Anyway, the Apprenti are summoned to the Guild hall, a rather grandiose setting which slightly overwhelms Lord Siral, who isn't exactly the most physically imposing of men. This weeks task is to plan a corporate away day on a budget of £5,000. But for once it's not just about money, the team will also be judged, in some unspecified way, by the customer's feedback. Myles is moved back to Team Morse in order to balance numbers and Leah is put in charge of the team, presumably because she spend so much time last week wishing she was. Team Evolve will be lead by Francesca because she does something that is in someway related to this stuff.
Luisa gets off to a cracking start by telling Francesca that she hates the corporate world and everything about it and hates theses sort of events. Though she does it in the same vapid squeak she uses to talk about everything else. Francesca looks impressed.
For reasons that surely have nothing to do with sending the team off in the wrong direction and creating unnecessary conflict, the teams are expected to come up with a theme for their day without consulting the client first. Francesca quickly settles on a school theme, though Rebecca's idea for a wine-tasting event suggests they might be struggling to come up with themed events. Or Rebbecca went to a very interesting school.
I'm not sure what's so great about the school theme, but Neil is aggressively pushing it over at Team Morse. Apparently he's been to a school-themed corporate away day before, which in Neil-world is the same as being an expert. Leah doesn't like the idea, though I think I might be put off breathing if Neil was trying to sell it to me. She prefers a history theme. Neil puts it to a vote and the team are with him. So, stuck between alienating the group or looking weak she goes with alienation. Karen Brady comments that she has been criticised for not following her instinct before, but she's still wrong now.
All in favour of ditching this stupid task and going to the pub?
Team Evolve meet with their clients, an 'online travel agency' who want the day to focus on team-building. They seem happy enough with school theme and so the rest of the team are sent to source activities. Luisa and Jason check out a chocolate-making workshop, but Luisa thinks she can do a cup-cake workshop that offers the same value and costs a lot less, an opinion she is very keen to state to the chocolate-maker's face. And then asking if she can buy some piping bags. Is she compelled to be rude to everyone she meets?
The chocolatier is impressed by Luisa's tact
Meanwhile, Jordan, in his role as Finance guy, is failing to keep Francesca and Rebbecca under control as they wander around a supermarket hurling items into a shopping trolley more or less at random.
Just think of all the Nectar points!
Team Morse spent so much time arguing that they're late for the client and then follow up by arguing some more in the corridor outside. They take so long that Karen Brady has to come out and get them. The client in this case is Barclays who, evidently, are famous enough that mentioning their name isn't considered. advertising. The client wants a day that focuses on listening and communication skills, but Leah ignores all that and starts banging on about how majestic her history theme will be. The client looks less than impressed. He's "not here to solve this assignment for you" but it looks like he's going to have to.
The sub-team of Neil, Alex and Myles, fresh from sourcing archery activities, are informed by Leah that the new theme will be army. Alex nearly blows his top. I'm starting to think he needs to get fired for the good of his mental health.
Casting around for new activities, Neil suggests sumo-wrestling in fat suits, which Leah, for some unaccountable reason finds 'offensive.' Offensive to what exactly? I know there are some religions with some pretty wacky beliefs. Maybe Leah subscribes to some obscure sect whose holy book includes the line 'Bankers wrestling in fat suits is an abomination unto the Lord. He shall set his face against them.' She finally agrees to keep it as a backup, but only if the sumo-wrestlers touch and don't wrestle. Because this is less offensive to God or something.
Both teams want to end the day with a motivational speaker. Rebecca is convinced they need a professional, Luisa, wants to save more money by doing it themselves. Francesca decides that as they are being judged on quality they had better spend the money. Over on Team Morse, Neil has 'persuaded' Leah into letting him give the speech. He's listened to people talking so that pretty much makes him a professional speaker.
The next day dawns and Team Morse meet their clients at what looks like an abandoned supervillain's headquarters. The picture is completed when Alex marches in in camouflage fatigues and sunglasses and demands that they call him Colonel. He looks so much like a military dictator that if this goes on he likely to be brutally murdered on national television.
The clients seem to go along with it at first, submitting to his orders with good humour. The activity, which involves one person giving instructions to another who has been blindfolded, at least fits the theme of communication and goes down reasonably well. Unfortunately, the weather turns nasty and the event has to move indoors. Unfortunately, Leah turns out to have no plan B. She ends up giving a long, rambling lecture about conflict resolution before resorting to the sumo wrestlers despite her religious objections. The sumo suits run in, crash into one another and run out in order to communicate the message that you shouldn't deal with conflict by running around in a sumo-suit, or something.
Conflict Resolution
Team Evolve don't have to worry about the weather, but that's mostly because they have kept their clients indoors drinking tea for what seems like hours. The event is starting to feel more like an OAP coffee morning that a corporate away day. Eventually, Francesca decides to start things off with a somewhat incoherent speech in which she tries to outline the theme of the day. It goes a bit wrong when she says they have one goal for the day before outlining four. It doesn't help that there's little evidence of the theme. The team spent £600 on props, but I can't remember my school featuring a large plastic flamingo or a series of fake flame lights.
The weather at least holds long enough for an exercise that involves teams walking along a plank, before lunch lovingly prepared by Jason and Rebecca. These two found themselves in the kitchen a few weeks ago. I think they put Jason there to keep him out of trouble and Rebecca to keep an eye on Jason.
They are released from the kitchen for wine tasting, though it isn't the most focused of sessions. The idea is to guess which wine is the most expensive, but no-one including Jason or Rebecca has any idea about wine so no-one knows what they are looking for and when it's time to reveal the results, Jason and Rebecca can't remember which is which. Nick Hewer seems to be enjoying himself at least
Luisa's cup cake session goes down like an offended chocolatier, with one client claiming he lost interest and looking like he might be suffering from depression. Another client tells the camera that she can't see the point. To be fair, you can say that about most corporate away-days.
The day ends with the two motivational speakers. Team Evolve's goes down well, but he should do, he's a professional who cost them £600. At Team Morse, Neil takes the floor. The tone sounds like Neil's usual monotonous drone to me, as he recounts his childhood history, born on a mountain top, his birth heralded by a double rainbow, or something like that. But his story about taking inspiration from the death of his father and having one goal in life to focus on seems to hit home and the clients are impressed. Maybe the best parts were edited out or possibly the clients, having worked in a hermetically sealed environment, are impressed by anything that sounds even vaguely like human emotions.
Back in the boardroom, Leah's project management is torn to shreds. Neil is eager to claim the credit for everything good. Though he rewrites history to claim that she called a vote about the theme which she subsequently ignored, when it was actually Neil. More troubling is Alex's determination that they get his self-declared rank right. He's already gone mad with power.
Viva El Presidente!
There's a lot of focus on Team Morse, which can mean only one thing. Team Evolve have lost. Both teams were fined 25% of the fee for basically being crap, but Evolve spent more money.We had to see Leah get shredded now because she wasn't going to be called back later. Neil is pretty much given the credit for the win, Karen Brady claims the client was 'very impressed' by him.I'm not sure if it's possible to make Neil worse without causing some kind of ego gravity collapse and the formation of some kind of black hole. For everyone's safety, the team is packed off to a spa where the Great Dictator gets his eyebrows waxed. Somehow this is not a joke.
Team Evolve are keen to criticise Francesca's project management, but the cost of the motivational speaker is quickly blamed for the loss. They lost by £500 and he cost £600. Ignored is the fact that client satisfaction was also part of the task. They already had to refund £1250, if Luisa had stood up and given a speech they would probably have had to refund the lot and pay a fine. Nevertheless, Lord Siral singles out Rebecca as she suggested the speaker and because of the inappropriateness of the wine-tasting event. He then gives Francesca a warning that she had better bring people in to the boardroom for the right reasons that is so unsubtle he might as well have said 'bring back Rebecca or you're fired.' Francesca complies, but there's no way Luisa is getting away with calling her a bad project manager and so she gets pulled in as well.
Francesca tries to defend her theme with some blather about creativity and team work. It's not the most coherent of statement, but Karen Brady responds by asking 'can you hear what's coming out of your mouth,' in a tone that would have been more appropriate if Francesca had claimed the Jews were responsible for 9/11. Lord Siral scoffs, which is a bit rich from a man who regularly fails to complete a coherent sentence.
Francesca plays her trump card, Luisa's claim that she hates the corporate world and everything about it, deciding to play this as though she just personally insulted everyone on the other side of the table. Luisa recasts this as hating corporate bullshit of the type just espoused by Francesca. Karen scornfully claims she would have a hard time at the bank. So corporate bullshit bad when Francesca does it, good when banks do? Also, if any of the people on this show could get money out of the banks they wouldn't be humiliating themselves in front of an audience of millions. Karen really is in a foul mood in this episode.
Lord Siral dances around the point for a while. Francesca should have been better at this as it was her are of expertise (to be fair she supplies stuff for corporate events she doesn't run them, it's like asking a brick maker to build a house) and the fact that everyone hates Luisa may reflect badly on her. In the end, he decides to get rid of Rebecca, which is pretty obvious given how determined he was to get her in the boardroom. Lord Siral is rapidly running out of women, at this rate they'll have to put Jason in a dress.
Next Time: The teams attend a camping and caravan show, selling products they don't understand to people they hold in contempt. Pretty much business as usual.
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