Word: work
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...most important, that you can find something interesting in the lives of people other than celebrities, lawyers and doctors. In CBS's new Undercover Boss, executives go incognito to work in entry-level jobs in their companies. In the premiere, Larry O'Donnell, president and COO of Waste Management, picks up litter and cleans toilets. He learns that a woman driving a garbage route has to pee in a coffee can to keep on schedule; trash sorters are docked two minutes' pay for every minute they're late from their half-hour lunch. He's horrified; he's humbled...
...here's the thing: you, watching the show, have the tools to come to that conclusion. You've held a job. You know how companies work. And one thing reality TV has trained people to do is to be savvy about its editing. That's how people watch reality TV: you can doubt it, interrogate it, talk back to it, believe...
...concerns, at a time when people would like to see some humility in our CEOs; a show, like Discovery's Dirty Jobs, about toilet cleaners and garbage pickers and other people that "quality TV" rarely takes notice of; a show, at heart, about how absolutely crazy-hard ordinary people work...
...also - in the worn-out but cheerful employees - see a testimony to the incredible camera-readiness of the American public. How did O'Donnell manage to work unsuspected among his employees? He told them he was "Randy," a host making a reality show, natch, about entry-level jobs...
...feed a hundred people, Mother Teresa used to say, then feed just one. There are slow-motion disasters everywhere. The Red Cross is doing heroic work in Haiti, but it is also doing it around the corner, when a house burns down. It may not feel glorious, but often the greatest good is accomplished quietly, invisibly. The choice is not either-or. We can give globally and help locally. Either way, the same principle holds in helping as in healing: First, do no harm...