Undercover Boss

The Super Bowl has come and gone for another year, and although I enjoyed watching the game, despite my Pittsburgh Steelers sitting this one out, it was the program that followed that proved to be much more intriguing.

For weeks, CBS had been hyping “Undercover Boss” for the programming slot immediately following the Super Bowl. The premise is simple enough: a head-office leader of a major company disguises himself, changes his identity and goes undercover to examine the day-to-day operations at the lower levels of the business. In the first episode, Larry O’Donnell, President and COO of Waste Management, a $13-billion U.S garbage company, sorts through waste and recycling on a speeding conveyor, stabs at litter with a stick on a windy hillside and pumps out human excrement from portable toilets at an amusement park.

Despite reminding myself that viewers must tune into reality TV with a sceptical eye, I have to admit, the premise hooked me. O’Donnell, posing as “Randy”, a guy filming a documentary on entry-level employment, meets his daily new boss and follows them around through their daily routines, their trials and tribulations and even gets invited for dinner at a co-worker’s house after one day on the job. O’Donnell seems like an honest man, genuine in his feelings towards the people he interacts with on the frontlines. He discovers men and women with long-term health problems, excessively demanding or inappropriate working conditions, or financial burdens that threaten to force them to move out of their homes. Heavy stuff. How will this masked, corporate suit react to the discoveries he makes? Will he check out of his roadside motel and return to his Tiffany cufflink lifestyle after his week at waste-truck fantasy camp? Will he pay the random subordinates’ stories the obligatory lip-service around the upper-management boardroom table or will action be taken? The viewer is lead to believe, through a series of captions across the screen, that the five people O’Donnell has interacted with, have had their grievances addressed, been reassigned to more life-affirming positions within the company and/or have been given promotions and raises.

This is a pleasant, tidy, scripted ending to the program and you want to believe the positive message that the big bad COO is a changed man, after one week of sorting trash and scrubbing a porta-potty floor with a brush. But is it too tidy?

I know the editors of the program want the experience to resolve itself with hugs from the coworkers and tears of joy, but as interesting as the concept might appear, I couldn’t help but think of the thousands of people working for this company who also likely deserved attention from a superior, who likely work in worse conditions for less pay and have no hope of the COO of the company helping them dump Mrs. Jones’ trash in to the back of their truck. Will O’Donnell be held accountable for these on-the-job deficiencies he’s discovered - items that can be addressed company-wide and will he and his corporate management team be held accountable to make sure some changes are implemented? Or have I just watched the latest, brain-numbing reality TV slop that amounts to just another bad aftertaste in the cafeteria that has become network television?

I want to believe in it, but I can’t invest in it emotionally, as the show participants seemingly want us to do. That might be possible if the Waste Management story-line could be extended to more than one episode, as the audience observes the slow changes falling into place at the work-site. Unfortunately, it wraps up into a 60-minute happy meal and its almost as fulfilling.

According to the preview, next week is a look at the behind the scenes exploits at a Hooters restaurant operation. After literally scraping the bottom of a latrine in its debut, one can only wonder what “Undercover Boss” will expose about the ladies in the orange shorts and their everyday travails. I’m sure the Hooters big boss will be undoubtedly shocked to his very soul, or so we're lead to believe.