I watched Undercover Boss last night and decided I couldn’t keep my big fat mouth shut any longer. In this episode, the COO of Massage Heights went to several locations to see how her company was doing, and one of those locations was Jacksonville. The tag line was that she was in a contest to see if she should be awarded money to start her own franchise, and how she performed each of the jobs in this business would determine if she won.
In Jacksonville, she had to do the job of an Esthetician, basically doing face scrubs and such. She watched the person work on one person and then she worked on another with basically no training.
Later in Texas (I believe), she got to watch a massage therapist do a massage and then had to participate in a couples massage. They told the people that she was a trainee.
First of all, there had to be some kick back to the customer to allow a ‘trainee’ to work on them, especially someone that had never done a facial or given a massage before, but also to allow the cameras in there. Frankly, if I went to that business and was told my session would be half price or free, I might consider letting someone that had never worked on a body before, but probably not, especially if I were in need of that service.
But more so than that, I am personally and professionally offended. I know I went through a lot of training before I was allowed to touch a person off the street. I know estheticians go through the same thing. Both professions are licensed as healthcare, at least here in Florida. Now, knowing that this show does a lot of filming and a lot of cutting, I can’t say what was done behind the scenes, but with just what they showed, they broke so many laws they could be shut down. Let’s see, they bring in an unlicensed, untrained therapist to work on someone that they are charging money for. (Like I said, there had to be some legal stuff in the background so they would not be liable for breaking those laws.)
I also feel that it makes the company look bad. Again, there had to be a lot of stuff in the background that was not shown, but it makes it look like the company COO was working on regular customers, and that I can not believe. That makes me think that this program is fake. It might make good entertainment, but the ‘undercover bosses’ go to places where they always find people with interesting stories. But enough on that.
According to the entertainment, Massage Heights would allow someone without licensing to come in and work on their clients. I can’t believe that either. At least I would hope they would not do that. I would never put my clients at risk by having someone work on them that I had not tested previously, someone that did not have health training. I would not risk my client’s health over that. I can’t imagine that they would do that either, yet the program makes it look that way. Back in school, they allowed people to come in off the street to get massage at a low rate as it was a student massage, and the students were not getting paid. But I do not think that any company with a reputation for caring about their clients would allow them to be worked on at full price by a ‘trainee’ or less.
One part did bother me though, and that was the part where the COO found out that the therapists did not like the company lotions, and were using something else. Now, according to what she said, part of what they wanted to do was extend the ‘experience’ by selling the same products to customers. If the staff is not using those products, they can not sell them to the customer. I also know that a lot of companies make most of their money on the products they sell, not the services they do. I don’t know how much Massage Heights does with this, so I can’t comment. But I can comment on the fact that the COO decided that her people would use the company products even though they do not like them. This is a typical move where a person that does not use the products decides what the actual therapists use. This is where a lot of companies fail. If the therapists do not like the lotions that the company uses, maybe the company should look into why, not just go with a bureaucratic ‘do what I say’.
What bothers me most about this particular program is that they do disservice to the massage industry and Massage Heights in particular. Don’t get me wrong, I do not like the massage-in-a-box franchises that charge little for their services and pay their staff very little, and Massage Heights could fit into this description as it seems the therapists shown are working at least one more job to make ends meet. But the program really showed this company in a bad light. It showed that the company is willing to let regular clients to be worked on by someone with very little training and no licensing.
It was fun watching the CEO of Waste Management learning how to pick up trash, a job that requires no specialized training. But it is another matter watching a company in the healthcare field (and yes, massage is healthcare) let someone work on a client that has not had the medical knowledge training as well as the physical training to work on a client. What’s next? Are they going to show a hospital CEO pretend they are in a contest and do open heart surgery as one of their tasks?
This program does such a disservice to the massage industry because it shows it in a bad light (like so many other programs on television). It makes people believe that anyone can learn to do massage (or be an esthetician) with an hour of training. It allows people to believe that there is no special training, no hundreds of hours of school, no license earned through the State Board of Health to do these jobs.
As a professional who has trained for months, taken tests, and had hundreds of hours of continuing education, as well as thousands of hours of experience, I am really offended by what this program showed. I think it really maligned Massage Heights, by making it look like a company that does not care about their clients or the law. It maligned the profession and made people think we do nothing but rub people. I have been fighting this impression for years. We don’t just rub people. We help people regain health after injuries or accidents, and maintain health in normal times. We calm and relax. We help center and focus. We don’t just rub people.
One has to remember that this program was cut as entertainment and not necessarily truth or fact. And while someof the things they showed were true, we are not seeing a lot of what happened behind the scenes. We are not seeing the whole picture. There is a lot in the background that is not being shown. So, the bottom line is that we have to take what they show us with a grain of salt, or maybe a lot of salt.
So while this program, this Undercover Boss, made a competitor look bad, I don’t rejoice in that as they really made all of us look bad.