You’re Fired (oh, and so are you…)

Whilst debating last night’s The Apprentice in the office this morning, a thought struck me. Every week, we see another hapless buffoon shown the door by Sir Alan (though how creepy James survived last night is beyond me) but surely there must be wider implications from each task?

Take last night’s episode as an example. Both teams set up catering firms, with the main point of the task being to supply canapés to social functions at two of the City’s leading lights (well, that’s the kind of thing the narrator would say anyway).

The boys team provided children’s birthday party food (including cheese and pickle on sticks – yes really) tied into some half-baked London 2012 theme. They dressed like students out on the tiles (or Greeks, if you want to get bogged down in the original point of togas) and tried to charge the buyer £60 a head before getting knocked down to £15.

The girls, like the boys, did not receive all of their negotiated fee due to poor food, but somehow managed to be considerably less terrible (or maybe luckier) and win the task. Watching them bulk buying cheap ingredients and looking for any way that they could rip off the customer made it feel like they weren’t really winners at all – unless Sir Alan applauds that kind of behaviour.

Anyway, digression aside, my point is this. The businesses roped into last night’s task, and specifically the individuals who negotiated with and then managed both teams, were shown up to be a little bit stupid. Both “guinea pig” firms obviously saw benefit from their involvement (other than TV exposure, presumably) but paying £500, as the client did to the girls team, for what was described as looking “like it’s come from a funeral at a working men’s club” does not strike me as good business acumen. Both clients were treated pretty contemptuously by the teams supplying their canapés, but someone must have taken the decision to open them up to this? Maybe it isn’t just around Sir Alan’s boardroom table that someone got fired following this task?

Even if those responsible weren’t dealt with quite as dramatically, surely it’s the type of thing that would be remembered by their superiors, customers and suppliers? Imagine the conversation: “Thanks for your application for this promotion James, but one can’t help but remember when you spent lots of our hard earned cash on bruschetta that would have choked a donkey.”

And it’s not just the main culprits at risk. One lunchtime punter spent £4 on one of the girls team’s half filled chicken wraps – just imagine how cross his wife is going to be when she saw last night’s programme and how he’d forgotten his promise to be a bit more careful with their money in light of the credit crunch?

So, every week now I’m going to pay less attention to Britain’s so-called Best Business Brains and spare a thought for those innocent victims taking a big career gamble by agreeing to be filmed. They don’t even get 5 minutes of fame for their trouble.

Tags: business, the apprentice, tv

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 at 11:28 am and is filed under Chatter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.