Prospero | “Undercover Boss”

CEOs with so much to learn—and so little to teach

Why we can't look away from bosses toiling on the stockroom floor

By M.H.

“UNDERCOVER Boss” sounds like a parody of reality television from the early “Survivor” days, when no one was sure just how far producers would take the form. But the very real show, which began in 2009 on Britain’s Channel 4, is now in over a dozen countries, and the popular American version just aired its 100th episode.

The premise is straightforward: a corporate executive spends time undercover as a low-wage worker in his or her own company. The boss learns about problems first-hand, rewards good employees and punishes the bad, all while trying not to screw up too badly at the cash register or on the mop. It’s hard to know how seriously to take the “reality” party of any reality program, and “Undercover Boss” episodes mostly unfold according to predictable patterns. The damage done to a brand almost never exceeds the show’s promotional value.

From a worker’s perspective, “Undercover Boss” is a dream and a nightmare. What could be scarier for a drive-through operator than having the chain’s chief executive looking over your literal shoulder? Then again, what could be more fun than watching your boss’s boss’s boss’s boss miserably fail to perform your job? “Undercover Boss” tends more toward the dream scenario, and bad workers getting punished appear only on occasion. Instead, viewers get virtuosic fast-food cooks and bumbling executives.

A thread of populist agitprop runs through the show. In one episode, Sam Taylor (pictured), the boss of Oriental Trading (a party-supply and toy company), goes undercover at his fulfilment centre only to discover, sweaty and overheated, that his employees aren’t treated very well. A computer system moves human “pickers” around the warehouse like automata, directing them to sprint from one box to another if they want to make quota. Mr Taylor was hapless at loading boxes into a sweltering truck. But what really galled him was walking past a locked glass fridge of sports drinks—managers decide when it’s hot enough to pass them out.

Middle management is often the bad guy on “Undercover Boss”. In one episode Rick Silva, chief-executive of Checkers, a burger chain, is threatened with a beating by a store-manager, who asks rhetorically if Mr Silva has any fast-food experience at all. Mr Silva can no longer resist: he drops his cover, and shuts down the store. Mr Silva punishes the manager ostensibly on behalf of Todd, a line-cook too scared to speak up because he needs his job to support his mother. It’s a convenient story: on the one hand management is bad, but on the other hand management is very good.

The show is most unguarded when bosses stumble into a legal problem on camera. Jane Abell of Donatos Pizza got on famously with Aaron, calling him the "perfect picture of a delivery driver”. But while driving back from a delivery, Ms Abell presses Aaron about the perks of working in a college town; figuring this lady was as cool as she was pretending to be, he tells her: “A lot of people smoke pot and they will, like, invite me to go in for a little bit and I'll kind of indulge.” Her face immediately drops, the calculations clear in her eyes: if he were to hit someone, she would be ruined. Aaron is fired.

In the 100th episode—at Wienerschnitzel, a hot-dog chain—there are no bad employees. Cindy Galardi Culpepper inherited control of the chain from her deceased husband, and her empathy and generosity are on the high end of the show’s range. She even swaps stories of adolescent suicide attempts with a 19-year-old employee. At the meat-processing plant Ms Culpepper, a former competitive bodybuilder, gets embarrassed lifting sausages by the only woman who works the floor. In the episode’s final minutes, as is the formula, Ms Culpepper reveals herself to her employees and, like a fairy godmother, rewards them. Teary-eyed after receiving $50,000, one worker says to the camera, “I’ve never been told I deserve anything before.” Another exclaims, “This is like two years of pay!”

These endings are heart-warming. Talented, funny, hardworking people get rewarded, and from the very top. The powerful learn a lesson and return to the boardroom with a plan to make jobs easier for their employees. But the melodramatic cash handouts are a distraction from the show’s more unsettling moments. Every episode includes a worker explicitly teaching the boss something about being a CEO, but the CEO never has anything to teach the workers about being workers. Watching the show is worth it, just to see that realisation dawn on the boss.

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