It’s never easy being an “Undercover Boss.”
But it was particularly tricky for Sam Dushey, the president/CEO of Shoppers World, who stars in Sunday’s episode of the CBS series in which execs go undercover to work in their own companies.
‘It was an eye-opening experience — in every store I turned over another leaf and there was a new problem.’
- Shoppers World president/CEO Sam Dushey“There’s no doubt my workers know who I am and what I look like. When I go to one of my stores, they can smell me a mile away,” says the Brooklyn-born Dushey, whose grandfather opened the first Shoppers World in the 1930s.
(Shoppers World is a discount apparel and merchandise retail store with up to $250 million in annual retail sales. Dushey took over nine years ago and has expanded the empire to 40 stores and 1,900 employees nationwide.)
To fool his eagle-eyed employees, Dushey sported blond hair, a beard and glasses while working in four of his stores (including stores in Brooklyn and Queens).
“To be able to go into our own business and work as an employee, undetected, was just an amazing opportunity,” he says. “I took on different tasks in each one of the stores I visited — running the register, working in the back stock room, working on the sales floor and on the clearance/markdown racks with a scanning gun … It was an eye-opening experience — in every store I turned over another leaf and there was a new problem.”
Did he hear any beefs from his workers?
“It wasn’t so much complaints but … that we have some policies in place that don’t make [workers] as successful … like putting restrictions on the register of what they’re allowed to do, security-wise,” he says. “They have to call a manager for every little thing. Not only policies but also our technology. I spent all this money to install wireless scanning guns to make it easier for markdowns, yet the Wi-Fi in the stores didn’t work. I never would have known this if I didn’t pick up a scanning gun.
“If there’s anything I took away from this experience, it’s that the employees don’t speak up because they don’t feel they or their opinions matter,” he says. “Everyone matters. Everyone has a voice.”
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