Word: bossing
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...series of low-wage jobs on the theory that the best way to write about life at $6 an hour is to live it. If only Ehrenreich had pitched the idea to TLC. Instead, the network produced the more capitalist-friendly job-switch series Now Who's Boss? (Mondays, 10 p.m. E.T.), in which CEOs do drudge work at their own companies, critiqued by their employees. For Tisch, flipping omelets and checking in customers was not just educational but good advertising as well. "We're not as large as our competitors," he says, "so we have to use creativity...
...Boss? may be a glorified infomercial, but it's also a fascinating dip into the service economy, with all its margin pressures and enforced hilarity. John Selvaggio, president of discount airline Song, has to wear a name tag with the moniker "Jammin' John" when he works the gate. Nicknames, the narrator tells us, are mandatory at Song, at which "they've banned grumpiness and attitude!" The screen flashes factoids (the average bed change takes 7 min.), and we learn lingo like "the 10-and-5 rule" (you look at hotel guests when they're 10 ft. away and greet them...
...results are fun, satisfying and probably a decent learning experience. But while the CEOs perform tasks, they never really experience work--the pressure to meet quotas, the fear of layoffs, the need to laugh at the boss's jokes--because they ultimately hold the power. (It's as if the players on Survivor had the power to fire Jeff Probst.) In a perfect world, Now Who's Boss? might have made its Warbuckses go undercover Ehrenreich-style and live on the wages they pay. Instead, it answers its own title's question: The boss is the boss, even when bumbling...
...final, eternal stakeout. There's a nice locker-room bit where, after a shower, the men grab hand towels instead of bath towels to cover their butts. And you don't want to know what happens to the pony, a Bat Mitzvah gift to a crime boss's daughter, when a fit of zeal overcomes the cops' habitual wrong-footedness...
...when he announced that the government would drop charges against a former intelligence analyst who exposed U.S. and British plans to spy on U.N. Security Council members potentially hostile to a war. Then Clare Short, a former member of Blair's Cabinet who last year resigned to protest her boss's stance on Iraq, accused British intelligence services of spying on U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan during the acrimonious walk...