White Castle Undercover Boss

Last night’s Undercover Boss was about the President of White Castle, David Rife. This is a family owned chain of restaurants that has been in business for over 80 years. Once again, you see the boss drive away from his lavish house in an expensive car so he can “check out” what the “little people” are doing. This theme is getting very boring.

What I didn’t like about this episode was that some of Mr. Rife’s decisions were not very good. Take for instance the supervisor in their hamburger-making factory. She didn’t seem engaged with her people. She was acting like a prima donna and not encouraging or helping her people. So what did he do? He asked her to work as a team player more. Excuse me, why didn’t he send her to some classes to teach her leadership, supervision or management. I would have put her on another shift after she completed some classes. I would have promoted the gal, who complained about her, to a supervisor, because that gal seemed to understand what it means to supervisor people.

Then he encountered a manager at one of his stores that was afraid of losing her job because of not following policy and procedures correctly. What a big disconnect between corporate and stores. He really didn’t do anything about it, just said that his grandfather wouldn’t want to hear about this because it’s the people who make this company great. Big deal.

With the usual donation of scholarship money for other employees, this episode was very boring – just like the President of White Castle. He showed no enthusiasm or passion, but seemed to me he was more concerned with the bottom line – making money.

The next episode will be about the owner of Churchill Downs. I hope this one won’t be smelly!

Until later,

Linda

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.