Yes.

She didn't bother digging deeper to find out exactly what her prize would be before quitting a £85k job. For £100k, suck it up and do work you think is beneath you. And if you want a challenge and don't want to stay, don't blame it on the employer, you took the job.

This is the part I feel sorry for her about, the role she was given wasn't her choice and if her colleagues were jealous and took it out on her, somebody should have stepped in and dealt with that.

But the fact that she was put into a role she considered beneath her isn't something I feel sorry about. She shouldn't have left a job without knowing the nature of her new job, that can't be blamed on LS or The Apprentice team IMO.

In her defense, the Apprentice never states upfront what role you will be given. The fact you get paid 100k makes it out to be some kind of Project Management role whereas in reality it was more of a bog standard desk role. Also what made things worse was that her direct boss was one of the ones who does the 'interviews' stage, and apparently he is really a complete 'a...hole'. I won't name names though just in case. But I can assure you he is one of the ones who appears regularly at the interview stage each year on the apprentice.

Well, as there is no assurance about what role you're given, all the more reason not to throw away an £85k job plus risk uprooting your family, no?

So where do you think she should have dug to find this out? She could have approached previous winners, but their advice would have been misleading as apparently they had had a very different experience after winning. She could have asked Sugar; do you think he would have told her straight up what the position would be?

Of course, she was getting the promised income, so to that extent she wasn't defrauded, but she is obviously not simply motivated by money, but by the idea of actually progressing her career. It's hard to deny that she was led to believe that the job would be something it wasn't. To say " don't blame the employer, you took the job" is therefore not a fair representation of the situation.

As Bordan is specifically named in the newspaper reports, there seems no real point in reticence on his name now.

Indeed the show established the other idea that winners did get projects to run. Everyone before Yasmina did - not sure if Yasmina didn't end up doing something similar to Lee. The devil was in the detail though - Michelle got a dud project, some projects look dull and most people didn't seem to hang around for another,

If you win a show called 'the apprentice' - then an apprentice is what you should be

Stella has been treated abysmally.

Ok fair enough ........ then I can confirm Bordan was her boss, and not just from Stella but from another person who worked there (which is how I knew she had quit despite Lord Sugars protestations on twitter that all was fine and dandy) ...... that basically hes a complete ....... (insert own word of choice here).

He is a complete arse, yes.


Exactly.


If nobody would tell her upfront the nature of the job then she can hardly complain that it wasn't what she expected. You don't come into the 5th or 6th series (whatever it was) of the Apprentice thinking you're going to be Sugar's protege getting lessons on business every day. They don't even get direct contact with him the programme except in the boardroom, where instead of giving business advice he tears them apart.

They gave her what was advertised which was a 100k job in Sugar's company. If she was naive enough to think she was guaranteed to be a project manager she doesn't deserve a 100k job.

You're not listening. The fact that Stella's series was the
6th didn't matter; she seems to have made herself familiar with what had happened to previous winners and wasn't the same as what happened to her. How do you think she could have known she wasn't going to get the same level of role that they had?

I'm not saying she should expect lessons from Lord Sugar every day, and I'm sure she didn't expect it. But she obviously did expect a role of the kind that other Apprentice winners had been given and not a junior role where she was only getting 100k so that Sugar could say he'd delivered. Despite what you say, it wasn't naive of her to expect this.

Lord Sugar certainly delivered on the letter of what he'd promised; I can't imagine she has any legal claim against him. But if everthing Stella says is true, he didn't deliver the spirit of what he'd promised.

I 100% agree, based on the previous shows and their experiences it was perfectly reasonable for Stella to expect a decent job. I mean the show is called 'The Apprentice' .... not 'The Office Clerk', and while yes I know technically the apprentice can be a lowly job, its clearly implied you are being an Apprentice to Lord Sugar and working directly with him .... not in some desk job in the middle of nowhere aka Brentwood.

Stella definitely got sold a pup.

Caveat emptor. If you are willing to throw away a secure job that pays very good money, uproot your children and your husband, you have to have some reassurance first (and I don't just mean assuming that what has happened to past winners will happen to you).

To be honest, it's no different from entering the X Factor and then being surprised if you get treated more like Joe McElderry than Leona Lewis.

It's a huge risk, and if my children were settled and I was already earning almost 3 times what a Police Constable earns just by working in a bank, there's no way I would throw that away just to be on a TV programme. If I couldn't get legally set out assurance of what the job would be and at what level, I wouldn't do it. As I say, caveat emptor.

Agree 100%. Apart from the first year's salary, there have never been any 'guarantees'. And who's to say some of the other past Apprentices didn't have beef with their roles - only difference is they haven't tried to make a meal out of it in the press. Even Michelle Dewberry was very dignified with her disappointment, with Sugar coming out of that particular episode looking bad. The bitter truth is that most people aren't ecstatic with their jobs but have no choice but to like or lump it...and that's if they even have a flaming job to be unhappy about! Zero sympathy here for Stella, I'm afraid.:sleep:

Yes, I agree completely. And most of those people earn a lot less than £100k or even £85k.

Again, I think that is to miss the point. Of course most people don't love everything about their jobs, but it's not the same as being misled as to what the job will be.

No, think you've managed to miss the point: it's entirely at one's own risk if one decides to jack in a career for the Apprentice show or 'prize'. Anyone with any commonsense understands this - however many years into the show - and thus can't sensibly nor reasonably claim to have been 'misled'.

Of course legally one does go on The Apprentice at one's own risk etc, and Lord Sugar has no doubt met his legal obligations by providing a job paying a six-figure salary. But the moral position is a bit different. You can't say that the job was what Stella was led to believe, nor was it similar to what previous winners had received. She had absolutely no reason to believe her prize would be any less. It's a nonsense to say she wasn't misled.

What are you talking about? They all got very different roles - cue Michelle Dewberry who wasn't happy with hers either - thus she can't have been 'led to believe' anything. By all accounts, the job was a good match for Stella's limited capabilities...

I'm sorry about all that because I really rated Stella. She was obviously underused. I agree she should have done a bit more homework before taking on the job though.
Never mind, she'll go on to bigger and better things. I found Stella quite impressive that year.

There is no more homework anyone could do. The job isn't known, There is no more information on what it may be, The past candidates, at least up to Yasmina (where there's not enough known and it would have been too late anyway) all got unique jobs to do - some of which were poor jobs, others of which were good ones, and all of which involved being given something to actually do with some new project. The show also continually pushes out the line that the winner will get the opportunity to learn from Lord Sugar. It looks very much as if that year there was nothing much, and the change to the show and prize this year was designed to avoid the problem happening again.

Michelle apart - and she left Lord Sugar very early after her win, not solely because of the role she'd been given - they were all given roles far more in line with what had been indicated.

If Stella's capabilities were seen by Lord Sugar as so limited, one has to ask why he chose her as his Apprentice at all.

The show is selling some kind of dream, it's not really enough to say "Well you're now earning more than the average so you should be happy". She was earning more than average before, and the show is supposed to be about finding someone exceptional, way above average.

No it wasn't. Then why did Lord Sugar select her as an apprentice if she has "limited capabilities"? It's quite clear that at the time he had no adequate roles for Stella and just dumped her wherever he could.

I think it's a shame people are trying to justify Stella's treatment as being "Well she should have done her homework". As if Lord Sugar was really going to admit "Well, I don't know where I'm going to put you at the end of this, I'm I'm honest". Anyway, no one really knows if Stella did try and find out more about the winning position. Maybe she did and was misled from there?

The fact Stella assumed that a 100K job would allow huge responsibility, career direction and room for growth wasn't naive. The obvious fact is that Lord Sugar is money oriented and no one would think that he'd pay 100K for a job that wasn't worthy of the pay. Which probably had something to do with why he didn't extend Stella's contract and said "I've done my duties as far as I'm concerned".

Stella was misled pure and simple and that's evidenced by the fact her co-workers were earning less but pretty much had equal duties or responsibilities.

After beating all those other people and giving up your day job for several weeks, I think the winning apprentice should win 100k outright. You can win more than that in a single episode of a game show. Given that, obviously it's supposed to be about the year's opportunity, not the money. If she's not given the opportunity then she's losing twice over.

It reminds me of talent shows like X Factor when you just end up winning a record contract, that could potentially make you no cash at all. Given the money these shows generate, the least they can give the winner is a one-off cash prize, before they figure in anything else like the record contract or work experience.