Brad Wardell/Stardock sue employee for one million dollars

Malcolm's guide

''I don't know which is worse...watching him slowly rumble towards you like prostate cancer, or him appearing suddenly out of nowhere like a severe stroke''

"I promise I will never call an 8 year old girl a cunt again"

I've never seen that show. Brilliant.

My favorite part of the BBC run of "Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares" was just enjoying watching Gordon Ramsay uncensored swearing at people in that ineffable British way, but from a position of such knowledge and power that his subjects pretty much got to take it and thank him for the opportunity.

I just read up on The Thick Of It and it says, that each script were sent of to a swearing consultant in Manchester. How brilliant is that?

You should really correct this.

I always wondered what Mark E. Smith did between Fall albums.

Not bleeping the swearing really made him seem more human, unlike on Hell's Kitchen. That show makes him look like a douche. Kitchen Nightmares made him look really smart and good at running a restaurant.

What also helped was the fact that Kitchen Nightmares had him checking in on the places he helped (either at the end of the episode, or in 'where are they now' episodes). Really changed my opinion of Ramsey from 'this guy's an asshole' to 'this guy's kinda mean, but you can tell he really gives a shit about these people'.

Totally. And he has a lot of business savvy!
Still, I had a hard time watching that show. Watching each episode felt like I was working for a new shitty boss. I don't have a shitty boss anymore, but when I did, man. That helpless feeling where it seems everything is about to collapse around you.... Yeah, I can't take it.

WHICH LEADS US BACK TO WARDELL!

He would be the most arrogant, cocky asshole alive if it wasn't for the part where he knows his shit so well that you realize it's really just a rare combination of confidence, competence, and the lack of feeling any need to self-censor his opinions. You sadly don't see that all that often, so it's easy to mistake the latter for the former. I really get frustrated with the Fox US version of the show though, because the British original is so much better in every conceivable way.

To be fairer, she left him.

"The smoothleg" just makes me think he's a glowing one.

The US version is barely worth watching, the UK version is some of the best kitchen television ever.

Mr Wardell, for the sake of this thread, we need more stupid. Please find it in your heart to deliver some to us.

Ramsay's F-Word is another good BBC series that really gets across how talented he is. And yeah, it's awesome fun to hear him swear at people.

I think this is relevant to our interests. Note the friendly blue man.

http://kotaku.com/5963528/heres-a-d...-the-games-business-have-to-deal-with-in-2012


Does Brad get a pass because he's just a little piggie in a herd of swine?

"I'm here to program games and molest women, and I'm all out of... games ... to... program? Whatever, whore, lololol."

Wait, you're trying to tell me this is a recurring problem in the industry?!

I'm finding this hard to believe!

I've heard others say the same.

That's all very interesting, but I think the real issue here is that Jane McGonigal appears to be promising me lots of AAA cowboy games and I can only think of one. Where are my goddam cowboy games?

Edit: Looking at Twitter itself, gotta love the dipshit guys getting in on the bandwagon. It should honestly be legal to beat some idiot guy who tweets "#1morereason #firstworldproblems" with a tire iron.

Edit edit: Oh, Leigh Alexander. I don't hate you because you're an obnoxious, drunk woman. I hate you because you're an obnoxious drunk period! You and Garnet Lee. Get off of podcasts I want to listen to.

Edit edit edit: This guy is posting a lot.

I kind of dislike him a little?

I find Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares to be unwatchable. They should call it "Let's Watch a Restaurant Fail," because 90% of the time that seems to be how it works out. Ramsey may know his shit in the kitchen, but he he is clearly pretty terrible at helping people turn their restaurants around, so maybe he should just stick to cooking. And yeah, I get that it's not his fault that the restaurants are in trouble in the first place. Even so, I don't get any pleasure out of being a spectator to someone else's misfortune. The show just makes me feel sort of sad when I watch it.

(It doesn't help that I also intensely dislike Gordon Ramsey. The man may well be a great chef, but he really is a raging douchebag. And not a lovable, roguish douchebag like Anthony Bourdain. More of an irritating, "Man-do-I-so-want-to-punch-him-in-the-face" sort of douchebag.)

Ben Sones
Other people's 'misfortune'?

Misfortune is doing everything right and going out of business anyway because a meteor blows up your restaurant. This is the predictable consequence of pig headed idiocy.

The people on the show chose to expend their money opening a shitty restaurant (despite lacking talent in the kitchen and the back office) in an act of supreme hubris. Many of them most likely did so despite knowing that the majority of restaurants fail in their first year, that it's a highly competitive industry and that there are tons of incumbents running vanity restaurants that constantly lose money simply because the owners are rich enough to give no fucks/use them to launder money.

Because of the show these cockgobbling loons are lucky enough to have a world class professional douchesultant give them a course in unfucking the monstrosity that they and they alone chose to midwaifu into the world. Sometimes El Doucherino's advice isn't enough to save the day, but so what! Tons of not suck businesses run by not suck people who know their shit go under every day without ever once getting the opportunity to have an expert tea-tea-teach them how to bidness.

In short you should kick back with a brewski and enjoy the richly deserved realignment with reality these individuals receive in consequence of coming in contact with Chef GivesNoFucks. If they don't enjoy being the recipients of a televised half hour long spanking they could try A) not sucking so hard so that they can tell The Redouchulous Brit to gobble a lovely dish composed of used anal beads and cow effluvia or B) going back to whatever they did before pursuing a career in sucking harder than a Dyson/Hoover hybrid.

When you yourself consciously choose to take every step down the path to Ultimate Shamedown you can hardly be considered worthy of pity. Giggles, yes, but not pity. You shat your shirt and now you must cleanse it one way or another.

Yeah but Anthony Bourdain isn't going to get emotions out of people that have lost hope or are in complete denial. I realize there's a lot of editing involved but I'm pretty convinced, having watched every single episode of the UK and US versions, that Ramsay's approach is the only way some people are going to snap out of their egos and start again. It's kind of amazing that it works as much as it does.

Also, "misfortune" is a pretty strange way to describe the situation of these restaurants. The majority of them are in the shit because they're run by people that have no clue about basics, whether business or food related. edit: I see Aeon has covered that part already, sorry.

Ramsay needs his own thread, I think.

I now want to sue this thread for a million dollars.

I couldn't disagree more if I tried. There's no doubt that Ramsey is a great chef, so we agree here, but his business savvy is also very evident. Both in the size of his little empire, but also in the actual advice he gives.
He's great at pinpointing what the restaurants should focus on, and his simplified menus shows his knowledge of restaurant management, and considering several of the UK restaurants are still running, he's clearly not useless.
It's also clear that he has a real passion for good food and those that love it enough to try on their own, but no patience for lazy people or those in it for a quick buck.
But as Aeon says, most of the people in the show (especially in the atrocious US version) brought it on themselves, and there's a limit to what you can teach people in a week - especially those that don't want his help.

He has a grating personality and has a mean streak a mile wide, but underneath that there's clearly a lot of skill and love of food.

Don't come after me; I tried to get the thread away from the asshole chefs derail.

Gordon Ramsey is the more-or-less balanced judge on Master Chef, as well. Graham Elliot tends to be friendlier, and Joe Bastianich tends to be much meaner.

Misfortune is "an unhappy situation," according to Merriam-Webster. You are misinterpreting my words. I was not implying that these restaurants are not responsible for their own ills. In fact, I specifically said that they were. Nonetheless, I don't get any pleasure in watching people that I don't even know struggling with misfortune, even when it is misfortune of their own making. It just seems sort of petty and spiteful, to be honest. No offense.

But the point of the show is not to give restaurants advice that is technically sound. The point is to convince them to take it. And that's what Ramsey is terrible at. Of course he has sound advice on how to run a restaurant--he's a highly successful restaurateur, so obviously he has some good ideas on what these restaurants need in order to turn their business around. And the restaurant owners are clearly ready for an intervention, because they agreed to be on the show. And yet in spite of that, most end up failing. And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that Ramsey's "confrontational asshole" personality is mostly effective at pissing people off, and pissed-off people rarely spend much time listening to what the person pissing them off has to say. In short: much like that professor that everyone had in college who was a super-smart guy but a terrible teacher, Ramsey is a good chef who knows how to run a business, but he's a terrible business consultant.

Another thing that bugs me about the show is that they often feature cases that are truly hopeless. As in, the people running the place clearly lack the skills and/or temperament to run a restaurant, and an honest consultant that was actually looking out for their best interests would advise them to cut their losses and divest. Ramsey can't do that because otherwise there would be no show, so instead he gets them to throw good money after bad trying to turn around a restaurant that is clearly going to fail anyway.

I can respect that. But most of the people in the episodes that I have seen don't really fall into that category. A lot of them have no idea what they are doing. They lack the skills needed to run a successful restaurant, whether it's cooking skills or management skills or business acumen or all three. No sane person opens a restaurant to make a quick buck, and if their real problem is that they are too lazy, then what's the point in even trying to save the restaurant? Just tell them that the restaurant business is not a good fit for them, and move on.

Ok, I don't really disagree with all of that, except that I like the guy and his passion.

I'm sure that his ways does turn some away that perhaps would have listened to a gentler and less abrasive person.
On the other hand I think a lot of those people appear on the show, because they're somewhat delusional, which is also why they opened and continues to run a business, they're clearly ill suited for. Some think "well, it can't hurt" and others again believe that it will "put them on the map" or even the old canard that bad publicity is better than no publicity. Some even seem to harbor some "I'll show him!" ideas.
Also a lot of restaurants fail. And would have with or without Ramsey's intervention. It's a tough business to be in, and one that a lot of people seem to enter into thinking they can do - "Hey, anybody can cook". It's like talent shows, a lot of people clearly have an inflated view of their abilities, or just no idea about all the other stuff that also goes into running a successful business.
A few have made some bad choices, but are willing to listen to a master at what he does, and some of those manages to stick to it and succeed - without a control group (and how would you make up one for that?) That infographic shows us nothing. And looking at some of the quotes there and on the show as well as the sources used, it's clear some are really looking for somebody to blame for their failing. And somebody (possibly including whoever made the thing) has an axe to grind "Changing the menu really cost us a lot of business", yeah sure, because you were doing fucking great before?! It's also interesting to note that Ramsey was sued twice for faking it on the show and won both cases.

Sure, he's not the greatest teacher. But he's a great chef, a great restaurateur and the program is great entertainment. Some of those deserve to crash and burn, and it's fun to watch them do. And on the occasion where he connects with somebody who really wants it, is willing to work with him and pulls themselves out, it's downright heartwarming.
Again, I'm talking about the UK version.

I also like him as a person - well, what I know. Getting three Michelin Stars takes dedication and sacrifices, those that manage aren't ordinary men - it takes a certain kind of asshole to run a kitchen to that standard. But still chefs from all over the world volunteer and fight to get to work under those assholes - it's a special world. Watch Boiling Point about his struggle to get that final star for his first restaurant - it's very entertaining.
(my brother is a gourmet chef and I know a handful of chefs with Michelin stars... let's just say, that they're all special. And not all in a healthy way)

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LET LPERS POST ON THIS FORUM DGNARGLB EBLEARGEL

Iirc wasn't Boiling Point where he fired a waiter for showing up with a blue band-aid on his hand because it was an unusual colour?

Possibly, it's been too long.
At least he didn't comment on the guys nipples.

Ben, even from looking at that chart you see quite a few of the "failed" restaurants actually ended up just cashing out. That's basically those people cutting their losses and divesting, possibly with the benefit of the added value from whatever renovation Ramsay's team may have provided. His advice regularly is that if they don't have the passion or the desire to put the effort into succeeding, they might as well shut down. For the purposes of his time there during filming, they at least give it a try to see if it's even remotely possible. That's really the only true motivation for these folks - picking them up and showing them what succeeding could look like, and setting some expectations of what they'll need to do to achieve it. Those that don't shut down, which is pretty much where they were all headed anyways.

I'm really not sure why you'd assume that the combination of good advice and people ready to take it would be a panacea to fix these businesses. Being prepared to take advice is not the same as being ready to actually learn something, and there's also a staggering amount of work and skill necessary, and most if not all of these places were up to their asses in debt to begin with.

Based on some of the places he's visited and eaten at, I'm not certain they haven't already basically done just that.

Can we maybe move the Gordon Ramsey conversation to a thread where it might be more appropriate? Dancing With The Stars And Other Shows My Mother-In-Law Loves, perhaps?

Oh crap... the off-topicness... this has become a dating sim thread!

I was with you up until the question mark, but for what you said after, I'll say fuck you and continue talking about Ramsey.
At least until Bradley gives us another juicy insight into his world.

Brad posted a #1reasonwhy with a straight face


Brad Wardell ‏@draginol
Our industry needs to wake up to the fact that women are a big part of its success: http://www.littletinyfrogs.com/article/437477/Misogyny_in_gaming … #1ReasonMentors #1reasonwhy