Just to stir things up again...

I was surprised that no one mentioned in the long, angry and ultimately locked thread about H & L's spat on YF that the voiceover says it's only Lucinda who was trained in using the computer: Episode 4, part 3 3.25

I think the main reason there have been so many arguments about that task was because the producers did an extremely poor job.

It was completely unclear:

1) How difficult the computer task was.
2) Who had training and how much (despite the voiceover).
3) What the rest of the team were doing whilst the training took place.
4) Whether the problem was equipment failure of candidate uselessness.

Thus it was a matter of a lot of people who had strong feelings about one or more candidates trying to make the picture fit with their preconceived notions and the rest of us pulling our hair out trying to keep the peace without having a fraction of the information we needed.

Plus it was all very well Nick saying the trainer had said "his 8 year old could do it" but that doesnt really prove anything.

I know plenty of adults who can only grasp basic functions and thats even when they have some experiance.

While alot of kids, having often grown up surrouded by technology, take to computers like a duck to water.

Then of course you et the hang of it and without warning "computer says no".

I went back and listened and you are right

Maybe that explaines why Raef did not want to get involved on YF because he knew Lucinda was playing games again

Yes, there has been a lot of that. For example, when Nick said something about Helene which he clearly did not mean as a compliment, when one part of it was taken out of context, it was suggested by some people that he might have meant it as a compliment.

I understand that they film about 180 hours of video each week, all of which gets edited down to an hour.

It is therefore impossible to generalise over what has been included and what has been ommitted.

It may well be that Lucinda had everything explained to her, line-by-line, several times. This certainly wasn't apparent from what we saw, but WE JUST DO NOT KNOW!!!

It is also pointless to speculate or point a finger. WE know ONLY WHAT WE ARE SHOWN!!! That represents less than 1% of the material shot for each task.

Speculation is also pointless as WE CANNOT CHANGE THE RESULT. It is an edited entertainment show. One can have a favourite candidate, but please do not rush to judgement over ANY observed behaviour, because you just DO NOT KNOW!!

Oh well, I guess we better close down this whole forum in that case....

But we can speculate on what we saw :yawn: otherwise why have a forum at all. I think we all know that we cannot change the outcome but we can discuss it and debate it til the cows come home if we want to


Not another thread closed down just because Lucinda is mentioned in it, lol She will hold a record soon for most locked threads.

Well of course despite all the drama they did actually win the task, so Simon's team had to take up at least half the footage shown, and there are only so many minutes of actual task shown each week.

It seems doubtful that the voiceover is 100% wrong though (imo), so it's likely that Helene missed at least some training and wasn't simply lying, as claimed by some on the other thread.

Thanks for posting that Trumbles. I had wondered where I could see a copy of that episode - Youtube didn't occur to me...duh!

Yes the voiceover does say quite clearly that the only person trained to use the computer is Lucinda. This sets the scene for the clip where Lucinda is having trouble with the computer and Helene is trying to help. Would they make such a definite statement if Helene had had the full training as well?

Furthermore, if Helene had had a comprehensive training, wouldn't she have done her best to help? I don't buy the argument expressed elsewhere that she was not cooperating with Lucinda so that she would have someone to blame if they lost the task. Whilst I'm sure they all attempt certain strategies for their survival, I think risking failing a task by withholding any help you can give when project manager is just too risky both in the short term and the long term. In the short term you're likely to get fired and in the long term (assuming you survive) SAS will look at who was most successful in the tasks they managed.

That seems pretty definitive. Lucinda lied.

Or the narrator and Helene lied.

There's no issue here of context. Either Helene had the training or she didn't. According to the programme, she didn't.

It's not so much context as perception.

IIRC we saw Helene in the room whilst the training was taking place.

If Lucinda was aware of her presence she might well perceive that as her having 'had' the training.

Helene, on the other had may have had her mind somewhere else and in no way considered she'd had any training.

It seems a pity that we have to use the term 'lying' when discrepencies can easily be explained by a difference of perception.

In the YF outburst OTOH, we know that Lucy at the very least bent the truth since her messages were not consistent.

I agree that many things can be a matter of perception, however whether or not Helene received training really isn't one of them. Whether Helene may "have had her mind somewhere else," we actually saw her doing something else. Unless Lucinda expects a team leader to be able to separate mind and body and attend to two separate functions at the same time, there's little room for her saying she thought Helene received training.

Unless Lucinda was concentrating so hard, albeit futilely on the training, that the rest of the world disappeared. In which case, she still can't say Helene received training.

I don't recall when Lucinda sent inconsistent messages. Was it in the you're fired show or in the interviews?

I believe Lucinda commented (on her YF or in the Interviews) that whenever she had a falling out she would take them aside later and make peace.

I am not as good as you in the transcripts but i did my best and this is the argument they had after the technician went away:

Raef to Lucinda: "Are you happy with the computer?"
Lucinda: "No I am not because as I said I .. really .. no matter how I hard try I am not a technical person"
Helene: "I am not either .. but.. "
Lucinda interrupting: " yeah but I told you this in the first instance"
Helene: "I know you did but what do I do ..don't put you on things. It's my decision"
Lucinda:"Ok..ok..ok" Lucinda sits down
Lucinda "I have to say you were there for training as well"
Helene interrupting: "No I wasn't, I was do..."
Lucinda interrupting: "why aren't you comfortable with doing this?"
Helene:"I am the project manager and I said you're going to be doing this like when I was assigned to the kitchen i cooked for 10 hours. It's about team work, it's about being assigned a work and getting on with it"

I think it is clear from the above argument that Lucinda did believe that Helene attended the training and Helene didn't pay attention to the training because she was doing something else. Lucinda did not have a clear idea about what Helene was doing during the training. Otherwise, she would not have confronted her.

It is also clear that Helene was not completely honest in the boardroom because she clearly knew that Lucinda objected to being put on the computer.

For me Helene was clearly under huge pressure because it was her first task as a PM but I have to say that she behaved badly on the task. She also didn't take the right decisions. Since Lucinda told her about her incompetence, she should have either paid attention to the training, had one more person on their subteam, or put someone else on the job. I really can't find an execuse for Helene no matter how hard I try for two reasons:

1- Her sales team was strong and could have carried Lucinda easily.
2- They already had one more team member than the other team. To make Lucinda completely responsible for the job was a huge mistake in my opinion. She didn't know Lucinda very well and she didn't know how poor Lucinda would be on her end of the job.
3- When the technician came, she should have at least attended with Lucinda or if she is not that confident, she could have asked Raef or someone from the sales team (who were doing nothing at the time because sales stopped) to attend with Lucinda. Till now no one understands the nature of the problem.

I think she had so many chanced to rectify the situation and she didn't.

She also had a bee in her bonet about the cooking task.

Thanks

Could be. It certainly doesn't seem 'crystal clear' that Raef knew Lucinda was right, as someone thought...


Agreed, that's not a plausible argument.


I agree it was an unnecessary risk putting Lucinda on the computer because it was the one place where failure completely crippled the whole team's efforts. Helene was not a great PM, as we saw again on the wedding task.

OTOH, we can speculate as to why she thought it was a good idea. It's pretty obvious that in the first few weeks several candidates were starting to wonder whether Lucinda had got into the process on a 'collect 6 crisp packets and win' basis as she didn't seem to be very effective at anything. However, she was supposed to have been earning £100,000. Given that Lucinda didn't turn up to a meeting (apparently just hadn't bothered) during the laundry task, apart from anything else, Helene probably thought she was just lazy and undisciplined. So when Lucinda said she wasn't much good with technology, Helene thought '...unless someone's giving you a kicking'. It didn't occur to her to take it at face value.

Given that Helene had no idea that Simon's team would self-destruct, she'd have wanted to get everything out of her team in case it was a close-run thing. If Lucinda was selling, she could just have swanned around without really trying. Better to plonk her in front of a computer with well-defined tasks to get through, and then stand over her to make sure she did them. All those keen on sales would be out competing with each other and bringing business in, and with an extra member they'd win.

This does not explain why Helene didn't pay more attention to the training or why she didn't make someone attend with Lucinda when the technician came. Even if hse wanted to price or choose the product. I think she could have attend the training and done that later. I think one of the elements of costing is how difficult the job is and how your team is coping with it.

Helene's mistake was in not predicting that an intelligent woman purporting to earn £100,000 would be so very useless that she had to take time out of doing other things, like choosing the products and pricing them for the market (having worked out that market), to learn to do Lucinda's job as well as manage the whole team. Should Helene have learned Raef's job as well?

If a manager, any manager, has to spend a disproportionate amount of their time on one of their team when the team members are allegedly on an equal footing (as, for example, they are contestants in a one-off reality show), the problem is not with the manager.

On the final 'You're Fired' show when talking about the task, Helene said:

"By Lucinda’s own admission she doesn’t like sales, doesn’t want to do sales, so where did that leave me? You know was it…did you want to do the back room or did you want to do the camera? And I was stuck ..."

From the way Helene phrased it, it could be interpreted that Lucinda had stated that she didn't want to do sales and Helene was obliging her by not putting her on sales. This would be consistent with the way Lucinda reacted in the car task, where she seemed lacking in confidence in her sales ability to the point of wanting to shadow Lee and have him point out possible prospects to her.

Helene might have reasoned that at least with the computer task a training was provided and Lucinda would thus be on more solid ground. Surely Raef's task was just as 'technical' so apart from sales, there wasn't a non-technical option for Lucinda. From the way Helene phrased it on 'You're Fired', in terms of questions, it sounds as though she might have asked Lucinda which task she preferred. If Lucinda didn't feel equipped for any of them then perhaps Helene felt she had to make a decision.

Helene admitted on 'You're Fired' that her biggest mistake was in not taking the training and stepping in to do the computer task.

You are quite correct, it doesn't explain.

And we can't explain because we simply don't know the various time constraints.

What we do know is that the technician said that the computer task was so simple a child could do it (and given that this sort of system is targeted at non technical people that seems entirely reasonable).

Just where are you going to draw the line a doubling up on such training? Getting the photo? Sending an email? Turning on a light switch?

If you're told that a process is simple and idiot proof where do you get the clue that a successful businesswoman earning 100k per year won't be able to handle it?

I can answer that: when you have perfect hindsight!

If the task was simple as the technician said, and given that Lucinda displayed great inability to deal with it, then Helene should have immediately put someone else on it or at least attend with the technician the second time instead of letting Lucinda deal with it again. Nick suggested shuffling the team in the boardroom and SAS asked her the same question - and no .. no one would have attacked her for it because the sales team was doing nothing at the the time. They were not selling.

This point is not about perfect hindsight rather than about a bit a management when faced with a problem.

I really can't find an execuse for what she did other than Helene's inability to adapt. Also every one seems to forget her appalling behaviour at the time which indicates that she simply cracked under pressure. I am not saying that Lucinda dealt with the situation better but it was Helene who was the PM.

In real life you simply don't make a person, who declared that they lack the skills completely responsible for a task that can cause the project failure.

Helene should have not learnt Raef's job because Raef declared at the beginning of the task that he has no problem whatsoever being in the backroom. In the apprentice and especially in early tasks, the only way to allocate roles was by asking every one what he/she is good at and if they fail, they are responsible and in many cases they will be fired.

Even if Helene did not anticipate what was coming, she had the chance to rectify it when the technician came and she didn't. She cracked under pressure, her behaviour was appalling during the task, and frankly she lied in the boardroom. I don't think that Nick would have suggested shuffling the team if she had no option.

I am not saying that Helene was a bad candidate in general. However, her people management skill is not good. She failed 3 times as a PM to motivate her teams and get the best out of them. Helene was not generally a liar, but like some of the other candidates she had no problem turning on someone if she felt they had a great chance of being fired instead of her (even if this candidate was not the main reason they lost the task). Despite winning that task, she was ready to get rid of Lucinda before knowing the results and that is probably why she lied in the boadroom.

So which task could she have been given that would not have been critical to the overall result?

Sales? - No, she said she was no good at that and if there are no sales, no revenue.

Photography? - No, she said she was no good at that and if the photographs are bad no one will buy them and there will be no revenue.

Raef's job? - No, because that was also technical and Lucinda said she was not technical and if you can't produce product there will be no revenue.

That only really leaves the PM's job!