By Steve Rhodes
Even I’m amazed every week at how Undercover Boss reveals just how out of touch America’s corporate suite is with the companies they run and the employees they rule over. Are they really so clueless about their own organizations?
Yes. Yes they are.
And the latest case in point really hits home: Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts looked as if he’d never worked a hard day in his life last night.
Dude.
The highlight was when Todd lied to his boss – who is really his employee – about having sold his vending stash and instead threw it in the trash and used money out of his own pocket to complete the hoax of having sold out his rack. In other words, an owner of the team was so embarrassed by his incompetence that he lied to his putative boss – on camera! Isn’t that a firing offense?
You can watch the whole episode here.
(CBS is not allowing embedding. Someone should go undercover there.)
Meanwhile, let’s take a look at some of the reviews.
1. “Chicago Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts proved last night that just because you’re in the boardroom doesn’t mean you can handle cleaning a bathroom,” babble reports. “It was amusing to see that in the real world, he would barely make it two days with the demands his club puts on his workers.”
2. “Todd Ricketts, this week’s guest on the show, is one of the four children of J. Joseph Ricketts, founder and former CEO of Ameritrade, which rose to become the top online discount brokerage in the world,” Daily Finance reports. “In the process, it also made the senior Ricketts a billionaire: In 2009, he was number 371 on Forbes’ list of the 400 richest Americans.
“Rather than sit on his holdings, J. Joseph bought the Chicago Cubs in 2009, and installed his children in the front office. Today, the Ricketts kids occupy four of the six seats on the Cubs’ board of directors, and son Tom Ricketts is the organization’s chairman. It isn’t really clear what Todd does for the Cubs.”
3. “[On] tonight’s episode of Corporate Welfare Apologetics Undercover Boss . . . Todd Ricketts proved to the world that he has never done a minute of manual labor in his entire blue-blooded life,” Mercurial Outfielder writes at Another Cubs Blog.
“And that was before he got fired from his janitorial position and lied to his boss about what was tantamount to stealing.
“This team is in serious trouble because the new owner is a fucking child who thinks he just bought Disneyland, when in reality he’s a grownass man who just bought a crumbling, urine-soaked relic.”
That’s about right.
4. And finally:
LoL RT @NatlSportsMAP: #undercoverboss… Wow… #Ricketts fam should rethink their strategy b4 sending #idontknowanything guy out
β πππΎππΆπ·πππ½ (@oh_elisabeth) November 8, 2010
Posted on November 8, 2010