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'Undercover' opens Forman Mills boss' eyes

Rick Forman was boiling over with anger and frustration. Impatient customers were backed up at the register at the Forman Mills store in Totowa, N.J. The credit card processor was crawling, price tags were falling off garments, price checks were impossible. Hangers had overflowed the behind-the-register boxes and no one was available to pick them up.

Rick Forman, founder, CEO, president  poses outside the Forman Mills store on Route 130 in Pennsauken. ( TOM GRALISH / Staff Photographer )
Rick Forman, founder, CEO, president poses outside the Forman Mills store on Route 130 in Pennsauken. ( TOM GRALISH / Staff Photographer )Read more

Rick Forman was boiling over with anger and frustration.

Impatient customers were backed up at the register at the Forman Mills store in Totowa, N.J. The credit card processor was crawling, price tags were falling off garments, price checks were impossible. Hangers had overflowed the behind-the-register boxes and no one was available to pick them up.

"I was ready to explode," Forman said. "I was ready to close the store down."

Most days, no one could stop him. After all, Forman, 54, is the boss, founder of the $275 million Pennsauken-based chain with 35 stores and 2,900 employees. So who's going to say no?

But not that day. For that day, he had gone undercover.

What happened next will be revealed at 8 p.m. Sunday, when Forman stars in CBS's popular series, Undercover Boss.

Forman, normally a crew-cut executive, had morphed into trainee Brad Bandini, a tough-talking leftover from the 1970s, with a hairstyle to match.

As it turned out, Forman, who started his business, didn't know how to do much. Just a few of his faux pas:

He thinks he cleaned the bathroom well, but the show's producer had a different take. "Rick kept touching something that was dirty and then touching his face," said Chris Carlson. "You don't realize," Forman rebutted, "cleaning the bathroom takes a lot of focus."

He couldn't manage the cash register and panicked, making up prices.

At the company's distribution center in Cinnaminson, he narrowly missed a camera man when he backed a forklift into a pole and had to be treated with ice. "He's careening through the warehouse!" Carlson said.

In Chicago, he had restroom duty and created chaos while trying to supervise the locked ladies room.

So terrible was he at the work that he was almost pathetically grateful for a compliment from Kurtiz Deal, who handled maintenance at Forman Mills' West Philadelphia store.

That's where, Forman said, "I think I broke my building. I think a mop went through a wall."

He said, "It made me realize what people are going through. They need the praise. Even though I'm the boss, when Kurtiz said you did that pretty good, that felt good.'"

There's a problem with being a CEO, and Forman nailed it: "The king walks around naked and nobody tells him."

So nobody told him about the restroom policy in Chicago, but that policy changed almost immediately. "It's a matter of respect," he said. "R-e-s-p-e-c-t. We have to figure out a way not to disrespect our customers. I don't care what kind of area it is."

And even though he had already planned to spend $3 million to $4 million to update the cash register system, it became a priority after that day in Totowa.

"It's antiquated," he said. ". . . We're in the caveman era. I don't understand how [customers] put up with us. If it were me, I'd sneak out the back door and never come back."

Most important, he said of his employees, "I realized that these are great people - even if they aren't so great. They have families. They are real. You take it for granted. They get up, take a shower, come to work."

"When I'm just another worker, I'm meeting them, face to face. You are actually talking to real people and you can empathize with their lives. It was good getting in the trenches. There are some great people that really care."

For Carlson, who has run the series since its start in 2010, Forman stands out. "He's a unique guy. A lot of people who do our shows are very careful with their words. Not Rick. Exactly how he was feeling, he let it out. He's immensely watchable."

Carlson and Forman don't think he was recognized. Crew members tell employees that they're filming a different reality show, and actors portray those in that "show."

Forman gained new appreciation for such employees as Liz Ortiz, a supervisor at the Cinnaminson distribution center whose record keeping helps stores stay stocked. "We're lucky to have Liz. It made me think, how can we prototype that?" A new training program is in the offing.

He also learned about hardship firsthand. Deal, for example, was homeless before getting work at the 48th and Market Street store. When he took Forman to a nearby shelter, the first family Forman met had lost its home in a fire. "That was emotional. . . . My God, I'm five minutes from these people and I never do anything about it."

Forman learned that a relative of Ortiz's had been murdered in Camden. "She's bringing up four kids and she has a beat-up car she's driving on Route 70 that's always breaking down," he said. "These are the things that wake you up."

TELEVISION

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