Work Place Horror Show: Or Why I Can’t Look Away from “Does Someone Have to Go?”

 

OK, am I the only one who is mesmerized by the FOX Show, “Does Someone Have to Go?”(Or as it is known in my household, “Nationally Televised Potential Workplace Violence.”)

If you haven’t seen this beautiful train wreck of a reality show, FOX takes dysfunctional privately owned offices (Presumably, because large-scale operations would be savvy enough NOT to broadcast their dysfunction to a national audience.) and really dig into what about the company doesn’t work.  The bosses abdicate their positions for three days while the employees are given the reins and told to decide what about the company doesn’t work and how to fix it, whether that means demoting someone, giving them a pay cut or firing them.

Before they can recover from the shock of possibly being publically canned by a mob of their colleagues, the employees are immediately shown “peer interviews” where they see what their coworkers REALLY think of them. And they’re ALWAYS shocked that the interviews they’d given over the last few days are being used this way- to which I say, “Really?  You talked smack about your co-workers to a camera crew and didn’t think there was a possibility they would eventually see it?  What do you think cameras are FOR?

And then, just when that particular betrayal is fresh, the entire staff’s years of experience and pay grade are displayed for all to see, letting the employees know exactly how much more the guy who steals office toilet paper is making than everybody else.  At this point, the boss says, “See ya” and trusts his/her employees to make fair, responsible choices.  The staff mulls over their fresh wounds for about twelve hours, then votes online for a “bottom three” of who they hate the most among their coworkers.  The bottom three then have to plead for their job in front of a panel of their peers just before they make their final decision.  Because the last few days haven’t been stressful and humiliating enough.

So it’s like “Office Space” meets “Lord of the Flies.” As someone who has worked in a few dysfunctional workplaces, it’s so easy for me to identify with the hapless “cast members” of the show. I’ve had a boss I wouldn’t speak to in the morning before he spoke to me because I wanted to gauge his mood and determine my responses accordingly.  I worked in an office where a temporary supervisor decided she like the “energy” in my office and took her breaks in my corner chair, distracting me from my work, and then fussed at me for not getting my work done on time.  Maybe my empathy is what keeps my tuning in. I’ve been there.  I’ve done that.  The t-shirt sucks.

And DSHTG does demonstrate several important caveats for running a small business.  For instance, the show illustrates the dangers of hiring family members, who are inevitably a source of stress in the office because they feel safe enough to slack off and treat their coworkers like dirt.  Family members are always among the top three, which somehow always shocks and appalls the boss when they come back.  Really?  You didn’t know that paying your cranky 70-year-old mother three times what you pay everybody else for work that you farm out to outside vendors would upset them?  Really?

I know it’s wrong to watch this sort of program.  I know that eventually, we’re just going to have reality programming consisting of toddlers in a gladiator ring beating on each other with nerf swords.  But I can’t look away.  If for no other reason, I can be grateful that I now work from home full-time and if someone in my “office” annoys me I can send them to their room with no dessert.

“Does Someone Have to Go?” airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. central on FOX.

So my questions are:

1)      What reality TV shows do you feel absolutely guilty for watching?

2)      What horrific work place experiences in your history would fit right in on “Does Someone Have to Go?”

 

 

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