I don't doubt that Claire's figures are all true, just that there's a big gap in what we're being told... the £8m she supposedly added to the company could not have been in pure sales revenue or she'd be on a far bigger package (at the last company I worked at, the head sales person was pulling in £3-4m per year and took home way more than £200k.) Either the £8m was over a long period of time, or it was incredibly low margin, or she didn't sell the product at all, just introduced the product to the retailer that happened to sell £8m of it... I was shocked at her salary too, but have to admit I've come across many many (even) worse characters earning lots more in my time... all a matter of being in the right department of the right company with the right product and the right customers at the right time.

As for Lucinda, I'd just say the same as many of the posters here - however strange it seems, her field is very well paid, and as long as you have a big enough contacts book (I bet she has - we haven't seen it much duing the series but I imagine she's a real flirt with her customers) you'll always be in work, and £500 a day is the going rate. I've been surprised at how technophobic she's been too, but again, have seen worse in my time from people earning way more... and at the risk of being sexist, she did push the "helpless female" archetype ("I can't make this work", "don't leave me on my own"), which still works in real life, less so in a ultra-competitive environment like The Apprentice...

The magic number.

Which would be fine if she were a salesperson, but she's not - she is a Retail BUYER

So yes, she could save her company money in that role, but £8m sounds a bit odd. As does the basic salary for someone her age.

http://www.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowP...o=290&pageno=2

So...going by this she would need to have 10-15 yrs experience to even earn £50k...methinks she is telling untruths

there's no way that claire could influence THE bottom line to the tune of £8m as a buyer. she has no infuence lower than gross profit.

and i thought that lucinda was a risk analyst and not just a business analyst. i'm a financial analyst and there's no way i could do this job without complex IT skills so i have no idea how she does it.

You mean, complex spreadsheet skills I assume (as you are a financial analyst), not general IT skills. Anyway, a financial analyst is a different role to a BA

yep, financial analyst needs professional qualifications and less corporate speak

There shouldn't be much corporate speak from a BA, if they are any good... Ambiguity is a very negative trait for these guys

Exactly! I think she is BS'ing too. No one could make it in the City as a freelancer and not be able to tackle basic skills on a computer. She was setting up a dating agency 2 years ago and attending Napier Uni doing an aromatherapy course...doesn't quite add up.

In Claire's interview, the guy who challenged her about her bonus said something along the line of 'something doesn't add up/isn't right here'. When she disclosed her salary in the interview, she even looked like she was lying. If she was a partner or head of buying, then her salary plus bonus would be more realistic (particularly when Superdrug has been making losses over recent years).

Other liars:
Michael was supposedly earning '£120k' as a 'telesales exec'.
Katie Hopkins lied about her 90k salary with the Met Office.
The Badger lied about being soley responsible for making £2 million (or whatever it was) for her ex-employer. Later we find she was just 'part of the team' that worked towards that profit.
Syed Ahmed was earning just £25,000 but made out he had built up a recruitment co. worth £1.6 million.

Mostly everything is fake about the show....so why are people so vitrolic about believing the salaries (an uncheckable fact) are true?

My boss earns a small bloody fortune and barely manages to turn his computer on without calling for IT assistance.

Because it couldn't possibly be the case that Lucinda is actually good at her job. You ARE sexist, your comments are disgusting and completely offensive. Women are perfectly capable of getting on in business by being good at their jobs.

Do you have sources to substantiate these? I don't remember reading about any of these.

I heard about the first two - think they were reported in the papers etc (and not contradicted by the candidates).

As for salaries being 'uncheckable' - surely they're not? If people apply for mortgages they have to supply payslips, or if in business/freelances accounts/tax returns or whatever.

If anyone wanted to challenge say, Claire on her salary all they need to is ask her to bring in some payslips... and if she seemed reluctant then that would indicate something was up.

She has never stated that she doesn't know how to use computer skills such as Excel or Powerpoint though has she? She clearly doesn't feel particularly skilled in technology and was flumoxed by getting photos off the camera but that doesn't mean she can't use standard office applications. The comment about the phone came across as just an illustrative comment rather than a genuine statement.

And I know people who work full time and also set businesses up in their spare time, as well as people (myself included) who have done uni courses part-time.

London salaries?

The director of compliance and risk at the stockbrokers i used to work for couldn't work out how to turn on his computer, didn't stop him being paid well in excess of 100k a year... Although i still to this day can't work out what he did for that money apart form sack me

I obviously expressed myself staggeringly poorly there - for the record, I liked Lucinda a lot and obviously know that women are absolutely as capable as men... what I was trying to point out is that Lucinda's chosen style in the tasks she wasn't leading was to be the "damsel in distress", an approach I insist still goes on all the time, without implying that every woman uses it! In its way it's the opposite equivalent of Lee's testosterone-heavy matey "wink-wink" all-lads-together style - it doesn't wash with everyone.

It's quite interesting to compare Claire & Helene's "one of the boys" approach (dark 3 piece suits, scraped-back hair, endless swearing) with Lucinda's ultra-feminine style (Bright colours! Hats! Capes! Politeness!) - neither is right or wrong, just examples of the different ways women choose to present themselves in the workplace...

I've probably made things worse, but there you go - no offence meant...

100k a year, that's 2k a week, that's less than £500 a day. That is PEANUTS for a contractor, we were paying some consultants £1500 a day for a project over 10 years ago

I don't believe Claire was telling the full truth about her salary

Well Lucinda's a consultant Business Analyst and they can command £400 per day - not far fetched at all.

As for Claire - I don't believe her. Sorry.:sleep:

My husband works in IT and its quite normal for contractors to earn 100K plus per year but if they were to go for a permanent position their skills would only earn them 60K tops and possibly a lot less

You generally earn at least double as a contractor because you receive no holiday pay and you have job insecurity and sometimes periods of unemployment between contracts. You also do not receive pension contributions from your employer or any other perks such as health insurance, company car etc

Lucinda is definately telling the truth. As a full time employee she would probably only earn around 50-60k and possibly less


I don't doubt Claire's salary either (though some of the figures didn't quite add up) It is possible in the corporate world to climb up the ladder by being in the right place at the right time, dead mans shoes, brown-nosing etc etc. I've known some complete berks end up in very good jobs via this sort of luck.

My millionaire Director always seems comically confused and clueless when anything remotely technical comes up.

He deleted all the emails off his blackberry after blundering around for a bit!

I believe the salary figures too. They are good for someone in their 20s, but not that remarkable for someone in corporate sales.

In my company the sales folk are on £60-80k basic but are expected to bring in at least £1m a year in business. If they do that they can bring in huge bonuses, if they don't they get fired (you are allowed one bad quarter but two in a row and you are out). It's a high pressure, high risk and high reward existence.

I don't resent them the money. It's their efforts that keep the business running and the rest of us in jobs. Me, I'd be the worse salesperson in the world. "This is the price. Do you want it?", "No? OK, I'll leave you alone."

I'm not sure what a DS Project Contestant is, but a trophy wife I know is a flashy bit of tat, that hangs on the arms of ugly men with lots of money. Obviously I don't know you well, so I can only guess you might know all about those other salaries; Claire and Lucinda might be able to earn.

That's what i was thinking. To produce those T-shirts, mugs etc - wouldn't they have been using Adobe Photoshop or similar? And if I emember correctly, her main problems were when she was trying to print - the ap couldn't see the driver (or at least the audible responses would be commnsurate with that).

TWAIN drivers are buggers sometimes... and it would be out of the remit of most of my userbase (BTW, I'm second line support - and a Lotus Notes admin.. normally comes to us after a reboot hasn't cleared the issue) to try to delve into the guts of the machine.

Also - it looks as though they were running on a vanilla build, rather than the heavy-testing-and-package-managed environment we use... with mostly business people (without onsite IT support) - would have been a little fairer to give them a standard build... they could then reimage the machine as a last resort...

Oh yes. Don't get me started on one user I remember when I worked in Euston... I was on deskside support. User wants to borrow a laptop.. 30 mins to warm the unit up, test it and hand it to her. Job done? No - not nearly. I had to stay with her, help her pull her presentation together... make like a packhorse 4 blocks down Euston Road, and run the sodding kit for her...

30 minute job turned into 8 hours due to her learned helplessness!

I had other orders to do...