Does Someone Have to Go?

Hello Film Fans!

This post is going to be a bit different. Today, I don't wish to discuss a film, but rather a TV show. Well, not even a "show" so much as an "experiment". As I was driving to my girlfriend's house this evening for dinner I was listening to the radio. There was an ad for a show premiering this evening and it sounded... intriguing. I was listening intently for the show title but all I could come up with was someone saying "I am going to get chopped". When I got to her house I told her what I had heard and that I wanted to watch it. I'm usually not one for train wreck type shows but this one had grabbed my attention. The concept was this: what happens when the bosses at your job give over complete control to their employees? When the salary of every worker is revealed, who will feel cheated? Who will feel undervalued? Who will be perceived as overpaid? These are questions that nobody ever really wants to answer but they sit in our heads. There has to be someone in your office that just doesn't seem to do much yet always gets the breaks. That is what this show went to fix. After some digging I found out the show is called "Does Someone Have to Go".

The show starts off by introducing the company that is going through the experiment, Velocity Merchant Services. VMS is a company that specializes in providing businesses with credit card readers and other business necessities. The office consists of seventy employees, but only a handful are focused on in the show. The company is headed by a husband and wife team and is staffed with family members, and a motley crue of employees. Present are the typical office tropes: the slacker, the @$$hole, the old timer, the IT guy, the underpaid hard worker, and the generally liked nice guy. The first item of "business" after the two main bosses leave is revealing how everyone feels about their coworkers. This is done via talking head type confessionals (think The Office...now I am sad). The rub of this situation is that, when the people were being interviewed, they didn't know their responses would be shared. This is a GREAT way to stir animosity within the work place. After everyone is informed of how everyone REALLY thinks, the bickering and cattiness begins. Accusations about work ethic are tossed around, hints at nepotism run rampant, it's complete chaos. They are then told that they must select three people that the company could get along without. So people's actual lives are put in the hands of vindictive, manipulative people. Perfect. The second order of "business" is the revealing of everyone's salaries. Yeah, this is a wonderful thing to do in an office environment. As if there isn't enough resentment circulating at the moment. This, obviously, creates even more tension and solidifies the three choices for some of the workers. At the end of the episode, everyone votes on who they feel should be let go. The top three selections go to: the Collections Officer that BARELY completes the minimal amount of work bestowed upon him, the Old Timer Salesman that is making the least in the office because he can never actually close a sale, and the mother of the owner of the company that serves as the redundant accountant to the already redundant accountant (she, along with two other firms, does the books for the company). When the episode ends, we see the owners of the business come back to the results and they are shocked. Furthermore, those that have been selected must put together a presentation detailing why they should stay in their position. This will all be covered in the second episode next week.

Wow. That's really all I can say, and it may not be for the reason you're thinking. Sure, this is a pretty vile thing to do to a company. This experiment will completely derail any morale that existed in the workplace. Nobody will trust each other, and the bosses will be despised. That is, if this whole thing is actually real. Everyone seems too nonchalant about what is occurring in their office. I know that if I found out that my job was on the line because of a jealous, self righteous imbecile felt that I was too good at what I did, I would be seeking legal council. I have a feeling that those involved have been informed about what is going on and are being compensated. As I stated above, VMS claims to employee seventy people yet this show focuses on less than a dozen. Where are the other workers? Perhaps they didn't want to participate, perhaps they were really bad actors, or perhaps they just weren't that interesting. Whatever the case may be, it feels a little staged (but reality TV is always REAL). Now, on the other hand, this raises a lot of valid workplace issues. The girl's mother that serves as an accountant makes over seventy thousand a year. She is in the office part time and she is doing a redundant job of an already redundant job. To put this into perspective, the average salary for a corporate accountant is around $64,000 a year. This woman makes seven thousand dollars more a year working part time than a full time accountant. That's absurd. The Old Timer salesman is draining the company of $25,000 a year without returning the investment via sales. He is essentially taking up space. Sure, we feel sad that he may be fired because he is old, but he isn't contributing so something has to give. The guy Collections officer doesn't do his work, plain and simple. Why keep these people on board? Perhaps you feel differently than me, perhaps you feel that Fox is way off base with this new concept. Let me know your thoughts.