Like most people, Terry Davis never thought he’d be a television celebrity.
On Sept. 6 at 9pm, the executive vice-president and chief operating officer of Home Hardware Stores Limited will make his television debut on Undercover Boss Canada on W Network.
The hugely successful show, now in its second Canadian season, features company bosses who go undercover to discover what it’s like to work on the shop floor. In the case of Davis it meant working an overnight shift at one of the company’s distribution centres and a paint factory, and regular hours at Home Hardware stores.
Undercover Boss is a co-production between W Network and Alliance Films.
“Each episode features an executive who is transformed into a frontline worker with a covert disguise and a convincing back story,” a network promo for the show states. “Working alongside their employees, each ‘boss’ embarks on an often emotional journey as they struggle to learn new skills and discover the effects their decisions have on others, the perception of the company, and who the unsung heroes of their workforce are.”
Davis, who together with his wife Anne, has made Fergus home since 1979, said Home Hardware was first approached by the production company last December to see whether they were willing to participate in an Undercover Boss episode. Having seen episodes based on U.S. companies, Davis was first hesitant to sign on. According to him, episodes aimed at the U.S. market have a tendency to be more sensational than their Canadian counterparts. After talking with the producer, the company decided to participate.
“He (the producer) said ‘if something wasn’t being done right wouldn’t you want to know?’” Davis recalled. “We decided yes.”
As the chief participant, Davis had to sign a non-disclosure agreement and take on any liability should “word get out,” about the show’s content and film schedule. That meant Davis had to keep the secret from everyone, including his wife.
“I had to take out 10 days out of my schedule and I couldn’t tell anybody,” he said.
The episode also meant a segment which included family members. When it was decided to film the family segment, Davis decided to recruit his mother Irene Davis and sister Lori Davis along with Anne under the guise they would be having a family portrait done. They wouldn’t find out the true reason they were gathered at the Davis home until just before shooting started.
“She didn’t know until the last minute,” Davis said of the secret he had to keep from his wife and other family members. “I couldn’t tell them until the producer whispered in my ear.”
Once they found out, they had to sign non-disclosure agreements to keep the episode under wraps.
Preparation for the filming also meant Davis trying on several disguises courtesy of a makeup artist who specializes in film disguises. Davis knew his disguise would have to work in a company where he knows many of the employees personally. Home Hardware hosts a market at its head office in St. Jacobs twice a year where all the dealers come.
“My wife thought it changed my appearance, it didn’t look like me,” Davis recalled of the disguises he tried out. “I was always in fear they would recognize me.”
Actual filming got underway on May 22 with Davis travelling to locations in Nova Scotia, Ontario and Alberta.
The producer wanted to shoot segments at a distribution centre in Wetaskiwin, Alberta and a company paint plant in Burford. The one location concerned Davis because earlier in the year he had visited the plant and handed out bonus cheques to employees. The decision was made to put him on the overnight assembly line to limit the possibility of being recognized. According to Davis, in the producer’s experience of shooting shows involving assembly line work usually resulted in something going wrong, a key ingredient among television viewers.
“They were dying to get me on the production line,” Davis said, declining to reveal what exactly went wrong during his stint until the episode airs on Thursday evening. “I didn’t do that well on the production line. They wanted something bad to happen and it did.”
“It was very good the first day of shooting,” he said of the shooting schedule and the end result. “I just knew at the end of that that this is going to be good television.”
The show also features rewards handed out to employees who Davis worked with undercover and who eventually get to meet him in person. It also gave Davis an opportunity to learn from employees about on-the-job concerns and ways to make work better and about their personal challenges.
He recalled a woman, Pat Ross, who worked in the garden centre at a store in Orillia. Home Hardware uses internal designers to set up stores such as garden centres. The woman immediately pointed out to Davis, who was portrayed as a former landscape business owner who had fallen on tough times and was looking for a new career path, that there was only one water faucet on the premises.
“There was only one faucet and it was at the front and I had to drag these hoses all over,” Davis said.
The experience means the design team will be made aware of possible shortfalls that should be avoided.
“One of the things she’s really interested in taking is landscaping design courses,” Davis said of a goal Ross has.
As a reward for her work, Home Hardware is picking up the cost of a landscaping design course for Ross. When she’s finished, the company also plans to host a garden party for her with celebrity gardener Mark Cullen. Unfortunately, according to Davis, the segment didn’t make it to the final cut.
“There’s so much you shoot that ends up on the cutting room floor,” he added.
From his experience at the paint factory, Davis said the company is introducing a scanning system that acts like a GPS to quickly locate products within the plant.
Another episode segment he recalls was meeting Larry Steele who heads up the plumbing department at a store in Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia which is one of the company’s bigger stores.
Davis describes Steele as a real people person.
“He’s a real showman,” he said of Steele.
Steele had worked at a different plumbing store before joining Home Hardware and was told, according to Davis, to “tone it down.”
At the Lower Sackville store no one placed restrictions on how Steele deals with customers.
“We’re drawn to characters in stores,” Davis said of what customers look for when choosing a place to shop. “Each of our stores is unique and you’ve got unique people in them. Customers have an affinity with them.”
The reward Steele received was to come to Toronto with his “drummer to plumber” band to record his music.
At the same store, Davis was concerned his identity might be revealed because he knew the store manager. Fortunately the disguise held up, even though the manager later acknowledged he was certain he knew who the person working in his store was.
“The owner came down and tried to say hi and I looked away because I knew him,” Davis said. “He said I looked fairly familiar.”
The company CEO said he learned a lot from the experience, some of which will be applied in some of the company’s 1,080 stores across Canada and that will benefit its 20,000 employees.
The distribution centre experience is one he relived, having started as a Home Hardward distribution centre worker 42 years ago.
The show will air several times after its Thursday evening premiere. Check W Network for times.
