If I feel my blood pressure falling, all I need to do is watch one episode of Undercover Boss, a hit TV show on CBS. Each show follows a standard plot line. The owner or CEO of a company goes under cover as a regular Joe trying to make a living at one of the numerous low paying, dead end jobs with no benefits that have become standard issue in the USA.
The undercover boss quickly discovers that the employees are doing the best they can under horrible conditions. Many are suffering from illnesses that their health insurance or lack of insurance will not cover. Some are crushed by mountains of debt from trying to live in the USA with a paycheck that no longer covers even the basics. The boss is often touched by the dedication and high morality of these people who are barely scraping by at a job for a company where the same company has provided that owner or CEO with an opulent lifestyle beyond the imagination or reach of any employee.
This plot line has a rich history. The producers at CBS act like a modern day Jacob Marley’s Ghost as they take their Scrooge de jour through a labyrinth of lives all in ruin and all employees of Scrooge’s business.
In the last quarter of each show, the boss sits down with each of the four or five exploited employees that he or she has met in this episode. The boss thanks each employee for their dedication, hard work, and devotion to the company while giving them gifts of cash or other benefits to make up for the shortfalls that existed because the employees were paid so little in the past.
The company that is the subject of the program receives a wealth of positive advertising and the CEO or boss hands out up to $100K in gifts to a few lucky employees; not a bad deal for the company.
Unlike the story in A Christmas Carol, however, only a few employees are treated with compassion and respect. Bob Cratchit’s family gets a helping hand. Tiny Tim gets his 15 minutes of fame and new pair of crutches, but with Undercover Boss, that’s where it ends. The other employees are still out in the cold as, so far as I know, not one of the episodes of Undercover Boss has resulted in a dramatic catharsis where the CEO is transformed from Donald Trump to Bernie Sanders. Their only hope is the next episode.
American Capitalism on display on CBS.
CEO bosses go undercover always; it is not a CBS exclusive. They hide their money now that it’s tax-filing season. General Electric rakes in billions and hide their profits undercover, to the point that (Senator Warren has reported) last year, they paid zero taxes, whereas I paid more to our Commonwealth through our Form 1. I cut a check between forty and one hundred fifty dollars on top of the hundreds withheld from my paycheck.
Our Federal tax code is so complicated by loopholes shoved in through an excess of specialized forms, schedules and instructions.
I expect televised undercover bosses to fill in 1040’s “Your occupation” box as “Service Crew,” right next to their dated signature.
don’t make these rest of the bushel unspoiled.
When the show started, I saw Arianna Huffington at an event at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center. She was praising the show as a change in the zeitgeist to Charley Gibson, the former ABC News reader who was a Shorenstein Fellow at the time. I told them it was simply a version of the old show Queen for a Day which pitted women with sob stories against each other to win a washer/dryer or bedroom set back in the 1950s.
Neither seemed to appreciate or understand my comment.
Thanks for the reminder as I found the perfect You Tube for a number of situations from DeLeo to the T and best of all the Olympics 2024 gaggle.
http://youtu.be/zMj2lwaSnhY
…that off screen and after the fact, the rest of the employees either receive something or at least see their pay and conditions improve? Is there any follow up?
They would not keep it “offscreen,” since the entire point of the show is to paint CEOs as being persuadeable, reasonable people who value their employees. I have watched this show a couple of times, and it’s worse than you imagine.
The franchise is basically a way to show that our betters are occasionally willing to refrain from protesting if the little people feast on the crumbs the sweep off the table. I don’t know a lot about reality tv, but I’d wager for every employee with a tough life featured (say, a sick relative, a recent tragic loss) there are three who are struggling with almost the same adverse conditions whose plight was ignored because their stories weren’t good tv material — that way, these impossible conditions can be presented as bad luck rather than the class conditions they are.
These shows are all completely scripted. They are no more “reality” than Breaking Bad or Leave It To Beaver.
I agree they aren’t reality, but I have taken to calling them unscripted because it’s not actors memorizing lines (I didn’t think), though producers push participants a certain direction to heighten the drama. I also thought a key motive behind such shows was they are cheaper to produce, so if they really are scripted why not just do actual scripted drama?
There may be exceptions, like perhaps Kitchen Nightmares*, but most of these shows are not only completely scripted, but employ lots of professional actors in their “ordinary people” roles.
* The Amy’s Bakery episode of KN appears to have been a mostly accurate portrayal of some seriously disturbed real people.
Now that I have read some of these posts on here for a while, I’m curious what are some of the occupations represented here. I worked for a Fortune 100 company, started in the factory, went to night school, worked into a low level management position, and retired. I always knew I was a number (literally 9653) and never expected to find fulfillment just a paycheck. I did find an interesting change in perspective when I went from complaining about bosses to having part of my performance rating dependent on my “teams” performance. I witnessed factory people destroy material to get back at a boss that they felt slighted them, and I witnessed decisions made by management which were hard but necessary.
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Not sure what that means, but I really was just curious. I know there is a teacher (jconway or Christopher?). I figure a few union guys, any social workers? I doubt any plumbers. It just puts things in perspective for me, don’t mean any harm.
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Jconway has mentioned wanting to be a teacher and Sabutai is a teacher.
My dad worked at Xerox back in the 60’s. He left and opened his own business. When that business went under, he was 55 and in a bad situation. When word got out, Xerox called and offered him his old job back. My father-in-law had a similar experience at General Electric. There was a partnership between employee/employer. I know that I am just offering anecdotes, but it seems clear to me that those days are over. People that I talk to who are in their 70’s and older don’t understand how much different things are today for labor. There is no more loyalty.
A friend of mine worked for Eastman Kodak. He was a high level manager in their IT Department. One day, his entire department was called in for a meeting and the message was simple: There is no more guarantee for life jobs at Kodak and if you are not contributing to the profit margins each day, you will be terminated.
My friend took the hint and interviewed at IBM the next week. He liked working at Kodak. He suspected he could earn more elsewhere, but Kodak was home and he felt loyal to the company. The meeting changed that.
Then something odd happened. He was called into a senior VP office at Kodak. He was asked why he wanted to leave. This was all quite a shock because he had no idea how Kodak found out about his interview.
It turned out that Kodak and IBM had an agreement to not poach each other’s people. Out of courtesy, IBM called Kodak and let them know that there was no solicitation.
My friend told the VP he was leaving because of the meeting. If Kodak was just in it for the money, so was he.
That’s where we are today, sadly.
Your friend should have consulted an employment attorney.
I don’t know about New York law at the time, but I’m fairly confident that such agreements are illegal in most states and have been for awhile. Apple just got in trouble for that in California, as I recall. Phrases like “illegal restraint” come to mind, not mention violation of individual privacy.
and I never thought of it at the time. However, once I heard of the Apple story, I thought of this. No doubt this practice is widespread.
I spend most of my time baking. I bake cookies, pies, breads, cakes etc … really anything you bake.
about your life’s experience and why you are a Democrat.
I’m a registered Libertarian. Republicans makes laws and steal from your bank account, Dems make taxes and steal from your pockets. Time to give someone else a chance. I’ve even voted green/rainbow.
Glad you are here.