The Top Executive on Undercover Boss

Introduction

Reality television programs have, especially since 2000, proliferated significantly. The format includes offerings like Big Brother, Survivor, and American Idol that incorporate the competitive spirit of the TV game shows of a past era, to other programs like Wife Swap, Jersey Shore, and Flip This House that presume to show a slice of everyday life. With the ascent of such programming, scholars have found it difficult to achieve a unified definition of reality television. Wood and Skeggs (2012) say that reality TV spotlights social hierarchies “commodified into forms of spectacle” so as to build and keep audiences (p. 8). Other scholars identify reality television as an attempt to offer entertaining, authentic representations of individuals, their problems, and how they construct—and live out—a narrative within their particular environments (Beck, Hellmueller, & Aeschbacher, 2012; Nabi, 2007). In that sense, it is an “unabashedly commercial genre” that attempts to fuse the pop culture framework with “a self-conscious claim” that the format offers “the discourse of the real” (Murray & Ouellette, 2009, p. 3).

However, say Skeggs and Wood (2012), self-performance, rather than representations of reality, is the hallmark of reality television. That is, rather than discourses about reality, the format emphasizes showing how “new understandings of value and ideology are coming into effect” (p. 233). In terms that are particularly relevant to this study, they refer to this as “the idea of personhood” or the “legal, social and moral states generated through encounters with others” (p. 4). These encounters are presented as opportunities for individuals to self-actualize and demonstrate who they are, within the demands and constraints of the neoliberal structures and values of the United States (Kavka, 2012; Ouellette & Hay, 2008; Skeggs & Wood, 2012). These observations are, in large part, inspired by Michel Foucault’s work, which stressed the importance of examining how the rise of neoliberalism emphasizes that self-governance is a way to avoid harmful interventions from the state (Foucault, 1997). With self-governance, individuals are encouraged to see themselves as the locus of power: Individuals “act upon themselves” following their inclinations to be productive and pursue their goals without top-down intervention from the state (Paras, 2006, p. 13). Foucault was interested in how governmentality, particularly in a capitalist society, promulgated this productivity orientation by offering up practices (e.g., dress, timeliness, and speech patterns) that can regulate individual behavior and structure use of time (Foucault, 1977; McGushin, 2011). Individuals encounter such patterns at multiple sites in society (e.g., church and school), but patterns are particularly visible at “creative sites of modern power” in the workplace (e.g., factories, health-care facilities, and retail/service enterprises), signifying that capitalism has a strong presence in the “manufacture of subjectivity” that informs self-governance (Oksala, 2005, p. 222). Accordingly, Foucault (2011) has called for critical examination of how “government of oneself” acts as a way for powerful interests to inform how individuals construct their sense of self and the reality around them (p. 8).

It is this line of analysis—what Foucault has referred to as the shaping of self—that is particularly relevant for examining the distinctive messaging of Undercover Boss, a program that attempts to show the corporation, through the machinations of the top executive, assisting the lives of their companies’ low-wage earners. In doing so, the program attempts to amplify the presence of the corporation in everyday life by displaying how the corporation holds forth values that are consonant with prevailing American beliefs. Scholars have observed that American culture is suffused with long-standing beliefs that the country is a beacon of perpetual progress through individualism, self-sufficiency, and continual striving that is unhampered by state intervention (Bercovitch, 1978; Lipset, 1996; Rojecki, 2008). These tenets help inform a practice of the American self, practices that are “not something that the individual invents by himself,” said Foucault. “They are patterns that [the individual] finds in … culture,” he said, “and which are proposed, suggested and imposed on him by his culture, his society and his social group” (Foucault, 1988, p. 11).

Influenced by Foucault’s observations, scholars have noted that the kind of personhood portrayed in reality television tends toward depictions of individuals who understand and embrace effective self-government (Ouellette & Hay, 2008; Sender, 2011; Skeggs & Wood, 2012). The erosion of the welfare state accompanied by the increasing valorization of private markets and personal initiative contributes to what numerous Foucauldian scholars (Crawshaw, 2012; Ouellette, 2010; Rose, 1996) call a logic of “governing at a distance.” That is, the influence of the state is seen as minimal; the real governing consists of the individual directing his or her attention to pursuing actions—like bettering one’s health or increasing one’s wealth—that are congruent with the needs, dictates, and values of market orientations. In line with this analysis, Hay (2010) points out that reality television, although depicting the individual as the locus of realizing the actualization of his or her abilities, stresses that the individual is always needing “continual training and retraining to remain rational, effectively calculating, and well-disciplined” (p. 391).

The reality TV show format—and Undercover Boss in particular—depicts the American character as less oriented to the welfare state and its public services and more attuned to maximizing oneself within an ever-growing privatized sphere; several reality shows promote self-advancement while also making the boss a central character. Cake Boss shows the behind-the-scenes dynamics of a family-owned bakery in New Jersey. Other programs like The Rebel Billionaire, Shark Tank, and The Apprentice use competition formats where show participants attempt to receive approval, and reward, from the boss who evaluates their efforts. Of particular importance to this study is the subgenre of reality TV that Undercover Boss inhabits: the “docu-soap”; a format visible in programs like Cake Boss, The Real World, and Jersey Shore that purports to show the American individual persona navigating real-life situations (Leone, Peek, & Bissell, 2006). Although there have been docu-soap programs that center on the importance of the boss (e.g., Does Someone Have to Go?, Secret Millionaire), Undercover Boss is distinctive in that the corporate entity, represented through the top executive, walks among employees as a seeming peer, yet, through this role, provides the patterns that inform front-line workers on how to improve their self-governance. In this way, Undercover Boss is an excellent landscape for investigating this question: How may a corporation affect a persona that is designed to facilitate individuals’ learning to self-govern more effectively? As scholars have pointed out (Cheney, 1992; Heath & Nelson, 1986; St. John & Arnett, 2014), there are corporate personalities that attempt to make meaning and shape events. Marchand (1998) and, to some degree, Ewen (1996) explored how corporations used various approaches across several decades—including advertising, community relations outreach, and employee information campaigns—to assert that they were human-like and cared about their fellow Americans. Scholarship on the contemporary appearance of the corporate persona, however, mostly concentrates more on legal aspects (Kerr, 2005; Krannich, 2005; Ripken, 2009) or the promulgation of an image (Cheney, 1992; Ewen, 1996; Heath & Nelson, 1986; Marchand, 1998; St. John & Arnett, 2014). Undercover Boss, however, offers the unique opportunity to see the corporate persona embodied through the top executive. That is, this work seeks to illuminate how the corporate persona, through the undercover boss, valorizes the primacy of individual efforts that are designed to maximize individual productivity and self-advancement in the workplace.

Undercover Boss as a Window Into Self-Government

The February 7, 2010 arrival of Undercover Boss on CBS featured top executives, disguised as ordinary workers, taking on tasks at their companies’ multiple work sites. More than 38 million viewers turned in to see the president of Waste Management Incorporated picking up litter and cleaning portable toilets under the ruse that he was being filmed for a program that featured workers competing for entry-level jobs. To depict the top executive’s journey through the work world, every Undercover Boss program customarily adheres to a sequence of events. First, the program offers a brief background of the boss and his or her company, quickly followed by showing how this manager affects a disguise. Then, the boss reports to a series of different workplaces within the company and is often asked to take on physically demanding (or sometimes merely disgusting) tasks. In the process of traversing the workplace, the program spotlights the top executive’s encounters with employees; the boss takes note of what is working well and what may need to be changed. The program ends with this senior manager revealing his or her identity to the featured employees and then delivering a reward for most (e.g., cash, promotions, mentoring), and, for some, providing needed redirection. Critics (Carter, 2010; Stanley, 2010) note that the program follows the classic mythical construct of the powerful persona (gods, princes, kings) that takes on the appearance of the common person so that a greater lesson may be learned (e.g., humility, empathy, commitment to justice for all). The aim, says one observer, was for the boss, through subterfuge, to find both “saints and sinners” in the workplace, take action to reward the humble and correct the dysfunctional, and, by show’s end, offer a self-portrait of a “compassionate corporate master” who has the workers’ “best interests at heart” (Hiltbrand, 2010, p. H1).

These critiques, however, are centered on how the program overtly casts the top executive. This study, informed by Foucauldian observations about self-government, is more concerned with exploring how the program transmits a larger message about constructive navigation within the neoliberal American society. Furthermore, Undercover Boss’s focus on top executives allows for examining the corporate persona in action, as the senior-most executives are seen as representative of the character of the organization and the values of their enterprise. “The CEO personifies the organization,” noted Lerbinger (2012, p. 55), and cases abound that demonstrate how the top executive signals the corporate character to various audiences (Fearn-Banks, 2011; Hayes, Hendrix, & Kumar, 2013; McKee & Lamb, 2009). Undercover Boss, however, provides a distinctive window into how the top executive can embody the corporate persona and thereby demonstrate the guiding hand of the corporation that supports the effective, self-governed American.

Method

Within the capitalist paradigm, inculcating self-management among employees is linked to the need for continual increases in productivity (Foucault, 1977; McGushin, 2011). In the United States, the fast-food industry is known as a site of intense focus on productivity because profit margins are low in many stores, employee turnover is high, and “cost control becomes the most critical element” in sustaining the operation (Newman, 2007, p. 9). Observers across labor studies and humanities (Ritzer, 2000; Royle, 2010; Schlosser, 2012) and organizational behavior (Leana, Mittal, & Stiehl, 2012; Tudor, 2011) point to how the fast-food, minimum-wage environment contributes to a tension between an intense management focus on productivity and worker frustration with low pay. As this study was conducted, employees in the fast-food industry engaged in high-profile campaigns to receive improved wages. In early December 2013, 1-day labor strikes were planned at more than 130 cities across the United States, mostly coordinated by the Service Employees International Union and the group Fast Food Forward, who advocated for a $15-per-hour minimum wage (Bacon, 2013; Chokshi, 2013). One 23-year-old man in south central Los Angeles was featured in the New York Times as an example of a low-wage fast-food worker: He earned $8.07 an hour over 20 to 25 hours a week, lived with his parents, and was unable to afford his own car (Greenhouse, 2013). As the strikes approached, one study announced that, adjusted for inflation, today’s minimum wage equals the 1966 standard of $1.25 per hour (DeSilver, 2013). The matter gained further traction as critics pointed out that $7 billion in social welfare programs, such as food stamps and Medicaid, were subsidizing corporations’ low-wage earners (Berfield, 2013; Walshe, 2013). By December 2014, strikes took place at 190 cities in the United States, with workers still advocating for a $15-per-hour wage and also speaking out for affordable child care, paid sick days, and more predictable scheduling (Berman, 2014).

As this issue of the inadequacy of the minimum wage for fast-food workers continued to appear in news stories and policy discussions, this study examined how the corporate persona, through the top executive of a fast-food company, attempted to signify the importance of self-government to such workers. In doing so, this work also analyzes how corporate messages of self-government works to reify the importance of corporate prerogatives in a time of structural failures in the modern welfare state. This study reviewed all episodes of Undercover Boss across the first five seasons of the program that featured the top executive (CEO or president) of a fast-food organization going undercover. ¹ A textual approach (Wimmer & Dominick, 2010) was used. Specifically, grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) allowed for the coding of repetitive themes involving how the CEO encourages self-governing among employees. After thematically coding each top executive’s interactions with employees into recurrent types, similar displays were collapsed together until major categories emerged. This study finds that these managers conveyed the importance of self-governance in three ways: (1) eliciting from employees their own self-governing observations, (2) focusing on employees who, in the boss’s eyes, appear to be significant role models (for good or ill), and (3) providing rewards to employees who exhibited positive self-governing or role modeling and providing redirection to employees who were ineffective self-managers or poor role models. Three episodes featuring the fast-food restaurants Johnny Rockets, Moe’s, and Checkers provide several windows into how the corporate persona signalizes the importance of self-management. After examining these episodes, this work briefly provides some further comparative analysis to other fast-food worker Undercover Boss episodes and concludes with an analysis of the significance of these findings.

Johnny Rockets

Undercover Boss first featured a top manager of a fast-food chain in its second season, when it followed an executive through Johnny Rockets, an international fast-food franchise based out of California that features a diner motif. The company’s President and CEO, John Fuller, first visits a store in New York City, where Ajay, a lead cook (and a would-be rapper) shows Fuller every rule that must be followed—wearing latex gloves, mixing tuna materials the proper way, monitoring carefully the time allowed for each burger on the grill. ² As Ajay works the grills, he tells Fuller that there is a “technique to everything I do” and “we don’t do things willy-nilly here … . We’re not animals … . We don’t just run around and just do things without purpose.” Fuller says that Ajay “takes it very seriously … . If I’m a customer coming in, I’d love to know that my cook’s taking it that seriously … . It’s kind of a thrill to watch this guy in action.”

At a casino-based store in Atlantic City, Tony, a “food runner,” shows Fuller how to quickly move back and forth from serving and cleaning tables, telling him that such hustle allows him to make more in tips. Fuller notes that this kind of self-government was rigorous; “I was starting to break out in a sweat,” he says. Then, during a break, Tony shares with Fuller that, years ago, his daughter was murdered, and he had taken it upon himself to bring justice to the perpetrator. He served 3 years for that assault and, upon release, was homeless for 3 months until Johnny Rockets hired him. Tony says the job has helped change his life and, later, Fuller says, “I’m just thrilled that we … [were] able to employ him and put some money in his pocket so that he doesn’t have to live under the boardwalk. It feels good that we can make a difference.”

Fuller also focuses on an employee whom he perceived as an important role model. Janice, a server at a casino-based Johnny Rockets in Connecticut, tells Fuller that it is important to “take care of [customers] like they are your family, your daughters, your mom, your dad.” Janice literally gets on her knees to take an order, laughing at a simple joke from a customer; she uses words like “honey” and “sweetie” with customers. Then, as Fuller clumsily attempts to take a customer’s order, she stands smiling at his side, leading him through everything that needed to be asked. Finally, Janice encourages all employees to energetically dance on the floor (which, says Fuller, is part of the Johnny Rockets’ “brand experience”). Janice points out that the corporate dances “stink” and leads him in ones she developed. Then, during a break, she tells Fuller that she has custody of four daughters and is the primary wage earner. Janice says, “I survive with this, but I have [no money] put aside.” Fuller reflects, “She strikes me as someone who is very selfless and would do anything for her kids.”

As the program ends, Fuller dispenses rewards. He tells Ajay that Johnny Rockets wants to recognize his rap ambitions by flying him to the American Music Awards. Tony will receive $5,000 to help pay his rent, and Fuller will send him and his family to an amusement park. Johnny Rockets will also donate $5,000 to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in honor of Tony’s deceased daughter. For Janice, the company will send her and her family on a vacation and will set up a $2,000 college fund for each of her kids. He also indicates she will be paid to roll out her dances in stores nationwide.

Checkers

In its third season, Undercover Boss featured Checkers, a drive-through fast-food operation based in Florida that operates in 28 states. The company’s CEO Rick Silva notices early an example of an employee articulating initiative at his first store visit in Florida where Todd, a cook and front-line worker, says his job is about satisfying the customer. Todd then shares with Silva that he has always had the desire to be a chef but cannot go to school because he has to help his mother pay her bills. “I’m her rock right now,” Todd says, “I don’t think of it as me being in a tough bind, or tortured by anything; I’m doing what I can and I’m doing it to the best of my needs.” He says he received no training from Checkers, that he taught himself, and then shows Silva how to keep multiple grills going and how to “speed it up, because it’s all about time right now.” Silva also encounters self-government in Alabama, where sandwich maker Johanna explains that she makes the sandwich the minute she hears the order over her intercom. That way, she says, when the customer pulls up “I want his food to be tagged … and out the window.” Johanna then shows Silva all the sequences to sandwich making, using a poster template. Silva later says that her expectations are high; he had a difficult time keeping up and was impressed that she helped him finish the orders.

Silva’s interactions with employees allow him to highlight some positive role models; he finds employees who persevere despite adversity. Johanna tells him that, after 7 years at Checkers, she made only $8.00 an hour; she said that she lives paycheck to paycheck and has difficulties with reliable transportation. In a store in Florida, Silva asks Joyce, a general manager, how she displays so much energy. She said she is grateful for her job because her father, mother, and brother all died within a recent 6-month span, after which she lost her previous job. When she was unemployed, she used Checkers free food coupons to feed her and her young daughter. “That’s why I’m so loyal to Checkers,” she says. Silva says to her, “I would never, ever in my wildest dreams have imagined that you had this much that you have overcome.” She answers that she is struggling on a tight budget and is in severe debt.

While impressed with Joyce, at Todd’s store, Silva observes a poor role model. Stevens, the store supervisor, repeatedly yells at Todd and other employees. Stevens tells a female employee, “So if you go on overtime, I can take you outside and beat you up, right?” Then, when Silva gets confirmation that Stevens talks that way to employees consistently, he confronts Stevens, a significant deviation from the normal flow of the show. Silva reveals to Stevens his position as the company’s CEO and informs Stevens he is improperly managing his people and providing a poor product. He tells Stevens, “You don’t belong in that restaurant. Right here, right now, we’re going to shut the restaurant down.” ³

By show’s end, Silva provides a clear picture of who is worthy of reward. He offers to pay all of Todd’s expenses to go to culinary school and promises him $15,000 for his family. He also points out to Todd that the verbally abusive Stephens is being retrained. To address Johanna’s struggles, he pledges $20,000 for her to buy a car and will promote her to a manager-in-training, with a 25% salary increase. For Joyce, Silva says the company will give her $10,000 to help with debt, and $10,000 to spend as she likes.

Moe’s

The fourth season of Undercover Boss focused on Moe’s, a Mexican-themed, fast-food chain based in the southwest. In a Charleston, South Carolina store, manager Angelisa guides their president, Paul Damico, on the cash register, informing him that the standard is to fill an order 3 minutes after it is taken; you must multitask and be happy, she says. As Damico struggles—and causes the line to back up—she reminds him that, nevertheless, “You really want to greet your customer before you start pushing buttons,” and to smile when he talks. Then, Damico travels with Janet, the catering director in Columbia, South Carolina. They go to a sheriff’s office and, afterward, Damico says that she was extremely organized; “every piece of that catering was meticulously delivered,” he says, “From the marketing, to the branding to the spoon location, it was pretty awesome to see.” Later, in Nashville, Damico works with Damon, who shows him how to cut up tomatoes with a hand machine. As they prepared guacamole, Damon says that no matter how long an employee has been there, they should always have preparation (prep) sheets in front of them so that all the steps will be followed. Damico reflects that Damon kept him to the sequences on the prep sheet and that was “the sign of a great teacher.”

While Damico is encouraged by these self-governing employees, he also encounters a young manager whose highly visible behavior did not meet his standards. Tito, a 19-year-old shift manager, tells Damico he will show him only one time how to roll a burrito and, if he does not understand, he should go find another crew member. Damico later observes that this first interaction was “a bit shocking to me, because that is not how you train within Moe’s.” As the day progresses, Tito loudly chastises Damico for being slow and not yelling “Welcome to Moe’s” when customers come in. Damico witnesses Tito acting belligerent, calling one female employee a “ding dong” and then yelling out “I’m king ding-a-ling around this bitch.”

At other stores, Damico finds examples of better role modeling. For example, at the Charleston, South Carolina store with Angelisa, she tells him, “I don’t want to come to work and just ask people if they want rice, chicken and beans on their burrito—I want to come to work and ask them how their children are doing.” She shares that she is a single mom with two young kids and aspires to a bachelor’s degree. She also has a new idea for Moe’s—a dessert burrito line. Damico observes that “she puts her heart and soul into this job” and that he cannot imagine what it is like to work 50 hours a week and “try to make time for two young kids.” Damico is similarly impressed by his time with Damon in Nashville. Damon explains that his 10-year-old daughter Mackenzie accompanies him to Moe’s when he does not have a sitter. When Damon takes Damico out to the lobby to meet Mackenzie, Damon mentions that he had only about two hours’ sleep before work that day, but that Mackenzie keeps him going. Damico says, “There’s no question [Mackenzie’s] learning about work ethic right now …. And I see him trying to give her the absolute best.”

By this episode’s end, Damico is effusive while dispensing gifts. He tells Angelisa that she is a “one in a million manager.” He will send her to Moe’s headquarters to share her dessert ideas. Moreover, she will receive $15,000 toward getting a bachelor’s degree and $40,000 total college fund money for her two children. ⁴ Damico says to Janet that she is executive-worthy material and wants her to help design a special Moe’s catering symposium—giving her $15,000 and paying for her flight and hotel stay. Damico then tells Damon that Moe’s will give him $15,000 to get a good reliable car. He will also give him $20,000 to use for “quality day care, so that when you come to Moe’s … you’re not worried about Mackenzie,” and another $20,000 to start her college fund. However, Damico has one course correction: He informs Tito that his treatment of employees is unacceptable; Moe’s will send him to its corporate headquarters for proper training.

Fast Food Self-Governing Across the Series

Fast-food workers appeared in nine different episodes across the first four seasons of Undercover Boss. ⁵ These episodes further portrayed employees projecting self-governance through (1) projecting a pleasant and engaging affect and (2) balancing speed with thoroughness. An employee at Fatburger tells the undercover CEO that “you’ve got to be super happy and excited” when interacting with customers. At Popeyes, a drive-through employee sings her transactions, and a Baja Fresh store manager goes into the lobby to talk to customers and give them free lunches. One Popeyes employee, in a half-joking manner, tells the boss to be sincerely pleasant with customers or “I’m going to take one of those chicken bones and whip you with it.” Moreover, while emphasizing the need for a pleasing disposition with customers, employees make it clear that high productivity with an attention to detail is essential (one Boston Market employee is impressive, says a boss, because she is like an “energizer bunny”). At Subway, one employee says, in an aside to the camera, that it is her intention to “break” the executive by timing him to see if he can make a sub within 2 minutes, and a boss at Boston Market strains against a constantly beeping timer to fulfill drive-through orders. In conjunction with demonstrating speed, employees repeatedly assert a keen attention to details that goes beyond meticulous food preparation: Undercover bosses at Baja Fresh and Popeyes are chastised by employees for staining a shirt and touching other surfaces that could dirty one’s hands.

Throughout these additional episodes, bosses continue to point out whom they see as significant role models. Notably, several of these employees bring a background of hardships to their jobs—one had been homeless, one had been in jail as a juvenile, two had been displaced by Hurricane Katrina, another had to move away from his hometown so he could send money back to his impoverished family. Bosses praise these workers for their perseverance and their dedication to their jobs. The CEO of Baja Fresh notes that one worker “sacrifices for his family so that they, and the next generation can have a better life. That’s America! That’s what makes this country so great.”

Finally, in keeping with the show’s format, featured employees receive reward for their self-governance; gifts range from being offered paid opportunities to train others, to five-figure cash payments for college education and debt reduction. Among fast-food workers, a Fatburger employee receives the highest grant: a $50,000 fund for hiring a lawyer to help with his wife’s immigration case. Alternately, three employees who exhibited poor self-governance receive course correction. A Popeyes employee who referred to executives as “corporate clowns” is appointed a mentor; an assembly line manager at White Castle who did not assist when product stacks up receives a lecture (and a warning of future follow-up) from the undercover boss, and a Boston Market employee who said he despised the company’s “ridiculous standards” and “hated customers more than anything in the world” is fired before the boss leaves the store.

Analysis

Undercover Boss provides a striking variation on the conveyance of the corporate persona. Up to now, the corporate persona has been conceptualized in two arenas: (1) the legal realm and (2) the image realm. In the legal realm, the concept of the corporate person has been well established (Kerr, 2005; Krannich, 2005; Ripken, 2009) and has received more attention recently, in large part due to the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision that affirmed broader free speech rights for corporations in elections. In the image realm, the corporate persona has been examined by public relations scholarship that has started to identify how the corporation asserts its persona in an attempt to influence audiences to accept its point of view (Cheney, 1992; Ewen, 1996; Heath & Nelson, 1986; Marchand, 1998; St. John & Arnett, 2014). This study finds that a third realm can now be opened up—the embodied realm. In Undercover Boss, the corporate persona, through the monitoring top executive, occupies place and time with the average American and interacts with them in their working environment. Bosses project the corporate persona as a mentor that walks among valiant and hapless strugglers, taking time to observe, praise and, eventually, reward them (and, occasionally, must redirect some toward efficiency and more constructive behavior). Although the embodied corporate persona, and its particular employee-focused mentoring, is limited in time and space, its larger message of guidance is not; the episodes offer, through this corporate persona mentoring, a framework for grasping the importance of self-government in the increasingly privatized American sphere.

Emerging research on reality television suggests that there are likely associations between the genre’s role portrayals and viewers’ perceptions of prevalent norms. These findings are intriguing in that, at a minimum, reality shows must impose a frame for their depictions of life, which inherently means that aspects are produced resulting in varying degrees of staging and participant self-modification of behavior (Beck et al., 2012). Still, some effects research has found that traditional female sex roles depicted on reality TV tend to be endorsed by viewers (Cato & Carpentier, 2010). More recently, a survey found that heavy watchers of docu-soap reality TV programs believed that women were more likely to display inappropriate behaviors (e.g., gossip and aggressive argumentation) and that discord was prevalent in romantic relationships (Riddle & De Simone, 2013). Such research points to the reality TV format as a potentially attractive mode for articulating and transmitting an embodied corporate persona to a potentially receptive audience. This study finds that Undercover Boss offers two role portrayals that signify norms: (1) depictions of employees who self-govern effectively and often act as exemplary role models, and (2) representations of the corporate persona—through the observations and actions of the top executive—as a constructive, beneficent entity who shares the values of average Americans. These two norms are, across these episodes, made real through the circumstances of the employees. That is, hard-working, underpaid, and often distressed fast-food workers toil mightily in the face of adversities and, by virtue of the monitoring (and approving) corporate persona, receive reinforcement and eventual largesse. The final reveals, where the top executives dole out rewards, affords employees the opportunity to explicitly reflect on how the wise counsel of the corporation (which had, of course, originally encouraged employee self-government) has allowed workers to take steps toward authentic self-actualization. When Johnny Rockets’ top executive Fuller provides gifts to Ajay, the cook says to CEO Fuller, “Not many people do good things for me. Hard work definitely pays off. You work hard all your life, you’ll definitely get your shot one day.” During the Fatburger episode’s reveal and rewards, Lisa tells CEO Wiederhorn, “I don’t feel like I deserve all this, I just do my job.” Wiederhorn replies “You do deserve it … because you’re so passionate about everything you touch.” These moments serve to highlight the connection the corporation’s message of self-government has with the American ethos of individual betterment through one’s own work ethic, a value that repeatedly appears in surveys of the American public. For example, a recent McClatchy-Maris poll revealed that, while most Americans (85%) believed that well-connected, moneyed people got ahead through an uneven playing field, they also articulated that they had to rely on their own work ethic more than previous generations if they were to get ahead (Lightman, 2014). ⁶

Moreover, portrayals of the virtue of self-government among fast-food workers—in a time where these workers are protesting a stagnant federal minimum wage—allows the corporate persona to assert that, instead of relying on the state, improving one’s lot through hard-working self-government is actually best for every American. This message of self-direction appears to be particularly important now for corporate power centers as the movement to increase the minimum wage persists. Currently, 29 states, and the District of Columbia, have minimum wage rates above the federal standard of $7.25, with states like Washington, Massachusetts, and Minnesota at $9.00 and above (Grovum, 2015). Some municipalities, like San Francisco and Seattle, have approved the movement toward a $15.00 minimum wage, and companies like Wal-Mart and The Gap indicated they will raise their wages (Johnston, 2015). Still, corporations, particularly in the fast-food arena, consistently resist hikes in the minimum wage, stating that it would cost “hundreds of thousands of jobs,” reduce hours for remaining workers, and raise costs for consumers (“10 Reasons,” 2014).

One approach to make such corporate resistance palatable to the broader public is to project the benevolent hand of the corporate persona as an enabler of core American cultural myths. For example, the corporate persona leverages the mythos of American individualism by appealing to wage-earner beliefs that individual hard work—and not reliance on state interventions—is the key to mastering the exigencies of the situation. This is a long-standing American value (Bercovitch, 1978; Lipset, 1996; Rojecki, 2008) that, says the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is reflective in the country’s orientation toward “the power of one” (Donohue, 2014, para. 2). That is, that the country’s ability to thrive through capitalism is built on individuals “from all walks of life … [who] take risks, work hard, and make a better life for themselves” primarily through “their own ideas and initiative” and not reliance on the state (Donohue, 2014, para. 2–3).

This work finds that the corporate persona, as depicted through the benevolent corporate executive assisting minimum-wage fast-food workers, attempts to reify such a “power of one” perspective. That is, through their actions, these executives reveal that the corporate persona valorizes the power of individual self-governance and does not attempt to address large and seemingly overwhelming systemic concerns like the inadequacy of the minimum wage, a predominance of low-skill service jobs, and the reality of state safety net programs like food stamps and Medicaid subsidizing low-wage jobs. Such macro items are not the focus of the persona’s appeal; indeed, addressing them would undercut the reach of the persona by revealing that the corporation does not suffer the ill effects of these systemic problems but, instead, sometimes benefits from them. In total, these Undercover Boss episodes elide the notion of any externally imposed action to better the lot of employees (like a state-mandated increase in the minimum wage or improved access to education or health care); instead, the program conveys that that the corporate persona is a sympathetic fellow traveler who, upon seeing the plights and hurdles of the average American, will take action to help those who are industrious, “self-regulating consumer-citizens” (Lewis, 2011, p. 82).

What Undercover Boss provides, then, is a window into a meaning-making element in American society that needs more careful consideration—the reality-shaping hand of the corporate persona. Indeed, the power of the corporation in the United States in the aftermath of the great recession of 2008 is impressive. One striking recent example is a 2013 “trust barometer” poll that found that half of Americans trust business institutions to do the right thing (Adams, 2013). Beyond polls, various evolving developments point to a sustained, strong privileging of the corporation in American life: (1) favorable Supreme Court decisions that assert constitutional rights for corporations regarding free speech and religion, (2) tax laws, like corporate inversion, that allow U.S. corporations to declare that their headquarters exist in foreign lands and thereby shield corporate income from U.S. taxes, and (3) favorable federal policies in areas of finance (e.g., low interest rates on borrowing from the Federal Reserve) and law enforcement (e.g., almost no prosecution of bank executives regarding widespread home loan frauds that led to the great recession). These items indicate that the power of the corporation persists at the systemic level, affording the corporation significant rationales to declare and display through many routes (e.g., reality television, public relations campaigns, marketing and advertising, lobbying of governmental officials) that the corporation actually has much in common with the average person.

In the case of Undercover Boss, that dynamic is revealed through the top executive’s message to the wage earner: To shape yourself in a valuable way, govern yourself in a way that meets the productivity needs of the market. This message is not imposed on the individual wage earner, rather the top executive embodies a corporate persona that attempts to show the corporation as an articulator and amplifier of common American values, and then suggests to us how we can productively act on those values. In directing our attention toward the practice of self, the power of the corporate persona works to focus our attention on the minute patterns of our own lives and away from any concerns we might attempt to formulate about injustices we face that may spring from special privileges for organizations. Certainly, across these Undercover Boss episodes, minimum-wage fast-food workers may be displaying particular attributes (e.g., excessive hard work, relentless diligence) and articulating arduous life stories (e.g., a rise from homelessness or the struggle to support a family) due to the narrative needs of the program. Still, Undercover Boss’s servings of such dramatic mini-narratives work to promote an atomized view of society. As Winslow (2010) has pointed out, this is an approach that calls on citizens to not question how trauma may, indeed, be associated with the rise of a self-governance that fails to consider evidence of systemic failure such as the inadequacy of the minimum wage. Instead, as Undercover Boss reveals, to thrive in austere times is to pursue “more association, and more acquiescence to the institutions at the foundation of modern industrial life” (p. 285). Indeed, the program’s portrayal of the beneficent top executive works at a very visceral level because it is a portrayal of where true hope resides in the modern capitalist society; that is, the promise for advancement rests in the counsel of the corporation, an entity that understands what it means to be productive in the face of the vicissitudes of life.

As the constructive presence of the state becomes problematic—and 55% of Americans see government policies as disconnected from their well-being (Lightman, 2014)—the guiding hand of the corporate persona looms even larger as a vital dynamic to meaning making in the United States. Consequently, what remains to be seen is how such a shaping of reality by corporations can actually broaden to serve the wider interests of society, displaying an impulse toward addressing the structural dysfunctions that promote inequities between corporations and individuals. When, for example, corporations can move toward a true empathy with low-wage earners, they may also come to see that an unending drive for advantage and short-term profit is, in itself, a corporate self-governmentality that limits how companies can more fully realize their missions, and long-term viability, in a democratic society. Perhaps the first critical step, for both individuals and corporations, on a route toward justice in the face of excessive self-governmentality is “to not discover what we are, but to refuse what we are” (Foucault, 1983, p. 220). With such an approach, self-governmental messages can move beyond amplifying the concerns of those who are invested (both monetarily and psychically) in the aspirations of the corporation and progress toward encouraging individuals and corporations to negotiate a more equitable existence.