Like a Boss

"A system based entirely on the division of labour is in one sense literally half-witted.  That is, each performer of half of an operation does really use only half of his wits." -G.K. Chesterton

As a rule I do not like reality TV.  However, I have found myself on many recent Sunday nights watching the show Undercover Boss.  The premise of the show is that a corporate boss or CEO will leave the corporate offices and, in disguise, will work in various franchises of his or her own company in order to discover more about the company's workings.  I have seen episodes featuring the CEO of a restaurant chain, a resort chain, a trucking company, the mayor of Cincinnati, and the chancellor of the University of California Riverside, to name a few.  The show does suffer from the obvious and annoying pitfalls of all reality TV: it is clearly selectively edited, it tugs strenuously at the heart strings, it digs a little too hard at times for drama, in short it's more TV than reality.

Yet I find myself drawn to the show.  I find myself surprised, when I know I shouldn't be, that the CEOs and big wigs seem to have very little idea about what goes on in the trenches of their businesses.  The bosses are consistently surprised that the employees they meet (clearly chosen ahead of time by producers because of their hard luck stories) are so dedicated to their jobs despite their financial struggles.  As a teacher I have never worked in the corporate world, but I can't imagine our superintendent walking into an elementary room and being surprised that the teacher had to deal with twenty-five third graders every day.  How can these people not know what is going on in their own company?  How can they not know that many employees struggle to make ends meet?  Do they not know what people are paid?  Again, I find it hard to believe.

Of course, at the end of the show the boss offers these chosen dedicated workers some sort of bonus, or a paid vacation, or training and promotion, or in one case a young worker was offered his own franchise and the franchise fee was waived.  "See!  The American Dream lives!" the producers are shouting at us.  I find myself wondering if the hundreds of other employees will reap the benefits of the boss's new perspective.  I can hope, but I have my doubts.

To bring in the quote I began with, it is always the boss who seems half-witted.  He or she is not able to hack the jobs performed by the employees.  That quote is from a book titled "The Outline of Sanity," (which I highly recommend) in which Chesterton lays down the principles of his economic philosophy, distributism.  One of his solutions is that the company ought to be run and owned by all of the people who work in it, not just a few at the top who give orders to the underpaid underlings.  It would be a company run on the principles of democracy, that system we supposedly believe in.  There would be no half-witted boss who sits in an office all day and has no idea how his company actually functions.  And maybe there would be no need to offer poorly paid and struggling employees what amounts to prizes for actually doing their jobs well.  It's a thought.

J