If i was in Sugars position i would have been majorly concerned with his attitude and excuses.

I was just following the recipe, we heard him say several times and it is thinking like this that gets your business into serious problems. Tunnel vision is far worse than anything Dan did or did not do. I have seen it time and time again people who think they are right and will run with that to prove a point which results in major problems.

Can't help but feel Sugar has kept the interesting people in for the purposes of TV

Disagree Dan made it easy to fire him by admitting he couldn't do almost everything required from the show.

I wasn't really impressed by Brett, but Dan was just too incompetent to keep. He was totally pointless.

Agree I'd rather someone just admit they can't do something than be delusional like Brett is. Plus Brett isn't that great for TV, this is where Trump unlike Sugar would weigh up the entertainment value. I actually think Dan would have been better for TV, like a Lucinda type character although I guess we have one of them in the older woman.

Brett has a lot to offer goimg foward

Like what? An unshakable commitment to the rules and witholding valuable task relevant info from his past.

Brett was bad but Dan was worse, never did anything & admitted he couldn't do anything you expect in the show, keeping Dan on would have been for entertainment purposes only.

Quite the opposite actually .
He now knows that there is wiggle room in most rules and specifications and that will stand him in good stead .
For me it was a toss up between April and Dan . To his credit Dan held his hands up to his limitations on this task , while April steadfastly denied any culpability whatsoever . Everything was someone else's fault and she pointed the finger at everyone but herself . Well she was PM, the buck stops with her for that abysmal £1.87 profit .

And sorry to be petty but that bun atop her head looks stupid , can't wait to see her with her hair down and styled nicely .

All three had strong cases to go. But surely the problem was that they didn't buy enough to make 300, and that wasn't Brett's responsibility. He just followed instructions to be fair.

I think the project manager was to blame, for choosing to do labour-intensive fishcakes, instead of a nice big spicy fish stew, which could be made quirky and ladled out into dishes really easily.

When you realise they look like skyscrapers and not like any regular sized fish cake you'd thin them down a bit to make more, or is that just common sense that none of these people have.

Brett at least seems relatively confident and skilled. Unlike Dan I think he could do well as PM

BIB I remember her owning up to her mistakes quite a few times.

It was bugging me who Brett looked like...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/t...s.html?image=2

Chiles, from last year!

Agree

Skilled at what? You all seem to be drinking his Kool-Aid. He could be a good PM I'll admit because I bet he can dish out orders alright.

Cillit Bang adverts, by the sound of him.

He does

He's an engineer - he follows the manual or the ship stops working.

If the calculations on price, demand, how much to buy , likely sales and the recipe to produce that were right - producing smaller fish cakes would have meant fewer sales and unused fish.

Not sure if they had fish left over , or that they should have adjusted the the size to get nearer 300 with what they had.

It looked like they had failed beffore that though. There wasn't an estimate of how much time fish cakes would take, and no focus on getting ready to sell by lunch time. The fish was bought at too high a price, the product was too ambitious, and they couldn't sell it even with the lower quantities they had - which reflected poor choice of product, or poor selling , or both.

Dan did the recipe and whatever figures were done. April didn't make the key decisions or adjust things when things went wrong. .

Brett was driving me mad! He kept banging on about the 2.5cm specification of the fishcakes when they actually looked more like 2.5 inches. I wouldn't think someone who can't apparently think for themselves would be an ideal candidate.

I actually thought Brett was pretty good to me, I didn't really understand the criticism levelled at him in the boardroom. He stuck to the specification and cares about making a quality product, it shows he's committed and passionate to making a good product for the customer, and has honest intentions. It may have cost them time which was unfortunate, but it shows he has some of the right qualities for a business partner going forward. I also thought he had his head screwed on and seemed like a natural leader in the kitchen. I think he'll be good as a PM when it comes round to his turn.

Meanwhile, I wasn't impressed by April and thought she should have been fired. She can say she's decisive and makes snap decisions, but that's not always such a great thing. Sometimes you need to think before you act. The other team negotiated a better sale for their fish because they took their time and didn't buy off the first person they saw.

April wasn't capable of listening to her team either, bulldozing her ideas over everyone else's and refusing to listen to anyone else's input. What I say, goes. She may be decisive, but that's no good if you make all the wrong decisions. The prices she decided for the products was ridiculous, and then she made a pointless argument over the £6.50 v £6 debate. She was putting unnecessary pressure on her team in the kitchen as well, with targets such as make 300 fish cakes.

Dan wasn't great, he didn't make any sales and he said the line that sealed his fate 'I can't sell'. But I think he may have had more potential going down the line, he just seemed a quieter character and maybe more of an ideas man, rather than a salesman. And ideas are important now Lord Sugar is looking for a business partner rather than an employee.

It shouldn't be up to a worker to decide for themselves the specifications of a thing that they're tasked with making.
It's the responsibility of those in management to ensure that the workers have the correct supply of materials to manufacture a thing OR instruct the workers to do things differently.

I don't suppose Alan Sugar would be too happy if one of his employees took it upon themselves to start building out-of-spec TVs or computers simply because they'd run out of a particular component.

The only thing that Brett could be criticised for is that he didn't "cover his backside" by telling April there wasn't enough fish and asking her to make a decision about whether to change the recipe or not.

He looks like a Plymouth version of scouse actor Mark Womak. Also that Dan looked like James Mcavoy a bit in the face.

But as someone rightly identified back at the house, this was a 'pile em high, sell em cheap' task, which the other team got. Neither Brett nor April showed many signs of appreciating the need for a quick turnaround product. I suppose April at least wanted high prices, but ruined it by trying to sell salad in a box after lunchtime in the city.

I agree. Even when April voiced her concerns in the kitchen he steadfastly refused to deviate from the 'specification'. I kept thinking back in the boardroom when he continued to repeat the this mantra over and over in a desperate attempt to save himself "wow, you are shockingly stupid!". Even when Karen pointed out he should have realised he wouldn't have enough ingredients to make such jumbo fishcakes again all he could say was "I thought it was important to produce a good product and stick to the specification" completely side-stepping the issue.