just went 'Oh I thought thats what we were doing.'

Now if she had been clear in her mind that the reason they should pay him is that he has more valuable stuff here so its worth them paying him. But she didn't. And dont make the wild assumption that the only reason she didnt speak up was because she was intimidated.

The reason she didnt speak up was because she herself didnt have a clue as to whether they should be giving the guy money or taking money from the guy.

ALSO I hasten to add, if they had followed Susan's plan they would have given the guy £150 .... the other team did it for free, so they would have been £150 down before they even started.

My end point being, that Susan may not have verbalised her thoughts, not because she was intimidated, but because actaully she didn't even know in her own mind what was going on.

but they would at least have had the contract (and the opportunity to sell all that stuff for a profit) and the other team wouldn't... The other team would have missed out on the profit they made on that contract unless they found something else to replace it, might have lost the task.

But if Susan's team had bought the contract, I doubt they would have bothered to find the copper cylinders, which were a huge profit. From the sound of it the metal in the contract wasn't that great having a mix of steel, irons and lead. Once Helen offered free of charge there was no way of beating that contract wise and still be in with a shot.

What both groups should have done was charge a low amount, say £40, that would compensate slightly for the waste crap they would have to pay to get rid of. Helen's strategy was extremely risky, and although I like her, she was lucky to win when the other group had managed to find the copper cylinders - which were a gold mine.

This is an assumption of yours for which there was no evidence in the programme itself.

I gave my guess as to why she never (as far as we're aware) gave her reasoning in the post you quoted, and nowhere do I mention intimidation.


Is it so hard to accept, as a possibility, that Susan thought giving them money was a good idea because they would secure the contract, deprive the other side of that contract, and sell the 'rubbish' on for a tidy sum?

Also, I never said that offering £150 was the right course to take (although it would have deprived the other side of the contract, and who knows what from there?), but her thinking (that they need to look beyond the obvious of charging for the service, as shown earlier when she suggested offering it for free) was sound.

By the same token, you could argue that Zoe's team were fortunate to find some guy with those copper cylinders.

The way it came across in the discussion was that Susan thought they were talking about paying the guy rather than charging him.

Had she then gone on to explain that her misunderstanding was because she realised they could make X amount flogging the desks on, so was it worth offering to pay for them, I would have been impressed.

However whatever was in her mind, she showed - as she has done before - that she can't communicate her ideas to others when under pressure so whether or not she had a good idea is a moot point.

I think within the discussion they were having it was quite reasonable for Zoe to say to Edna 'Have I misunderstood this? We are talking about charging not paying aren't we?' Admittedly she said it in such a way as to suggest Susan was talking rubbish but it was open to Susan at that point to say 'I know that's what we thought we were doing, but....' and she didn't.

One thing I'm getting very tired of with Susan is this 'They're mean to me because I'm young' refrain she falls back on. Zoe said in the car back to the house she would talk to anyone in exactly the same way and I believe her. I think most of the candidates on Junior Apprentice were more articulate and clear thinking than Susan.

I don't see Shugs going into business with someone who thinks she's always right but lacks the ability to get other people on board with her ideas, or someone who allows people to sideline her so easily.

The rules of the task weren't made very clear. It wasn't made clear you have to charge for collection. I think you can give Susan the benefit of the doubt because the rules weren't clear. Did they have to pay money to the customer, did the customer have to pay money to the team, or did team have to offer its services for free? Seemed a bit unclear to me.


I thought Sugar meant the guy should pay them 50 quid.

Wow, talk about confusing!

Sugar didn't even say "the team that makes the least money will lose and one of you will get fired."

I think that's the first time in the show's history that bit of dialogue was edited out. Don't know why it was removed.

Yes, over £100!

I have no idea what Nick sees in this girl. She's all over the place.

I didn't understand any of it. You pay the customer, he pays you, you do if for free?

Totally confusing! No-wonder Zoe and Susan were bit clueless.

The concept is simple. You are there to remove all the rubbish. Now normally you might charge say £100 to do the job. But if you notice among the rubble an original Monet ..... you might offer to do it for nothing as you know you will make it back and more from the sale of the painting. You go to the next job and its the same amount of rubbish but not Monet painting, just rubble, and you will charge him £100 to remove it even though you did the last job for free.

Easy.

I think it was all a bit pot luck really. Zoe's team didn't secure either contract, but still only lost by £6. I don't think there was a right or wrong way to tackle the task, it was about making the most of the route you chose to take. And both teams did pretty well in that sense. I don't think Zoe should be too hard on herself.

Exactly, and I made a similar comparison in my first post on here. Indeed, if someone offers to remove the rubble that includes a Monet for nothing, some might say it'd be worth undercutting them by offering to pay to remove it.

Not a difficult concept at all, but one that Zoe failed to grasp when accusing Susan of trying to 'sabotage' the task when suggesting the same thing.

But Susan did not grasp this. She genuinely thought the gig was --

Go to a site and buy rubbish and then sell it. The clearing aspect of the task escaped her. She saw it like going to an auction and buying stuff to sell on ebay.

I'm not sure rubbish collectors would make any money if they regularly offered their services for free. As mentioned by another poster, there are fuel costs. The job requires a lot of travel and petrol is very expensive. There's also salaries for the employees. Perhaps in the 'real world' Helen wouldn't be able to afford to offer her services for free.

Only - from what we saw - Susan didn't suggest anything and certainly didn't explain that they could make money from the desks so they should in effect buy them.

Either she's completely unable to explain herself or she's working a tactic of saying just enough in a confusing enough manner to be able to cover herself whatever the outcome.

Eg if they had actually paid for the furniture, on what she said in that discussion she could equally have claimed it as her idea if LS thought it was a good one or said that she had got mixed up about the process because of her extreme youth and that Zoe should have known better than to do what she seemed to be saying.

Just as in the cosmetics task she confidently said she could sell all the fake tan but when she didn't it suddenly became unfair to criticise her for that assertion because it was only her idea and others should have overridden her if it wasn't a good idea.