Monthly Archives: June 2008

Movies & TV, The Apprentice

Sir Alan Makes His Choice

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I’m somewhat getting used to not agreeing with Sir Alan over the final winner of the Apprentice, indeed over the four runs of the competition so far I think I’ve only actually agreed with his choice once.

The grand finale this year pitted Alex and Helene against Lee and Claire, with Sir Alan arbitrarily deciding which team had won, and picking his apprentice from the two on the winning team.

The task involved producing a new fragrance for men, involving giving a sales pitch, and presenting advertising. Both teams made mistakes. Alex and Helene proved to not be able to work together, and largely lost a day deciding on a name. Thanks to their allocated designer, they got a stand out idea for a bottle (and it was interesting watching the boardroom exchanges with Alex trying not to admit that he was given the idea) that could be split into two, which then lead to a name for the product – Dual. Helene tasked with producing the fragrance managed to produce a near clone of the perfume she usually wore, again an embarrassing moment for her in the boardroom. However the task also gave them a fixed price point for the product, and with their fancy bottle, all the margins would be blown.

Things weren’t much better on the other side. In terms of a product, their market research (asking a bunch of plumbers) indicated that men wanted a more male oriented fragrance, so they very much targeted male stereotypes, opting for a near Bond themed launch and product, calling the perfume Roulette, and producing a Bond-esque advert set in a casino. The problem with this was that to the industry guests invited to the launch this seemed to be strongly encouraging gambling, and would be a difficult sell as the main purchasers of fragrances for men are actually women (buying as gifts), so the thought was that the advert and theme would be off-putting to the main purchasers. Scent wise the task fell to Claire, and people were less than impressed, in one case describing it as a seventies throwback.

The split of teams was pretty deliberate I think. Claire has previously shown herself to be strong at presenting, Lee by far the weakest of the final four. Putting the two of them together proved to be beneficial, as Claire was able to help Lee to produce a much better presentation.

In the boardroom, Sir Alan awarded the task win to Lee and Claire, the two candidates most people expected to be in the final anyway, ostensibly because the dual bottle design was too expensive. Then after that, he seemed to fairly swiftly opt for Lee as his apprentice.

To many people Claire was the stronger candidate, but in much the same way as he did last year, Sir Alan has opted for someone with a lot to learn, someone he can shape, rather than the much stronger candidate. Needless to say, much as with Kristina, who is doing rather well for herself, Claire may find that coming in as runner up gives you a much wider choice of opportunities.

However, whilst his choice was a surprise this year, the choice this year has generated more column inches because of the revelation last week that Lee had lied on his CV. When you saw a brief shot of the offending document last week what he had done is quoted the dates of the course, and then put a note underneath that he had not completed it, however when question further on it he didn’t immediately admit the length of time he was there, causing a definite problem when it transpired that the company had contacted the university. Sir Alan, when questioned on this in the You’re Hired following the announcement justified it by saying that everybody fibs on their CV’s, and then made a comment about the expense claims filed by Bordan Tkachuk, the interviewer who had found out about the lie. At this point the camera cut to a not very happy looking Bordan Tkachuk sat in the audience. The decision has also been criticised by other TV businessmen for the message it sends out about being untruthful on a CV – many stating that honesty is a key quality in business.

To some extent, the You’re Hired programmes afterwards proved to be more of a revelation than previously. One interesting point was that Alex very much blew it the week before in the boardroom because he attacked Lucinda. Sir Alan said when asked about why Alex wasn’t suitable said that by that point it was already clear that Lucinda wasn’t going to be picked, and it was unnecessary to do what he did, almost kicking somebody when they were down. Alex tried to justify his actions by pointing out that all the others agreed with him, but largely didn’t get very far with his justification. The programme also looked back at the clash between Helene and Lucinda, made all the more interesting by having Lucinda sat in the audience with the other candidates. Helene tried to defend herself by arguing that it was the pressure of the task and that things were sorted out later, saying that her and Lucinda were on more friendly terms – unfortunately Lucinda didn’t agree.

The other uncomfortable looking former candidate on the programme was Jenny Celerier who was pretty loud throughout the early part of the programme until Sir Alan came on and the infamous kosher Chicken incident came up, and the discussion moved to a discussion about Jenny Celerier and her boardroom tactics. Once again she was heavily criticised for the way she latched on to what Sir Alan was saying and manipulated the boardroom. Certainly of all the candidates this year she has come out by far the worst from the experience being shown bullying other candidates and quite blatantly telling lies to get on. Unfortunately whilst she got her marching orders, the fact that Sir Alan has been seen to let off and employ a liar does tend to lessen the impact. As the article goes on to state that one-in-four companies have rescinded job offers due to dishonest or accurate CV’s. Certainly in previous recruitment processes for technical roles we’ve almost dispensed with interviews before we give candidates a thorough technical test to confirm that they can actually do what they say on their CV – and a worryingly large number of them cannot.

Maybe then it is good news for Lee, but bad news for the rest of us who have to recruit somewhere other than a TV show.

General

Parcel Farce

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Usually when I’m ordering something, I try to have it delivered to work – the theory being that at work there is usually someone around to sign for the parcel, and you’re not going to have problems with forged signatures and parcels propped up against the front door. However every so often we have to have something delivered to our home address, as it has been with a parcel that we were supposed to receive on Tuesday. Unfortunately the company from which we were purchasing requires that for credit card purchases, the package has to be shipped to the credit card address, and it was shipped with Parcel Force, the parcel delivery arm of the Royal Mail.

When we first moved here, we had problems because being a new build, the road wasn’t on any of the maps. Eight years on, we’re on all the latest sat-nav data, indeed you can put our address into Google Maps and take a nice look at our back garden. Recently about the only problem we’ve had has been the occasional Tesco delivery driver who ends up in Penrose Park (worth noting at this point that it Ocado equip their drivers with a sat-nav, so we’ve never had a problem with them).

Anyway, both yesterday and today there has been no sign of the parcel, nor any sort of card. Thankfully the company sending the parcel supplied me with the tracking code so I could see what was happening, and it came as somewhat of a surprise. They have twice failed to locate the address – it escapes me quite why having failed to find it on Tuesday they didn’t at least look us up on a map to try and find us on the Wednesday – but twice they have failed to find it. Incidentally, the top item on the tracking is my redirecting the parcel to our local post office, where since we know the post mistress quite well, hopefully there should be no problem picking the parcel up without the card. Annoyingly it takes Parcel Force two days to actually get the parcel to the local post office, so we’ll have to wait until Friday until we can go and collect it, plus they’ll charge us 50p for the redirection. That’s a lot less than the £5.50 they’d charge to redirect it anywhere else. The only other option is to drive to the other side of Reading to collect it in person, but I fear after the farce this week I’ll probably not be at my best with whoever happens to be on the desk if I did.

It just amazes me that a company whose primary business is delivering packages is unable after two attempts to find our house. Granted if we were in an out of the way place, or a brand new house it would be understandable, but the house is eight years old, and the road is on sat-nav, map, whatever, why on earth is it so difficult for them to deliver our parcel?

Update: You’d think this was complicated. I’ve just had an e-mail back from Parcel Farce customer service saying that they had “resolved the address problems” and that the parcel was back out on the van to be delivered to my home address – I’ve just phoned them up, and once through their automated system to a real person (hint, press the ‘#’ key on your phone a few times and you can get out of the menu system) and she had checked, it seems that the parcel is indeed on the normal delivery route, not being sent to our local post office as requested. The customer service agent said that she could send a message to the driver to make sure he delivered it to the local post office instead, although that proved to be complicated as the list of local post offices on her system bizarrely doesn’t list our local post office at all, despite the list on the main website including it. So place your bets please, do you think they’ll actually manage to deliver the parcel to the right place by the weekend?

Update 2: Parcel all delivered. Looking at the paperwork attached to the box the initial instruction to redirect the parcel was actually received, although after having accepted that instruction they then had another failed attempt to deliver to the house. What is interesting is that the customer service agents you speak to seem to have no more information than the tracking system gives you so can’t tell where a parcel is actually going, hence all the confusion in the middle of the week.

Current Affairs

Milk in a Bag

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If you want an entertaining little distraction, take a look at BBC reporter Rory Cellan-Jones trying out the new recyclable bag and jug system for milk that Sainsbury’s has just launched.

What comes over is quite what a faff the whole system is compared to just opening up one of the normal plastic bottles that most milk comes in. The idea is that you buy the reusable jug once, and then the bag is made from recyclable plastic, avoiding the bottles going to landfill. In the case of us, that isn’t a problem, as our local council will take the plastic milk bottles anyway, however I’m well aware that different councils have different policies.

However the big question that comes up is why, if this is a move to encourage recycling, why this is more environmentally friendly than the way milk used to be supplied which was in reusable glass bottles. You’d hand back your empty bottles which would be taken away, cleaned and reused. Surely having a container that is totally reusable like that is more environmentally friendly than a whole load of plastic bags?

Cars, Focus Grumbling

How Many Volkswagen Mechanics does it take to Change a Golf Headlight?

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This morning when I started the car, there was a warning light left illuminated on the dashboard. Needless to say the icon was a bit obtuse, at a guess I thought it might be something to do with the brake lights, as it looked a bit like a cross between a bulb and the hand brake light, but after a flick through the manual it turned out to be a general bulb problem warning. A quick bulb check and it looked to be one of the headlamp bulbs.

Now as any long term readers of this blog will know I had a generally poor opinion of our previous Ford Focus, especially when it came to changing headlamp bulbs, since the design of the engine bay in the revised mark one Focus we had was so bad that even the experts had to disassemble the front of the car to change one of the bulbs. I’m not alone in that either, the original posting is by far the most commented on the site. There are various suggestions on how to make it easier, but whichever way you look at it the bulb change is still a pain.

Compare this to the Volkswagen Golf we now have. I’ve just popped down to the car park and changed both headlamp bulbs in about ten minutes with no tools at all, the back of the headlight is a screw fit, and the bulb sits in a socket that again screws in and out. It’s not exactly as if there is loads of free space in the engine bay of the Golf – it’s still a bit fiddly, but it’s a job that either myself or Beth could easily completed on the roadside, rather than needing a toolbox or a visit to a garage to do the job properly.

Apple/Mac, Computers/Technology, iPhone

iPhone in 3G

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Sometimes a Steve Jobs keynote is all about surprises, you go into it after a surge of rumours, but what you get on the other side is all a bit of a surprise. Yesterday it was exactly the opposite. The 3G version of the iPhone had been trailed so much it would have been a surprise if he had stood on the stage and not mentioned it. It even turned out that some of the apparently phoney leaked pictures of the new phone were genuine too.

So what did the Apple faithful actually get given? The 3G obviously gives the phone a big speed boost in terms of internet usage, and the other big new feature is the real GPS – pushing the iPhone into the realms of location based services – indeed it is already being reported that TomTom have a working version of their software on the platform. The physical design is slightly changed, but still recognisably the iPhone, and it still has the fantastic screen. In terms of disappointments, perhaps the biggest is that they haven’t done a thing with the camera – it is still the same old 2MP version, looking increasingly underpowered against the 5MP that is common in competitors phones. The iPhone is still missing the forward facing camera for video calling that competitors have – although I can honestly say that I’ve never made a video call on my current phone so it is no great loss. The new model still has limitations in some of it’s other abilities in that it still can’t do multimedia messaging, nor can it act as a modem for a computer.

The impression I get is that Apple are as always partly singing to their own tune, so they are very much focusing on what they think a mobile device should be, giving us fantastic internet browsing, but lacking some of the features that others may regard as necessary. Equally you may think that a GPS is a frivolous addition, but Apple as always are going their own way.

After the features, the big discussion seems to be the pricing.

With the significant drop in price, it is pretty obvious that the iPhone is being subsidised by the networks. However over in the USA, alongside the upfront price cut, the ongoing monthly charges have been hiked, as has the contract length, such that the total cost of ownership works out more expensive. The big news is that for once it isn’t rip-off Britain, as although in the UK we also get the price cut upfront – with the phone being totally free on some deals, we’re not getting a similar increase in the monthly cost, nor are we getting an increase in the contract length. Maybe it’s because our 3G market is more competitive than in the USA, but certainly for anybody like me who is in the market for a new phone, it is great news. Looking at my current usage and costs I can get a brand new iPhone and in addition cut my monthly cost all without having to spend out on the new handset. I don’t know about anybody else, but I know where I’m going to be going on 11th July…