ROFLMAO!

So you missed that little incident when Zoe started slamming into her in public in the middle of a large shopping centre and task?

Why don't you go back and play that episode again and come back and tell us exactly why it didn't happen?


Susan also seems to be having fun a lot of the time.

The fact that they edit the programme to include many instances of her complaining might be because she complains a lot or it might be because that is the persona that the editors have decided to provide for her. We have no real way of knowing.

Your argument only makes sense if she has enough buisness accument to know what things to complain about

I find myself getting annoyed on behalf on Susan week after week, she is so frequently not heard or respected that I see myself in her.

As a physically small and slight woman with a soft voice and a gentle manner at 21 I too was frequently not heard


Now I am older some people are still suprised when I make myself heard and the ideas I have are good


The others in the programme need to listen to what she is saying not how she is saying

I also find her annoying and whiny and beleive she needs to learn the same lessons I learnt to get the respect I deserved and do it quickly. However, really the others in the process are so egotitical the only voice they are listening to is the one that is in their head telling them how wonderful they are

We saw quite a few of the shots come up on the screen when he was choosing which ones to send through to Jim & Zoe. Some of those he dismissed out of hand were far better than the ones he shortlisted - and Susan did try to tell him that she preferred some of the ones he binned!

We may not have seen ALL of the shots but we were shown enough to see that he had no eye whatsoever for what would be a good cover shot at all (and yes I run a scrapbooking business and do know what makes a good photograph!)

and in defenece of Glenn and Susan once they went with the god awful name of Hip replacement the action shots and the name in conjunction were dire as Jim pointed out.


As much as Jims failure to negotiate that name and the condescending tone ( for example explaining how to send an email! or make a phone call from a mobile) made the magazine a very difficult sell to the ad people

The concept was good they identified a gap in the market and then promptly went with a knitting pattern magazine completely ignoring the focus groups advise

and in fairness to Susan she ask whether they should be aiming to do something for a market that they personally knew nothing about ( which again was ignored)

Surely using action shots would have helped get across the (rather lame) message that the title was supposed to be ironic?

I suspect the actions shot made it look too much like how to get a hip replacement

seriously I despair of these so called buisness people

The identified a gap in the market for bright affluent older people and then proceeded to thing that these people wanted knitting patterns and would ever buy a magazine called hip replacment

First, do me a favour and never use the rolleyes smiley again. It's inflammatory.

Secondly, she wasn't being belittled. Zoe pointed out that she asked for a large order and now she needed to sell them. No-one told her she was "little", or a poor saleswoman, or implied she couldn't do it. Zoe said, "Try and recall it back, and try and get the sales." It was intended as encouragement.

Pointing out that someone has made a mistake isn't necessarily belittling them. Unless they take it personally, as Susan is wont to do, whinging "It's so unfair".

You might as well say Susan was belittling Zoe when she said she'd have done the rubbish contract for free, or that she was belittling Jim when she said he should have given a discount. But that would be silly. It's not belittling when Susan does it to others, and it's not when they do it to her.


I have. I like evidence. I'm sorry if you have a problem with that.


Agreed. It's still part of why Tom is liked more: we just haven't seen much reason to dislike him.

Didn't she used to work in skincare?

"You've made your bed and now you have to lie in it" is encouragement, is it?

As I've pointed out before, if Zoe really intended her speech to Susan to be encouraging, then she has zero social awareness and should be fired immediately on that basis.

I think you must have no idea how to speak to people in a civil manner if you think Zoe's showdown with Susan was 'encouragement'

Zoe was pointing fingers and speaking with that whiny tone of voice. It was completely unnecessary marching over mid day to stop the entire team from selling or doing treatments, gathering the cameras, in the middle of a busy shopping centre to say "You said you can sell", "Why haven't you sold", "You need to sell" when Susan was trying her hardest to sell in the first place.

It was completely humiliating for Susan, and very uncomfortable to watch. No wonder she got defensive. A good PM would have said, "We haven't sold as much, but we've got the rest of the day to make up the sales, go on everyone, let's nail this"

Besides, they did pretty much sell out, bar a couple of bottles I saw in the box with a load of unsold nail varnish. And because of Susan's choice of tanning products, they won by £500 or something, and I never heard any praise from Zoe, rather from the other team!


Of course not, but it depends on the manner on which you do it. Making a public announcement is absolutely belittling.


This argument is just plain stupid. Susan says it with a kind tone, and offers her OWN opinion of what she things should be done, not blaming others for their mistakes. When they received the phone calls in the rubbish task which transpired that Susan was right on both occasions, she never said to Zoe "You made a mistake, how could you make a mistake", in fact she was encouraging Zoe back at the house. And only bought up the mistake in the boardroom when it was necessary.

And if you perceive Susan's correct suggestion of reducing the price of the magazine as the same tone that Zoe has with Susan, then you must be in your own world.

Seems like you really have a problem with Susan. You seem to want to portray her in the worst light possible and completely deny the obvious.

Susan often has valid points, but I wonder if many people only like her because she is young and nice (in stark contrast with the other women on the show for instance).

Personally, I fail to see her as a great potential business partner. Her best asset seems to be her management skills, so if she is indeed the PM in the next task then I am sure she will do great.

That said, she might still be in the top half (in my rating of their abilities) of all the candidates left but that is more due to the quality of candidates.

Exactly and more than that, I don't believe that Zoe would have spoken to another candidate in that way. She might disagree with them as she did with Jim this week, but she never talks to them with the same lack of respect as she shows towards Susan. I still think the issues between these two are going to boil over eventually and Zoe will get called on her attitude problem with Susan. Zoe never misses one opportunity to have a dig - she was even at it in the losers' cafe this week.

Haha, you will be in for a surprise then

"No, but I'm happy to support it" is still, very plainly, no. I wish she'd just said no, and left it at that, or better still suggested an alternative, because the last bit isn't really necessary. I can see why she said it; she knew she was outvoted and probably didn't want to be seen as negative. But it's given people a stick to hit her with.

I believe she would.

Ahh, but Dave (I assume you are from Scotland ) .. by saying No, but I'll support it ....... means you look like a team player on the outside and if all goes well, everyone forgets about it ........ but if you get dragged into the boardroom, you've got a convenient ace up your sleeves.

This is what annoys the other contestants. The others are making decisions and dying by them (ok, read as getting fired) .......but meek, couldnt make a decision to save her life Susan, doesnt and then gets to play it both ways.

In fact the only time I can remember her standing her ground was when she said she could sell 60 units of perfume on her own ......... turned out she couldnt even shift 30 of them .......... still to be fair the womens beauty market was a complete mystery to her ....

So you're saying she should have said she didn't like it and then point blank refused to do anything more in the task, correct? Basically boycott the entire thing?

Tell me, if Susan's course of action was wrong, what was the right course of action?

This is something I've asked the 'Susan haters' time and time again but never got any answer.

When other team members do not take any notice of your contributions you are damned whatever you do.

Make your case strongly and you are labelled disruptive and whiny. And if the task is lost you are accused of not supporting it wholeheartedly.

Make your case mildly and you are accused of 'just covering your arse'. Or, sometimes, people will deny you ever objected.

Maintain your objection and you're accused of not being a team player.

Get on with the task and you are accused of not being serious in your objection.

I think she should have said "I want it on record that I don't like that name and I don't think it will work." She could then obviously have carried on working on the task, but at least she could truthfully say in the boardroom that she was the only one who went on record as not liking the name.

You can still support your PM, but it would have been better for her if she'd have been firmer about her feelings on the name.

WRT Zoe, she treats Susan as a child. She might have a whinge and a whine about other team members (she was outright disrespectful to Glenn) but Susan is the only one that she treats as a small child.

To me it comes across as picking on the weak; she knows she wouldn't get away with it to anyone else. There is no way that lining everyone up as a firing squad to have a pop at Susan, in the middle of the shopping centre, was professional or encouraging.

Interesting, isn't it? It's a bully's mindset; Whatever x does is wrong. What should x have done then? Doesn't matter. Whatever they do is wrong.


But in substance that is no different to what she did. If you don't like the name it follows that you don't think it'll work. Why else would you not like it? She was on record because it was filmed by the cameras and noted by either Nick or the production staff.

Yes, true, but I still think she should have been firmer with it. Even saying "Erm..no, but I'm happy to support it" could be construed as being wishy-washy.

Where has someone who's not a PM gotten fired for making a decision?

Alex and Ellie got fired for sitting back and letting the others carry them. Edna got fired for making claims she couldn't back up. The only ones fired for actually screwing up tasks and making decisions have been the PMs so far.

When Susan was PM, she made decisions and would have been accountable for them, like every other PM has been so far.


Tanning lotion, and she never said she could sell the entire 60 on her own. She made an estimate, judging what she thought each person could sell, based on her own experience.

She did over-estimate this, but not to the extent that the Susan-haters are suggesting. And her only fault was judging it on what she would sell pre-Apprentice, forgetting to take into account they were going into a different environment and there was a honking great camera crew following them around which would put some people off.

Yes, she isn't perfect. I think she is slightly too reticent but it's not as big a failing as so many people are making it out to be.


Spot on!

There was one scene last episode where she was talking to Susan as if she was her mother/big sister and had had enough of discussing something and was moving to: 'you're just a little girl, it's time for you to listen to a grown up' mode.

I don't think Zoe actually dislikes Susan but I think she overestimates the degree to which her own extra experience overrides Susan's innate business sense.

I think there is a mistake that a lot of people make, both on TA and on forums discussing it, and that is to assume that 'selling' is a great big, homogeneous, activity.

I consider myself to be as far from a salesman as it's possible to be but I can sell things perfectly well if people want to buy them! Technical sales, where you learn the product (range) and find out what people want and match it with what is available is completely different to 'cold' selling where you are trying to induce people to purchase things that they had no intention of purchasing.

We have seen time and time again that people who consider themselves excellent salespeople just don't cut it when cold selling.

They make the mistake of believing that because they can sell well to people who are already interested in their product they can translate that into selling to people in the street - which is a great deal harder and requires entirely different skills.