I had never seen the CBS show Undercover Boss until this weekend. Honestly, I didn’t even mean to watch it. That type of thing just isn’t the brand of TV I make time for. But my DVR decided on its own to keep recording for another hour after 60 Minutes (which featured a great segment on Tucson gunman Jared Loughner that evening), and I noticed that this episode of Undercover Boss was featuring the CEO of BELFOR, one of the world’s biggest disaster restoration companies. So I watched, curious to see a major show profile a company connected to the risk management industry.

The premise of the series is pretty self-explanatory: the head honcho of a big company puts on a disguise to anonymously work for a few days alongside his front-line employees, and in the process, he learns that these salt-of-the-earth workers are the key to his company — a revelation that forces him or to rethink the jet-setting lifestyle of luxury. It’s basically like Goldie Hawn in Overboard but with more inspirational music and voiceover.

And that’s exactly what happened in the BELFOR episode.

Company CEO Sheldon Yellen slapped on a comical wig, donned some Coke bottle glasses and grew a terrible beard to go hang drywall, inspect moldy insulation and clean smoke damage. Then, due to his frustration at how bad he was at these tasks and how much he was touched by the sad-sack stories told by those he worked with, he cried. A lot. Like “five, maybe six, times in a 44-minute show” a lot.

Like I said, this type of television really isn’t my cup of tea, but even I thought some of it was heartening drama. At one point Yellen gets so emotional while talking to a woman with whom he had just inspected insulation in a crawl space that he becomes compelled to remove his wig to reveal his identity. She had been promoted to the position of “water technician” many, many months ago and was clearly really good at this job — but due to a companywide freeze on all pay increases that Yellen and his fiscal decision-makers in corporate had implemented to weather the financial crisis, she still hadn’t gotten her raise. She was just discussing this casually, talking about the difficulty of paying bills with some guy she thought was named “Tom” and mentioned off hand that she didn’t think anyone from corporate would know who she was if they tripped over her. Yellen broke down and hence the big reveal, with him assuring her that he — and the company — does care. Cue the piano strings.

At the end, he continued this theme by bringing back all the workers he spent time with and showering them with bonuses, raises and new opportunities at the company. It was all rags-to-riches, and because you know these are indeed real people whose lives will instantly improve due to a $15,000 check, it was definitely uplifting to watch.

At the outset of the program, I was wondering why an executive would go on Undercover Boss. It’s not so much this show in particular, I have just never understood why someone would want to be on a reality show at all. For reference, I’m the type of person who is still pretty upset with my boyhood hero Jerry Rice for debasing himself by going on Dancing With the Stars. I suppose I can understand a relatively anonymous CEO wanting some “fame” more so than Jerry Rice caring about such nonsense, but it still seems silly.

By the end, however, Yellen’s decision to do this was obviously very good branding for his company (depending on how viewers feel about a weeping CEO, I guess). And I imagine the higher profile for the company, particularly a firm in a relatively obscure industry like this, will help BELFOR draw new applicants. I mean, I was probably one of the few people watching who was familiar with the concept of disaster restoration, let alone heard of BELFOR, so the name recognition benefits gained through Undercover Boss had to exceed anything else the company could do from a marketing perspective. And since the emotional heartstrings gimmick even (somewhat) moved a crusty, skeptical cynic like myself, I imagine the company came off in a pretty good light to most viewers.

Here’s a clip from Yellen’s time on the job.

You can watch the whole episode over at CBS if you want.