Last nite after getting home from Driving4$$ (work is slow and tips suck), I turned on the tube for company during dinner (and to wait for the Good Wife). Happened upon Undercover Boss on CBS.
Ya know, if the OWS movement and the 99% ever need a real publicity department, they only need to call on CBS and use this show.
I've caught parts of it in the past and am dumbfounded at the total ineptitude of these Captains of Industry when it comes to relating to or accomplishing even the simplest of tasks that their rank and file employees do every day, over and over.
The Diamond Resorts guy last nite flies in his private jet to his first "position." (Any line-boy I've ever met would have been on the phone to the property manager before the engines had finished spooling down). He's driven by his major-domo/body guard to a local motel (subsequently adjudged by the neckless guy to be insecure - so we move on to a luxury suite). Here (presumably after a good night's sleep and room-service breakfast) our hero dons a wig and glasses to assume a geek/yahoo appearance and heads to his new "employment."
In the course of his country-wide job experiences, he seemed perplexed at how to climb a ladder, flumoxed at why the reservation clerk couldn't find the caller a room in Hawaii between Christmas and New Years and disgusted that sanding dry-wall by hand was boring and dirty. Don't these guys get it. Most work IS hard, boring and/or dirty (except maybe for chashin' those dividend checks).
The amazement that these "little people" had to put up with overwork, low pay, understaffing, lack of training and just plain old contempt and disdain for their efforts makes me mumble "Mama Mia" as my head bangs against the keyboard. But it's OK 'cause at the end of the show he invites them to his beach house and surprises them with a reward and promises to correct the company faults that he's discovered. Everyone cries, smiles and tells him how wonderful he is and praises the change he's made in their
lives -- "Honey, you won't have to work two jobs now."
I doubt that CBS will ever follow up and see if the promises of improvement made have ever been carried out or have continued (wouldn't this make a great lead-in to this show by having 60 Minutes do it ??).
It's a given today that companies (in the interest of the almighty god of shareholder equity) first cut staff, then cut training, then capital investment, maintenance and R&D -- but not management salaries, perks or shareholder dividends.
I remember the high muckety-muck of Johnny Rockets saying "I don't know anything about the fast food industry" and the deer in the headlights stare of an environmental clean-up boss at what his employees actually did.
When that librul media talks about the inequality in our system and the inability of what was once the middle-class of this country to grow or get ahead, you only need to tune in to this.
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