Undercover Boss : White Castle
This week’s Undercover Boss offered abundant evidence that big businesses inherited by family members can be a bad idea. Dave Rife, a great-grandson of the founder of the White Castle hamburger chain, began the hour in the standard Boss format — by telling his executives that he was going undercover. But instead of a board-room table ringed with attentive business-people, a gaggle of indifferently-attired relatives clomped in to what looked like a hotel ballroom to hear what their brother/nephew/uncle/whatever Dave planned to do. This, along with footage of Dave tooling around in a sporty red car saying he has “a lot of toys,” set the sour tone for this week.
Sure enough, Dave encountered poorly-managed stores staffed (in some cases over-staffed) by low-morale employees. The boss endured the usual Undercover embarrassments: he couldn’t keep up on the hamburger-bun assembly line or the cheese-straightening-on-the-cheeseburger assembly line. We were told Dave ruined Read more…
