Did anyone watch the premiere of “Undercover Boss” on Sunday after the Super Bowl on CBS? It’s a reality show where the president of a company goes undercover for a week with the people who work for him to see what it’s like down at the bottom. It’s being repeated on Friday, Feb.12.
During O’Donnell’s week, he discovered that the female garbage truck driver he rode along with had to pee in a tin cup because there was nowhere on her route to make a rest stop, the manager of workers on the recycling-sorting line had their pay docked 2 minutes of pay for every minute late they clocked in after lunch, etc. He got let go for not being able to keep up while picking up trash on a hillside. At the end, he rewarded the good workers and had a stern talk with the bad one. It was a very entertaining episode, and really made O’Donnell out to be a good guy. He has a mentally handicapped daughter, and it was implied that he has a lot of compassion and humanity towards others perhaps based on that. He treated all his employees with respect, and seemed genuinely touched by some of the things he observed on the job.
Unfortunately, it left you wondering how much shit goes on there that he never saw if at the few places he did go he saw such major issues. I couldn’t help but wonder if he is going to have managers continue to look for working conditions that need improvement, and how he could justify things being that bad in the first place. What good does rewarding 4 workers do if you don’t check on the other 50,000? Was this just PR for the company, or a real effort to make change?
My teens enjoyed this episode a great deal. It was an eye-opener to them about why you should go to college. We are looking forward to the next episode. Except, Hooters?
I wanted to watch this but just forgot. It was on CBS, right? I’ll have to see if it’s on the website. I like the premise. Do they take nominations? I know some executives in my company I’d like to see behind a cash register…
I’d be tempted to watch if the employees didn’t know they were being filmed. People seldom act like themselves if they know they’re being watched.
I read a couple reviews of the first episode. One reviewer called it corporate apologist PR bullshit (or something like that) and complained that a middle manager caught flak for following orders from higher-ups. Another reviewer referred back to Morgan Spurlock’s 30 Days series, and said it was too bad that the CEO’s wouldn’t really be immersed in the different culture.
At the last place I worked (a factory), management decided on a solidarity experiment and salaried employees spent a day working on the shop floor. I already knew the work was hard, so all it accomplished was giving me a break from a desk job. (I suggested having some of the floor people spending a day in the office but management wouldn’t go for it.)
Do your teens watch Dirty Jobs? That’ll help get them on the college track.
Like AuntiePam, the fact that the employees are aware of the cameras is a big issue for me. The basic premise of the show is really a great idea, but the fact that the camera and crew are right out in the open in every interaction changes everything.
And based on my experiences in the corporate world, the Waste Management president’s shock at some of the things he found was feigned and won’t last. Guys in his position make their living pushing numbers on their underlings that are harder and harder to hit. By the time a fiscal quarter passes he will be right back to demanding more work for fewer dollars and not caring how those below him get it done.
The explanation for the cameras was that “Randy” (the pseudonym being used by Larry O’Donnell, president/COO) was a former construction worker who was trying out for jobs with Waste Management Inc and was being shadowed by a news crew while doing so.
BTW, regarding the recycling plant manager who docked his employees two minutes for every one that they were late. I think that has to be some sort of labor law violation. Of course Larry O’Donnell had to do something to correct that.
That’s for sure. You HAVE to pay non-exempt employees for all time worked. Letting them work and not paying them for it can bring the Department of Labor down on your head sooo fast.
Yep, I watched the show and knew that. It just takes away from the reality and candidness of the interactions. None of those people was behaving as they would if they were unaware of the cameras. I’m not sure how they could do the show with truly candid cameras, but it would be better if they could.
See, I caught that too. Though I don’t agree with the policy that manager implemented, it’s rather obvious that she specifically, and maybe many of the other employees there as well, abuse the break times they are given.
And then they piss and moan about the consequences.
Yes, she did. I wondered about that as well. My wife’s take on it was that the extra time she was in the break room was spent talking with “Randy” and so was work-related.
Well you gotta know it’s totally faked. No company would leave themselves that wide open to lawsuits. Oh sure you see the minor infractions, but who cares? And you can bet 5 minutes after their corrected on TV, the company will go right back to where they were.
A labor violation can bring on headache after headache so some agreement was reached far in advanced. I’ve been through wages and hours audits by the State of Illinois, and they are not pleasent, and I did everything correct. I can imagine how awful it’d be if you were screwing your employees over.
Still it’s no worse than any other sort of entertainment they air.
I liked it up to the point where he picked one employee to promote to a management track after he ate at her house. I’m sure hundreds of WM employees watched and thought “Hey, I work hard. Where’s Larry O’Donnell to fix my mortgage troubles?”
I watched the show and enjoyed it well enough, though I agree with the complaints about the workers being aware of the filming.
I wonder how they choose which employees get shadowed. They all seemed to have some sort of “hook.” My theory is that the company had some sort of “nominate a worker who’s overcome diversity for some bullshit recognition” campaign.
I ended up in the hospital with an extreme case of rolleyes when the boss dude was shocked to learn the manager was enforcing the 30-minute lunch policy that he implemented.
I am shocked, shocked to find gambling going on in this establishment! Really?
I don’t know if I’d say it was totally faked, but it seemed very clear that most or all of it was set up ahead of time, meaning that someone (either from the company, or the show producers, or both) did a lot of research and found the right people to send the boss to work for. I mean, what are the odds that he’d randomly find himself working for a guy who’s been on dialysis for years, a guy who cleans outhouses but still has a really happy attitude, and a woman who’s basically doing the work of three people?
It seemed obvious that it was set up for the boss to “discover” these wonderful people dealing with bad situations that he could then “correct”.
Anyone watch the preview of next week’s show? We go to Hooters where, apparently, the local manager makes his waitresses engage in “reindeer games”. Games that consist, at least in part, in having to eat something (beans?) directly off the plate with no hands. Gosh, I wonder what the big boss will think of that . . .
I have a buddy who is a supervisor at a WM facility. He supervises dumpster haulers, and he is under constant pressure to reduce the minutes to load ratio.
yeah. this is simple charity along the lines of “extreme home makeover” dressed up in the guise of proletarian populism. it’s excruciatingly bothersome to watch one hand-picked employee get coddled because they have a good life story and are easy on the camera lens.
and, as was mentioned upthread, from my brief viewing of the show (i really only caught the 10 minutes or so where both of these things occurred) it was really lame how they attempted to drive a wedge in “worker” solidarity, and deflect responsibility for corporate policy, by effectively making the slave-driving middle manager the bad guy.
