The Apprentices Get On The Marrakesh Express

The Apprentices are rung in the early hours to get their passports and fly to Marrakesh for their next task. They arrive and Sir Alan greets them via a TV link, or maybe just through a simple DVD?

Anyway, the teams are mixed up with Lee leading Alpha and the non-orange haired, or Irish, Jennifer leading Renaissance.

They’re given their task to collect 10 items from the city of Marrakesh. The items were:

1. A Santos ‘Classic’ orange juicer
2. A cow hide with tail still attached
3. A green Mosque shaped Alarm clock
4. A cream Berber bedspread with silver sequins
5. A blue cactus (with a specified height)
6. A pair of medium strung tennis racquet
7. 1.5Kg kosher chicken
8. Dye
9. 3 red Akal branded tagines
10. Grey slippers

Can Retail Buyer Claire Negotiate?

Idiot Renaissance project manager Irish Jennifer says the task is a bit of a race against time so she wants to get into the souk as quickly as possible! She doesn’t bother doing what Lee gets his team to do. Lee gets his team, Alpha, to find out where the items they’re looking for are by phoning around first. Clever girl Sara points out the difficulty of finding Kosher chicken in a mainly Muslim country. Something Renaissance don’t even consider – despite having someone on their team who claims to be “part” Jewish.

Anyway Jennifer excitedly leads the way and Alex and Claire go into a stall to get the juicer pretending to be a “couple”. Whilst Alex is in the middle of a negotiation Claire goes out then suddenly returns brandishing money and saying she really wants the juicer and she has 1,100 (£76). The shopkeeper had been asking 1200 dirhams (£83) for it. Claire idiotically breaks into Alex’s deal and buys the juicer for £7 less than the shopkeeper was asking but about £35 more than their target price – shoot her now!

After that Alex and Irish Jennifer suggest that Claire stays out of the negotiations. Needless to say she ignores them and as Alex begins negotiation states that she wants to buy the Berber bedspread here, because her feet are aching. Talk about handing a winner to the opposite team! And again her interruption and further involvement in the deal costs Alex £60 more than he planned to pay.

Then when Irish Jennifer says “we need to stick with what we said before” Claire blithely says “yes” as though she hadn’t noticed her gaffes.

Michael negotiates a cow hide for £50, a third of the original asking price.

None of team idiot know that Kosher is a Jewish thing. Agent Orange asks for the chicken to be blessed by someone from the mosque.

Claire finds the tagines, but they’re not the right brand. Team idiot strikes again…

Then to top their stupidity Agent Orange and Michael try and bribe the tennis shop people to not re-string the rackets they’re buying so they’ll miss the task. I don’t know about you but I want people with integrity in my business.

Team Alpha Research Proves More Powerful Than Just Going Shopping!

Lee turns out to have potential when he organises his team to research the items they’re out to buy. The team spread out and really go all out to get the items based on their research.

Raef and Helene go to an out of town tannery to bag a skin with a tail. They come back with one for £15, significantly better than Renaissance’s attempt.

Sara comes into her own by negotiating for the alarm clock

From research Lee’s team find the Marrakesh Jewish Quarter where they buy the required chicken.

Alpha then go on methodically collecting items. Until they’re left with just the juicer to get. In the end Lee’s team manage to find a second hand juicer.

The Apprentice Task Winner Was…

Alpha spent £413.61 buying all the items.

Renaissance spent £449.60, plus they were disallowed the tagines and of course the non-kosher kosher-chicken and were fined to give a total of £603.59. And so lost the task.

In the boardroom Irish Jennifer was immediately asked whether she did any research. Simple answer, No!

Of course Sir Alan pulled the half-Jewish boy Michael out to ask him about the kosher chicken. Which he claimed to know nothing about…

As Sir Alan said there were 3 major mistakes. One was the Berber bedspread negotiation in which Claire interfered.

The other was the kosher chicken. Agent Orange managed to swivel round and blame Michael for buying the kosher chicken.

The final one was getting the wrong tagines.

Finally Agent Orange’s attempted bribery was noted. When asked about it she claimed that “we did take some money out and asked them if they wouldn’t string the tennis rackets.” We did take some money out? What does that mean?

Finally Sir Alan lost patience with Agent Orange’s wriggling and pointing the blame at anyone who looks as though they could be scapegoated. Sir Alan stopped her mid-flow and fired her.

Irish Jennifer effectively said I didn’t pay attention but I work really hard. So what?

In the end Jennifer’s disorganisation meant that she couldn’t really be kept on. So she was fired too.

Were The Apprentice Firings Fair?

Interestingly Margaret has a low opinion of Michael and says he’s just a waste of space.

There’s no doubt that Agent Orange should definitely have been fired. She should have gone weeks ago. So her firing was completely fair.

Irish Jennifer was not a project manager at any stage of the whole process. Then in the boardroom she highlighted other people’s sins rather than showing Sir Alan why she should be kept.

Claire was lucky that Alex had not mentioned the other negotiation that she scuppered because then it would have been a difficult decision as to who to fire. However, despite Claire costing them team money and despite the fact that I think she’s an idiot Sir Alan was still right to have fired Irish Jennifer.

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