The new show on CBS, Undercover Boss, is based on a pretty simple concept – CEO’s go undercover to work alongside the “regular people” that spend long hours making the big guys big bucks in hopes of learning how to make their company better. Sounds like a good concept, right?
That’s what I thought too. After watching the very first episode, I thought, geez this guy sure seems nice, but boy is he naive. Every guy (will we see some female CEO’s?) walked around dumbstruck by how hard the people worked. “How do you do this every day?” “This is hard.” “This assembly line moves too fast.” Wah, wah, wah.
Larry O’Donnell, President of Waste Management, kept saying, “I didn’t realize how difficult this job was.” Really? Your company is called WASTE management. Your employees pick up garbage and clean shit out of porta potties all day and you didn’t think that would be difficult? What planet have you been living on?
Coby Brooks, CEO of Hooters, was shocked to learn that people think his restaurant, founded for men who want to drink beer, eat wings, and visually cheat on their wives, is degrading to women. After a lady on the street echoes that very thought, Brooks tries to defend it saying, “Apparently there’s still a stigma out there.” A stigma about a restaurant named after boobs? Nooooo. Impossible.
The CEO and President of 7-Eleven, Joe DePinto, struggled so much at work he couldn’t make a pot of coffee without it overflowing. And when he met a young man working the night shift so he could go to college during the day, hell froze over. “How do you do this???”
Now, I think it’s a great idea for the people in charge to really understand how their company works. But, for these CEO’s to be so entirely clueless is pathetic to watch. And at the end they always give perks to the selected showcased employees. That’s nice of them, but somehow that also bothers me. What about the thousands of other workers? Did you realize how tough the job was and give pay increases across the board? No. Did you hire more people to handle the growing workload? No.
So, all this show really does is pick 5 people they deem worthy of a promotion, film them struggling, edit some sappy music over it and BOOM – CBS has a hit show that will really show the American people their bosses are looking out for them. I wish that was the case, but all I see are hour long advertisements under the guise of helping the little guy.
The opening voiceover proclaims, “Some bosses are are willing to take extreme action to make their businesses better.” What’s so extreme about working a normal job? Not a lot, unless you’re used to wearing expensive suits and sitting in a cushy office all day. Sorry, Undercover Boss, but you’re all just too naive.
A good article Thank you!
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