Undercover Boss Canada: TTC boss Karen Stintz goes undercover

TTC chair Karen Stintz is seen in a recent photo, at left, and in disguise during an episode of Undercover Boss Canada, at right.

SUPPLIED PHOTOS

Tess Kalinowski Transportation Reporter

2012/01/09
TTC chair Karen Stintz has a new starring role on TV after she donned a dark wig and disguise last summer for an episode of Undercover Boss Canada.
The TV show, already popular in Britain and the U.S., puts executives, masquerading as trainees, on the frontlines of their own businesses.
Stintz, the city councillor for Eglinton-Lawrence, said it was an eye-opener working in July at the TTC’s upholstery shop, cleaning buses, posing as a station janitor and staffing the transit system’s lost-and-found.
Stintz also rode in the driver’s booth of one of the new Toronto Rocket subway trains, although she never actually handled the controls.
Still, of her various assignments, “That was the best job for sure but it was also hard. You don’t appreciate how complicated it is,” she said. “On the simulator I couldn’t get one train to get into the station in the right spot.”
Loneliness is an issue for the subway operators, who work their shifts in isolation. Those with less seniority draw the worst hours too, she said — “all the things you don’t really think about when you’re trying to get on the train in the morning and you’re annoyed.”
Stintz was introduced to her TTC co-workers as Ruth Bear — her middle name and her mother’s maiden name. To explain the cameras, the TTC employees were told that Stintz/Bear was the subject of a documentary about a woman re-entering the work force.
Only one employee, Carmen Miller, who oversaw Stintz’s cleaning efforts, was suspicious after the TTC chair, tired from working a week of night shifts, accidentally introduced herself as Karen.
Cameras captured another employee rolling his eyes at Stintz’s rookie attempts in the upholstery shop.
“As we talk about the jobs to outsource there are efficiencies we can get, but when I worked with Sylvia cleaning the station — she has so much pride in that station. She’s the eyes and ears of that station,” Stintz reflected. “We need to build more accountability and more ownership in the TTC. Building a culture of accountability. Everybody I worked with were longtime TTC employees that did have a lot of pride, and were frustrated by their colleagues that don’t.”
Toronto Zoo CEO John Tracogna and executives from Pizza Pizza, 1-800-Got-Junk, Molson Coors Canada, Second Cup, Cineplex and FedEx Express also appear in the Canadian version of the show, according to a news release from Corus Entertainment.
Undercover Boss Canada begins airing on Feb. 2 at 9 p.m. The TTC episode is tentatively scheduled to air late next month on W Network.