undercover boss

My husband and I just watched a new show on CBS called "Undercover Boss". I honestly don't know what to think. The show takes a CEO of the company and sends him undercover doing entry level positions and shows his (and I'm sure eventually her) reactions to the work. This first show took a CEO from Waste Management and sent him to five different entry level positions through out his waste pick up and recycling company.

Now I guess I have to give him a little credit for admitting that he did have it pretty easy, got lucky though out his career, but the some of what he admits during all the work he does just amazed me. I've never been "rich" and I've never been really hungry but I know that when someone brings me a drink in a restaurant more than one person is involved in bringing me that drink. I also know that no matter what I do or where I go there are many people who are involved in making these things possible. This CEO seemed amazed that he was going to have to clean portable toilets (who did he think did this), that he had employees who were afraid of being even one minute late from lunch for fear of docking their pay, that a secretary had to do the job of four people, or that people can be positive while doing jobs like picking up trash on a hill or cleaning portable toilets.

One of the employees was diabetic and 20yrs on the job, still with a positive attitude. Another one had to pee in a tin can because she wasn't allowed to stop on her route to use the bathroom with out loosing productivity and missing her numbers. Still another one had her father, sister and brother-in-law living with her husband, daughter and herself. He seemed amazed that these people had to endure these situations. What amazes me is that there are still people out there that think if you don't have a six figure salary job that you are just not working hard enough or don't even realize these people exist.

There are millions of us out there right now, and before the economic crisis that most are facing now, that work hard at their current jobs and/or are working to improve their job skills that don't make tons of money and are scrimping and saving to make ends meet. I go to school, work part-time and try and keep my house clean. I have a 7 year old step daughter, a 5 month old baby and a husband that I would like to try and see on a regular basis. I can't work more because if I worked more then we would have to pay for full-time daycare for the baby and possibly part-time daycare for our older one. We make too much money for state help but if I went back to work full time then everything I would be making would be paying for daycare. We watch every penny trying to make sure that the girls have everything they need. Basically every company has 100's or 1000's of these stories and the CEO on today's show seemed amazed that he had 5 struggling families. There are so many families trying to hold on to what they have, or like us doing everything we can to try and buy a house. Trying to make sure our children are taken care of so they can grow up and be successful themselves.

This show is just another in the line of pointless reality shows unless it actually does what this CEO said he wanted to do, improve his employees working conditions. I want to see a follow up that shows whether this and other CEO's that do the show, will do things like redirect their bonus' and the bonus' of their upper level staff and not just fix the few immediate things they find in their week undercover but work to keep improving the lives of it's employees. During the show we saw the inside of this CEO's private gated home and his car service as he drove to work and then watched his surprised reaction as he heard about his employee's homes being foreclosed on. All these big money workers that whine that they can't afford their lifestyles with out their bonus' should take a good hard look at what the people that make those bonus' possible have to do so they can have a yacht, gated home with every damn amenity available, 5 fancy cars and "housewives" that don't know how to operate a stove or a vacuum cleaner.