Well, I don’t scream about ice cream, but the contestants on the new season of “The Apprentice” do. The task for the men (Octane) and the women (Fortitude) on the second episode of “The Apprentice” was to sell as much ice cream as they could from an ice cream cart in Manhattan in two days. The team with the most profit would win. How did these former/ aspiring future captains of industry try to sell as much ice cream as possible? By yelling and haranguing passers-by.
It didn’t look like much fun from my view on the couch and it probably looked worse to the residents and tourists around Union Square Park in New York City. They kept calling it the hard sell. It was just awful. I heard numerous contestants utter the phrase, “you look like you could use an ice cream” as if it was water and Manhattan was a desert. I realize they had to do something other than let business come to them, but the sales tactics were enough to put me off ice cream sandwiches for life.
Now, how did Fayetteville’s Kelly Beaty do? Just fine. Fortitude won, beating Octane by $300, so all of the women were safe from elimination. Besides, even if they had lost, it looked like Leeza was going to be the one to go. And after calling project manager Poppy the “B” word during champagne, she’s likely to be the next woman to go whenever that time rolls around. Kelly, virtually silent in episode one, piped up a bit when one of the guys referred to the women of Fortitude as charlatans. She said she did not like what that term implied. The term means malicious trickster. I got the feeling that she might have thought it meant something a little worse, but the scene appeared to have been heavily edited, so who knows what ended up on the cutting room floor.
Still, it was good to see Kelly show some fight and stick up for her team. Perhaps her teammates will remember that in the weeks to come.
Next week the teams operate a doggie hotel and Dave on Octane and Leeza on Fortitude look like they could be the next one’s to go.
Business tip I learned from Episode 2 – The hard sell is unattractive, especially when wielded by people without exceptional sales skills. There were a few who used some charms to do well selling, but the flop sweat was palpable on others when they appeared like carnival barkers. With such large teams, allowing everyone to use different sales styles may have worked better.
