Sir Alan Sugar is back for another season as The Apprentice UK series 5 cast of 15 new contestants competes for a job.
When the show opened saying that there were 16 candidates, I was confused because the originally released cast list only contained 15 people. There’s a reason for that. Someone has already been fired and/or quit. That leaves the men one short.
The first task is about cleaning, whatever it is they can get their hands on. It will be broken down girls versus boys.
Noorul loves the sound of his own voice. I suspect he’s not the only one of these candidates who thinks that way.
Kate doesn’t want to be seen as a dumb blonde.
Sir Alan suggests that the simplest thing is to just grab a bucket and sponge and start washing cars. If they try to go too over the top, they’d better bring back a lot of money because they have to pay for all the cleaning supplies they use.
The men will call their team Empire. The women go for Ignite.
Pub owner Howard will be the project manager for the boys. He describes his management style as fair and gentle. The women talk in circles a bit before finally deciding to make Mona their project manager.
Half of the men will be doing a car wash; the other half will do shoe shining. The women will be cleaning cars, or at least they will if they can make a decision about how much equipment to take with them. They spend almost all of their £200 budget.
Philip, Rocky, James, and Ben have a meeting at a mini cab office to clean its cars. Despite their project manager’s warning about how much time cleaning the interior will take, their pitch includes an offer to clean the interior. They get a deal for 30 cars at £16 each, a discount over the company’s current rate of £17.50. They’re only going to pay for the ones they’re happy with.
Mona and her half of the team go to a limo company and are looking to wash three limos for £200, enough to bring them to break even. Their first pitch is £300, which is way too high. Their current supplier does everything inside and out including full wax for £60. No point in trying to meet that amount, but they keep pushing to see what they can get.
The other half of the team, led by Debra, wants to clean four classic cars. They make a deal to do the four cars outside for £80, and if the customer’s satisfied, he will let them do the other 10 cars inside the showroom for £10 each. He can tell pretty quickly they don’t know what they’re doing. They have to ask the customer how to use a power washer.
As for the team at the limo company, they offer £180. Then £135. Finally, they get the guys to agree to £120 for some reason.
Howard, Majid, and Noorul are polishing shoes. They’ll get £4 or £5 per shoe shine. Margaret is not sure whether this low value service will pay off.
At the cab company, the guys are having some trouble. They’ve got some wet seats, uncleaned areas, and poor Hoovering to contend with. Howard calls and doesn’t like that they’re doing the insides of the cars, so they’re going to shut down and go straight over to help out. The shoe shining has generated about £60-70 in an hour.
Mona’s team has finished with the limos, so it appears their negotiating has paid off. From there, they notice a car wash charging £10 per car, so they’re going to be washing some more cars.
Debra’s half of the team has been taking a long time to do their four cars, and the guy in the showroom isn’t happy. Since they’ve taken this long, he doesn’t believe they’ll have time to do the cars in the showroom, and the quality of their first four car washes wasn’t good anyway. Mona tells them to head to a supermarket or something to wash some more cars. Washing the individual people’s cars is turning out to be a much better idea than wasting their time on the showroom cars.
Howard can’t quite figure out how it took four people an hour and a half to wash one car earlier, but nonetheless, they are finally making some progress. They’ve managed to finish 18 cars by the end of the day.
Kate doesn’t think Mona took enough leadership
Ignite took £357 and spent £196.45, for total profit of £160.55. Empire took £347 but only spent £107.39, making a profit of £239, earning a win for the men. Howard didn’t think his team could do it. Ultimately, given how much money the women spent, they didn’t have a prayer.
Mona hasn’t quite gotten this simple business message, though, and doesn’t realize Sir Alan will harp on it. She wants to blame the other half of the team for taking in less money than her half of the team did. Debra blames Anita, one of the people she’d labeled as a puppet, for that.
When the girls get into the boardroom the next day, the very first question is about expenses and who was responsible for the business plan. Debra’s response is that there was no plan.
Aside from a lot of double talk, there’s not a great deal going on here that indicates where anybody’s head is or who’s to blame. Mona will be bringing back Debra and Anita. Debra because she was the leader of the other half of the team and Anita because of feedback from Debra. That said, Sir Alan hasn’t gotten any answers within half an hour indicating what went wrong.
According to Mona, Debra didn’t manage her team well. Pot, meet kettle.
Anita has been fired. I… didn’t see that coming. 7 other women were willing to overspend, but it’s Anita who gets blamed because she had the calculator.
Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another recap of The Apprentice UK Series 5.
