The Apprentice Season 2 thread (1 Viewer)

[Chris Lockwood]

Yeah, I don't think she meant her comments as a slur, but since she knew she was on camera, she should have had the brains not to word things as she did. Plus the executive-level job she was trying for on the show should require better judgment than that.



Was the issue of her comments raised in the boardroom? I just wonder if Trump was aware of them when he fired her, because that alone would be enough to give her the boot. I don't remember it coming up in the boardroom on the show, but could have been in the parts that were edited out.



I like how she's whining about her career being over. Hey, don't make remarks like that on national TV. I'll bet if one of the men had made a sexist remark to her, she'd be all upset.

 

[WillG]

I feel a little bit bad for her because I'm sick how society will ruin a person's life for one stupid comment. Was Jenn dumb for saying that, Yes. Do I think she's a true racist?.. probably not. Have we all made stupid comments in our life?...Yes. And this is the same society where starring in a homemade sex tape wins you all the fame in the world. How is it that we worship sensationalistic and hedonistic behavior but one dumb, slighly racist comment makes you an outcast?

 

[MickeS]

When did it become racist to call someone you think is jewish "jewish"?



/Mike

 

[Raasean Asaad]

It is when you apply a negative connotation to that description such as she did.

 

[Chris]

Idiotic. I'm almost ready to quit watching. Nope, I'll just quit watching. I felt as though the first run had a good play at going after business sense, this season has been a complete lack of those fundamentals.



Spoiler:



The women sell more units then the men by almost 3 fold. They then lose by $10 in the race of total sales, due to the higher price of the men's product. Fine. But the men were a notable "crapshoot" for QVC because their profit margin wasn't even remotely that of the women, who used a much cheaper product at a higher upsell. I think the Donald referring to it as "being clobbered" was completely out of context, on any day, if QVC showed these kind of sales, they'd take the woman's product every time.

BTW, the Pamela was right, even if she loses. $1/bar is what you buy the Magic Eraser at walmart for, which their product was identical to. Kind of shows how out of tone the people doing this are. George's assessment that 'hey, if you lose the bid, you lose the bid'. Is ridiculous. Business operates on a profit. The women's group turned in, by my math, almost two folds the profit margin of the men. I think Pamela may be playing it kind to say "we tied" rather then saying "hey, we generated significantly more PROFIT then the men, the shipping cost, cost of product on our item is much lower, and our margins for QVC were better.

 

[WillG]

Spoiler:The point of it was gross sales Period. Strategy plays heavilly into it. It was not a most units sold contest. That involves product, pricing and charisma on QVC. The men won, just by a little bit, but they won. And Trump's comment about the women being clobbered was in reference to the Apex's overall record.



Spoiler: BTW, I'm starting to like Raj more and more. He may dress weird sometimes, but he has a sack on him to hit up Anna Kournikova

 

[LanieParker]

I was sad to see Pamela go. I thought she really did a goof job of getting those woman to focus for once on the task. There was hardly the amount of bickering this time as compared to before. The chaos was definitely minimal. I thought Pamela was a much better leader than any of those woman could be





I think the woman are in for a very rude awakening. They do not perform well at all together and they just do not know how to focus on the task at handIt will be two men at the end competing for a job with Trump.

 

[shaniceMW]

Spoiler:pamela should have been fired. one buck a bar is one thing but you forget you have to pay for shipping and handling also. and that's 1.50 a bar so to speak. when you factor that in, i am not willing to pay that. maybe the extra amount i said is a lil bit much but you still have to factor that in. so you dont just have that bottom line figure. if it's all of that i will wait to go to walmart. and not pay the shipping. but if you want to sell more, you have to create an atmosphere of bargain shopping. now if it was Spoiler:99 cents per bar they would have clobbered the other team.

 

[Chris]

Spoiler:Uh, it was less then .99 cents a bar. 30 bars times .99 is $29.70. They sold 30 bars for $27. That's 90 cents a bar. Compare to $2.13 a bar for Magic Eraser:



[url=http://www.builderdepot.com/browse....rodstoreid=2052]http://www.builderdepot.com/browse....rodstoreid=2052[/url]

[url=http://www.iteminfo.com/Product.asp?subcat=2514953]http://www.iteminfo.com/Product.asp?subcat=2514953[/url] ($7 in a four pack)


Or here you go, a 12 pack for more then what they wanted for 30:
http://www.acehardware.com/product/i...ductId=1791171



Trust me, I've got toddlers. We still buy this stuff, and even at $2/bar, if it saves you from painting.. and it does, it's worth it. The assertion of "it's ridiculously high" is just a sign that the people in that boardroom knew nothing of the product they were selling.. and Pamela was right.. she was LOW in her pricing.



Still, my key argument is that their profit margin was significantly better. Business is built on profits, not gross. The other way around is the old internet logic of "we lose money on every sale, but we make it up in volume" doesn't work that way.

 

[shaniceMW]

that's true, but it's how you structure the pricing. if you have a 9 at the end like .99 or 1.99 that's lower than what people were willing to pay and they feel like they are getting a discount. psychologically people will pay 2.99 before they will pay 2.50. just as a whole. obviously not everyone. but when people feel like they are getting a discount, they buy in bulk.

 

[shaniceMW]

oh and they do not have a clue. they dont do the Spoiler:cleaning. they dont do the shopping either. and i bet they dont watch qvc.

 

[Chris]

I will agree, they should have ended the pricing in a .99, that's just good logic. I don't know what was wrong with that. That is the psychological threshhold, if they see a .99 they feel like it's been 'price cut' who knows, but every study says that.



Still, I'll stand by what I said above in evaluating their performance.

 

[Kevin Reckelhoff]

quote:The point of it was gross sales Period.

And that's why the show shouldn't be claiming that it is trying to find the best "business person". Who gives a crap about *gross* revenue? This task would have been much more relevant if they actually included some thought about costs and margins as part of the strategy.

 

[Kevin Reckelhoff]

quote: was sad to see Pamela go. I thought she really did a goof job of getting those woman to focus for once on the task. There was hardly the amount of bickering this time as compared to before. The chaos was definitely minimal. I thought Pamela was a much better leader than any of those woman could be

Not to mention that it was perfectly setup for her to fail. She is forced to switch to a team that Trump has acknowledged is completely dysfunctional and that she has never worked with. Then, she gets them to their closest finish, and yet she has to take the blame for the whole team. This show seems increasingly arbitrary. Does Trump really run his companies this way?

 

[Chris]

quote:



Not to mention that it was perfectly setup for her to fail. She is forced to switch to a team that Trump has acknowledged is completely dysfunctional and that she has never worked with. Then, she gets them to their closest finish, and yet she has to take the blame for the whole team. This show seems increasingly arbitrary. Does Trump really run his companies this way?

When he said "you didn't assess talent very well" I thought.. hey, she had the entire bus ride from NY to Penn to assess talent in before they arrived at QVC.



Yeah, that's a lot of time to figure out talent.. whereas Trump is taking the whole freaking season to do it

 

[shaniceMW]

look at george and caroline and how they react to trump. by the way george hasnt gotten paid for being on the show and he wants his damn money!

 

[DAN NEIR]

I found it interesting that Trump sent Pamela over there to straigthen the women out when Pamela was the PM of the ONLY loss the men have ever had. Then,she did horribly at selling ice cream, had no energy what so ever and she was invisible on the restaurant episode. Ultimately the women's loss was her responsibility as their leader. That being said this was the best the women had worked together since their victory with Bradford.

 

[WillG]

quote:Who gives a crap about *gross* revenue

Surprisingly, there is alot of that mentality in the business world. High Gross sales look good to shareholders. So, many times a company would rather make 10 Million on some product that costs $10,000 to produce per unit than 1 million on some product that costs $15 to produce.

quote:Not to mention that it was perfectly setup for her to fail.

Ding Ding Ding!!!



We have a winner. Seriously, this show is starting to become infected by Survivor. Preying on the strong by the weak. It seems that with the exception of Jenn C. and maybe the first guy who got voted off, Trump is giving the true screwups a pass and firing people with talent for some dubious reason. With Pam, it was admitted that Trump respected her, and that she showed good leadership (the lack thereof is something that Trump has continously criticized many for so far) But she does not have the best people skills, so she must be fired. I think true leadership is harder to cultivate than than people skills. She only lost by $10 and while that is still a loss, it is not nearly as bad as some others have performed.



When this show first started, I figured that the winner would be given $250,000 and some do nothing job, just to be let go after 3 months. In that first season, he made the right choice, Bill. And I was happy to see he was actually getting a real job with real resposibility. But this season, I wonder if it really will be some do nothing post.



I agree with the person that somewhere in this thread said that you couldn't pay him enough to work for Trump. I know that he is probably putting on an act for the show, but even if he halfway resembles this in real life, it is too much.

 

[MickeS]

quote:I will agree, they should have ended the pricing in a .99, that's just good logic. I don't know what was wrong with that.

That's not how QVC does it. When you see "28.99", you know that the price is pushed up as high as it can go. When you see "28.34" it is meant to convey that the price has been pushed DOWN as low as it can go, to the point of not caring about the "99 rule".



It was the WRONG decision to fire Pamela. To say that she misjuedged the teammembers abilities is perhaps right, but she had very little to go on. There was absolutely nothing wrong (in the footage they showed) with the way Pamela assigned the tasks. I would instead fault the one who says she is a good public speaker and then completely blows it (Maria did a TERRIBLE job in the dry run). Stacy is obnoxious, and I think she took her legal responsibilites (summed up great by Pamela as "taping over labels on bottles") way too seriously only to be able to show she's an asset to the team. All she needed to do was OK it with QVC legal, nothing else.



I do NOT think the product was overpriced, I agree that if anything it was underpriced. I don't think they could have sold more than 30% extra units if they had priced it at $20.



I agree that the competition is ridiculous in comparing gross sales.



Pamela's leadership style was too harsh and condescending, yet I think from what we saw she accomplished what she set out to do. There is no consistency in Trump's decisions, one episode he wants someone who's decisive, and the next he complains someone is decisive. It's all about the ratings.

 

[MickeS]

I just noticed that QVC have the two presentations on their website: [url=http://www.qvc.com/ac/ac_apprentice_video.html?tmp=P19&cont=3]http://www.qvc.com/ac/ac_apprentice_...tmp=P19&cont=3[/url]


/Mike