Undercover Boss: Sheldon Yellen, CEO of BELFOR

Sheldon Yellen, CEO of BELFOR, the world’s largest disaster restoration company, goes undercover posing as Tom Kelly and experiences frustration and anger at his shortcomings — particularly his attempt at struggling to hang drywall. Anyone who’s done it knows the awful difficulty of trying to hold that drywall up with your head and your shoulders, while attempting to drive enough nails in it to secure it so you can finish the nailing without bearing that load of drywall. Your shoulders ache, the sweat starts dripping into your eyes and burning them, your hand cramps up — Yellen was furious! “There’s gotta be another way. This is stupid already!” Later, he admits: “Hanging drywall is much harder than I ever imagined.” His trainer, Drew, tells him “Don’t let it get to you,” but later admits to the camera that “Tom’s” performance was “sub-par”. This day in the life of Sheldon Yellen was one of the worst he’d ever experienced –he had failed at every single task he was given — and he was near tears when he admitted later “I’m not used to failing” and “I’m probably just not as good as I’ve been told by everybody else in my business life.”

Sheldon Yellen as Tom Kelly

His undercover cover story is that he is competing with other candidates for a BELFOR job. As he packs for his journey, we briefly see a glimpse of his clothes closet– full of Gucci garments and accessories, from which he extracts items like work boots and jeans, as well as the wig which is part of his camouflage.

As a newbie on the job, he is given the tasks that usually fall to a newbie — jobs that don’t call for much expertise — jobs that nobody else really wants to do. Like packing up belongings to be removed for storage while disaster recovery is taking place [he almost crushes some items], or collecting a long-dead animal that was discovered behind the drywall removed at a water-damaged home. Power tools present another challenge to be overcome — the darn nails just won’t stay straight long enough for the drill to drive them in!

As always in these episodes, the unsung heroes of a company share their sometimes brave and painful private lives — like Brenda, unschooled and unable to pass the Watertech exams because she couldn’t read the instructions, although she knows the job and how to do it. Her life-embracing warmth and customer interaction does not show that she was once homeless as a child and for awhile lived in a boxcar. Then there is Jen, who can’t make all her bill payments and who was promoted a year ago to be a Watertech, but never given a pay raise, which she desperately could use.

What is the point behind these undercover shows? Is it to be amused at bumbling attempts by a CEO who portrays incompetence at even entry-level jobs? I don’t think so. It is because it allows us a peek into one small part of what makes a company great and at what helps create entrepreneurs — a willingness to expose oneself to the possibility of failure and then to step right over that possibility and move forward toward success.

As is usual in these episodes, upon the CEO’s return to the company’s headquarters, several – or even many – positive company actions take place at the direction of a CEO who has been given new insight about his company’s practices and the dedication of many of its key employees . Yellen is one of the most generous CEOs Undercover Boss has covered.

Sheldon Kellen, CEO, BELFOR

We can do some things wrong for the right reasons
At BELFOR, Yellen had made a conscious decision to freeze wages in order to refrain from layoffs, and to retain all of its employees. Who can argue with that? Yet, because of that decision, there were employees who’d received promotions and expanded duties without any additional compensation. They were hurting financially, and struggling to pay their bills.

As Yellen listened to their dilemmas, he was so touched that at one point he revealed his true identity to Jen, the employee who had been promoted without a pay raise, and who wondered if anyone in “corporate” knew she existed. Moved by her expression of those thoughts, Yellen pulled off his wig and glasses, revealing his own “corporate” identity to reassure her that they did indeed care. Near the end of the episode, Yellen and BELFOR deliver on this promise with a host of generous bestowals of financial compensation and bestowals for the employees shown.

Take the time to watch this episode online here: Undercover Boss

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