PHOTO | COURTESY OF CBS TV
Modern corporate CEOs aren’t the most popular guys in America. While workers face stagnant wages and high unemployment, the Chief Executive Officer is not only guaranteed a fat paycheck, but usually also multi-million dollar bonuses, even if their company is suffering. Given these circumstances, CEOs tend to be the very definition of “out of touch.”
Undercover Boss, a new reality show on CBS, takes a CEO out of his comfort zone and onto the front lines of his company.
Each week, the show follows a different CEO and goes undercover as a new employee in his own company. The other participants are told the camera crew is on hand to film a documentary on entry-level jobs. The result is surprisingly enjoyable and effective.
All the participants seem genuinely changed by the events of the show. The workers share their personal stories of trying to make it on low wages, while the CEO is humbled by their dedication and his own inability to do the same work. The CEO meets good and bad employees. Some are overworked or suffering from poor work environment or personal tragedies.
One early episode featured the head of Hooter’s Restaurant, Coby Brooks. As a male worker, Brooks was not subjected to the same tank top and hot pants outfit as his much younger female coworkers were, but he saw first hand the negative public reaction the Hooter girls deal with, not only from the public but also from a chauvinistic male manager.
Brooks, perhaps a little tone deaf to modern sexual politics, was surprised by the hostile environment created by the manager (who forced his waitresses to participate in degrading food eating contests for his own enjoyment). For the first time, Brooks seemed to question if his restaurant was the type of place he would want his own daughter to work.
At another Hooters location, Brooks was impressed by a female manager who seemed to care about her workers as people first, becoming a surrogate mother to her employees.
Another episode followed David Rife, the owner of White Castle, a fast food chain. Rife found disorganization and low morale, while also realizing that working the drive-thru window was even tougher than it looked.
Fortunately, the worker who trained him for the window was an employee with a heart of gold, straight out of central casting. The worker told Rife he must work long hours in order to provide for his vision-impaired son.
At one of the company’s food processing plants (where the burgers are prepackaged) Rife met a supervisor who seemed to enjoy taking breaks when her employees need her most.
At the end of each episode, the CEO reveals himself to the duped workers, congratulating those who impressed him and rebuking those who disappointed him. The reveal is also used to award those employees who really touched the CEO’s heart, sometimes with cash gifts, scholarships or promotions within the company.
It would be easy to dismiss the show as pure theatrical manipulation. To some degree, it is. Each episode features the good employee who loves his job because it represents the American dream, along with the employee who suffers personal hardship or tragedy.
Featured also is a bad employee who distresses the undercover boss because he/she is rude to customers, hard to work with and generally fails to live up to the corporate code of conduct.
The structured nature of each episode doesn’t mean it is staged, however. The situations never seem contrived or scripted, just carefully selected for maximum impact.
It can be argued however, that the show is thinly veiled public relations. The awards given to the employees with hardships are really very small on the corporate level, much less than a 30 second TV commercial would cost. For only a few thousand dollars (the size of the typical award given on the show), the CEOs buy themselves millions in good PR.
Or maybe it really is just an enjoyable show spotlighting good-hearted corporate bosses. Undercover Boss airs Sunday nights at 8 P.M.