This week’s episode of Undercover Boss was Rick Tigner, head of Kendall Jackson. Interesting to see the scope of the empire. Startling to see at the end that the tasting room woman, Laura, who got a full time job and medical insurance for her 3 kids had left the company.
It was interesting to see the different aspects of that side of the industry. I’ve only watched a small handfull of episodes of the show since it began, and they always tend to focus more on how they have worked with the individual employees profiled in the episode than what the company will do overall to address the concerns the employees have brought to light. I did enjoy the episode overall.
Bingo! That’s my take as well. In this episode they reinstated 401Ks but I don’t get a sense of company support in that 401K. Same for the language barrier and full time vs part time benefits issues. All of this repeats itself with every episode as there are large gaps between employee levels endemic in larger companies. Would like to see a well run top tier company profiled where things are going well top to bottom…might serve as an example to others. Thus far I think the Waste Management episode might be the best. The “resorts” episode a couple of weeks back takes the cake for scariest CEO…
I thought they did a pretty good job with this program. I was pretty shocked that Laura is now gone. I can only guess that over the past 4-6 month since the show was filmed that she found a better offer? I also liked Rick’s personal story. He’s a guy who has worked his ass off for many years. Rene the truck driver got himself a bit cornered. I was glad to see that he had some ideas that were used by the front office.
We were laying in bed watching this and my GF looks at me and says “Bye Rene”. Even in the post ride interview he didn’t seem to show his willingness to conform to the “team” idea being put forth by Rick. Was really surprised that he was still there in the end.
Remember that reality TV always goes for the swerve. Yes, Rene the bus driver was a bit of a d**k but also remember how long he was there. He may have been a lowly delivery driver but he was a long-serving LOYAL lowly delivery driver.
Laura, on the other hand, was clearly there just to pay off her loans and feed herself and the kids. So it makes sense that if she latched onto something that gave her the same or better (full time, benefits, more money) she wouldn’t hesitate to jump at it. No company loyalty there. That is not a criticism in the least. You gotta look out for yourself nowadays as companies won’t look out for you. Rick should not take this as a slap in the face but the normal course of business.
Good episode overall and I like the fact that Rick came off as a decent guy.
How much do the companies pay to be on this show? First one I’ve watched but it came across as an hour-long ad for KJ to me.
I can only imagine Rene watching it and seeing everyone else on the show got some sort of financial payday except him. He got training. Hopefully he can learn from it.
I’m still amazed KJ produces 5 million cases a year! WOW!
Maybe from a grocery store in Texas?
Savannah left the tasting room (not Laura). I worked a number of days with her in 2009-- She is a very good person, a hard worker, and I am glad she got some time in the spotlight.
This was the first (and probably last) time I watched this show, but the KJ angle snagged me.
You only see what the producers want you to see, but I felt for Rene. 27-30 deliveries/day? I’d put emptying the truck at the top of my to-do list. If Rene’s not a team player, that might say as much about the corporate culture and structure established by mgt as it does about the employee. Hopefully mgt learned something from this.
I felt for him a bit as well (but just for his work)- Delivering wine in the Bay Area (or any metro area) is insane. On days that I’d have more than 10 stops, I’d be close to homicidal. He’s doing 27-30- yikes- I can’t even imagine. But, you’ve got to be a bit of a knucklehead if you are saying that sort of stuff and you know you are on camera.
They had the president of KJ on the local radio in Denver talking about the show. The host asked him if he ran into the truck driver and it wasn’t on TV, what would he have done?. His reply was “fire him”.
He’s an idiot for saying that in public.
BTW, what is with Murphy-Goode and the Berserker hats?
Yes Rene was a knucklehead for swearing on camera but you could also see that the CEO was struggling to keep a lid on his anger. The later radio interview just confirms this.
It appeared to me that some cooler heads (maybe the head of HR or their PR guy?) prevailed between the actual encounter and the end of the show. Even then when the CEO was meeting with the driver I was still getting a “my way or the highway” vibe rather than a desire to open a dialogue to discover what if anything about the job and work environment was contributing to this attitude and how to fix it.
In albertson grocery stores, there are bottle tags on ALL kj wines promoting the show.
In the end it’s just about selling more juice.
As opposed to?
When waste management did a show I didn’t see advertisements on my trash cans.
I watched a few episodes the first season, but haven’t seen it since. I did watch this one, though.
I was hoping they would have filmed this during harvest so he could see the dirtiest side of the biz, or at least have him do SOME sort of wine work, but after the show I realized he might be more recognized by the winemakers than the people he did film with.
I too felt sorry for Rene in a way, but also couldn’t believe he was talking like he did on camera. Also as far as how restaurants feel about deliveries during lunch service, yes, they hate it, but when you have as many deliveries as he does every day, it’s kind of unavoidable.
It always shocks me at how incompetent some of these CEO’s are when they try to do these “menial” jobs. ![[snort.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/bdc3944606213c4dca6c1169cf0a166c8bc4f8c9.gif "snort.gif"){kind=small}
