Does anyone else see the show Undercover Boss as a manipulative contradiction?

Reality show in manipulative, fake shite shocker…who knew?

Me me me <hand raised> call on me! I notice it. I am disgusted by the low pay. I also can’t believe how badly the training is for some of the very young employees. They are so disrespectful all too often, and it many times goes unaddressed. The C-level in disguise doesn’t even notice they were treated like shit by some wong person just throwing them in saying, “now you do it,” with barely any guidance.

Did you see the Hooters episode? What a total fucking embarrassment. He should have come out of disguise and fired that manager on the spot who abused his female employees, and given those girls a talking to about having some pride.

The episode with Frontier airlines? Disgusting. The CEO has a basketball court in his house making God knows how much, and the staff had taken pay cuts and one person is doing the job of three.

Then there are episodes like 7 Eleven that make you feel a little better.

Sometimes they give away hundreds of thousands of dollars at the end of the episode. Maybe they should just pay everyone in general better.

Did you ever wonder if the work colleagues of the people who get all the money from being on the show treat them badly after they realize they received a free car or $20k because they were on the show?

@JLeslie I would think the CEOs would be so embarrassed they would never permit the shows to go on TV at all. Rather than making the company look good, it shows how bad a place it is to work. Really? Does a $40,000 payout to one employee make the place better? Is that the only hard working, honest employee you have?
If a loyal, dedicated employee working there for 10 years can barely survive while the CEO sits in his castle for a decade is there any reason to think anything will change?
Do the other 1000s of employees get angry and quit?

I particularly like the camera work. Sometimes there will be three separate camera angles shown in one 2 sentence conversations That means they were all recording simultaneously. How do you do that without anyone seeing? Ridiculous.

Like @ucme implied Reality TV really is worse than junk.

But I will admit to almost tearing up Clearly, I’m eating too much soy.

I wish they would just take the $100,000 they pay out in extra benefits and give raises. The show really pisses me off.

Besides, who is to say that the three people that get followed by the boss are the “most deserving” employees.

@Cupcake Exactly! Disneyland?!?! Are you freaking kidding me?
Pay a respectable wage you cheap SOB!

The cameras aren’t hidden. The employees agree to be on camera.

The cameras are not hidden?! Then both the CEO and the employees are stupider than I thought.
It is an intelligence test. Of course everyone will say it is a good place to work. Of course they will talk about their daughter’s MS, and the truck breaking down, and their dog dying, and…

The cameras are not hidden. The employees agree to be on a reality show about their jobs. They train the CEO in disguise and one other person, and then the employee is supposed to decide which person would do better at the job. That’s the reuse anyway.

I like the show. I like finding out about the businesses. I like learning how hard so many people work and the extent of their jobs. I love when someone loves their job, especially when it is a job many people might feel is awful. Like the woman who cleans bathrooms at the Wrigley field. She loved cleaning the bathrooms clean, she smiled, she had a great thing about her, she said she loves it.

@LuckyGuy I always figured my lousy coworker with a sob story would be the one the boss would follow and I would have to sit by and watch them go on an all-expenses paid vacation or have a college fund set up for their kids while I got nothing.

How is that supposed to help a company? 3 people win?

@Cupcake Exactly.

I think they must feel it will be good advertising and don’t care about a specific employee. That’s all I can figure.

It’s been several years since I watched an episode. Here’s my take on it…They are real CEOs who volunteered with the show to participate. Yeah, there’s a stock formula. Part of that is because each episode has to be edited to a certain amount of time. How they always “pick” one worthy employee and one who needs improvement (or the axe) is a mystery.

As for the cameras, The fictitious explanation given for the accompanying camera crew is that the executives are being filmed as part of a documentary about entry-level workers in a particular industry, or a competition with another individual with the winner getting a job with the company. Source

I don’t recall much on how these employees were rewarded, but it did seem like most were temporary, other than one promotion. Maybe there is more to the CEOs’ follow-up actions that doen’t end up being showed…maybe it comes later. It would be nice to see an “After The Experience” episode that interviews them all six months or a year later.

All the shows I’ve seen they tell the employee that the CEO-in-disguise is learning about different types of jobs, which explains the cameras.

I wonder if the employees ever recognize the CEO’s.

I also notice that the employees that they use to be on camera are never bitter employees who talk about how to get over or how to shirk their responsibilities. They’re always employees who are really gung-ho, really hard workers, really the “do the right thing” types. The Hooters episode was an exception. I agree with @JLeslie, I think that guy should have been fired on the spot. The CEO could have done it while remaining undercover. He could have notified someone who would take care of that on his behalf. What if the company were subjected to a lawsuit in the meantime because he knew of the goings on and did nothing about it, or if the manager of the restaurant did some type of sexual abuse before he got around to getting fired?

They do sometimes have bad employees who bitch about their job on the show and do a poor job. One sporting goods store employee talked badly about customers and was always looking to be lazy whenever possible.

The CEO’s also sometimes are recognized. Sometimes they aren’t recognized, but an employee does guess it is Undercover Boss.

The premise of the show (I watched it once) is that “this guy [undercover boss] is in his own reality show to see if he has what it takes to win [insert name of fake prize here]”. That’s why the employees are always interviewed away from him to get their opinions of “does he deserve to win?”

I loved this show the first couple of times I watched it because I felt like the average, hardworking Joe was getting rewarded. I loved the idea of someone getting noticed for doing a great job – I guess I saw myself as that person. Working extra hard even when no one is looking and rarely getting treated any better than those who goof-off, come in late, etc.

But now, a couple of things bother me. 1). Too formulaic if you watch often. 2). I’m not sure they are giving away money responsibly. I felt like in the begining, they would pay for 2 years of child care or for a new car so they could get to work/school easily, or pay for school/help with student loan debt. They would put the money in places where it would actually help the person get ahead. Now I see more episodes where they just give a big chunk of cash and are left to spend it on whatever they want. Knowing that a lot of lottery winners blow their cash, I worry that they will be in a similar position.

I hate that show!!! So you help 3 out of 3,000, yeah, you’re a great boss and a wonderful sensitive person. Ignorant, and it’s so boring, the same format every single show.

I wonder what the other employees think of one of their co-workers getting a random payout, while they’re still stuck in the same situation completely unnoticed? I imagine that the lucky employee feels great while they accept the cash… but then their job is quickly made to be a lot less enjoyable.

I always feel it would be interesting to have a follow up episode in a year or two to see what has changed at the company (is that CEO still there?), if the company has implemented any of the suggestions of the employees featured on Undercover Boss, and what repercussions, if any, came to the employee (I know it’s not likely to be shown truthfully but I’m always curious). Maybe someone should do an Undercover Boss Undercover to see how things are going now for the employees!

@jca I’d love some sort of follow up also.

I thought that everyone was staged (actors), replaying what really occurred.

I somehow found one episode about some place called Tilted Kilt, and really only continued watching it for the boobs.

The whole thing smacked of a PR stunt for the company. So, just four hard-working and underpaid workers struggling to make a comfortable and secure living get some one-off handouts of around $20,000 each—what about all the other hundreds of workers in every other branch of the company?

The CEO in this case did seem like a nice guy, but systemically it was still bullshit. It merely supported my view that there should be a revolutionary change in workplaces generally. The CEO sits there in some ivory tower collecting millions, and largely oblivious to the conditions of the workers, while the workers themselves are usually more aware of what actually needs to be done than the management and the company hierarchy and do the vast bulk of the actual productive work, yet are typically ignored and paid the least.

What there needs to be is the collectivisation of workplaces and the wholesale implementation of worker self-management, and get rid of these useless middlemen, managers and bosses who think the world revolves around them.

They just did a follow-up show a few nights ago.

I agree with those who wonder about all the hundreds of hardworking employees who DON’T get featured and who don’t get a chunk of cash.

Granted, for some it has been life altering (like the one whose child needed surgery for a rare birth defect) and I don’t think anyone begrudges them.

But the vacations to Bahamas or trips to Disneyland are, I imagine, difficult for the rest of their coworkers to deal with.

I used to like the show a lot more than I do now

How sad that a payment of $20,000 (guess) would be so life changing for a loyal employee who worked for the company for 10 years.
If the boss had paid them just $2,000 a year more in salary, $1.00 per hour, they could have afforded it themselves.

Hmm, well, maybe not.

@LuckyGuy, have you just not heard the joke on this topic?

So, where’s your fucking Ferrari?

@CWOTUS I almost wrote the same sort of thing in different words, but I thought it would be obnoxious to assume the employee wouldn’t spend their money wisely, because many would. Your joke doesn’t hold because she doesn’t smoke. If she did smoke, then you can tell someone they could’ve had a Ferrarri. Like when I was in college my friends would ask me how I have the money to fly to Atlantic City and Florida for vacation. My response was, if they stop drinking for 6 weeks they can fly with me.

But, the people on those shows, they are paid soooo low. If they are not in debt, then they are not being reckless. I am exempting college and medical debt.

If they were paid that $1.00/hr more we do not know how they would spend it. I doubt it would be spent on a tennis court, corporate jet, or off shore account in the Caymans. Most likely it would go to food, rent, and children’s school supplies.
The boss is considered magnanimous because he pays 20,000 so the employee can afford to get the surgery his kid needs. Big deal.
How about offering health care for the employees that have worked more than X years? He might even reduce turn over and have healthier, happier employees who believe the company cares about them.