YESCO boss goes undercover for TV show.

• Author: Christensen, Lisa
• Position: Around Utah

Salt Lake City -- When producers from CBS' Undercover Boss contacted YESCO's co-owner Jeff Young about appearing on the show, he jumped at the chance.

"We were absolutely honored that Undercover Boss would consider us, a Utah company, in the lineup. You think about how many great companies there are, and how many there are in the U.S.," he says, noting that The Larry H. Miller Group and Vivint have also appeared on the show in earlier seasons. "To be the third [Utah] company to have a chance to do this, we're just so honored and thrilled to do this."

Young appeared on the fifth episode of the seventh season of the popular television program.

For Young, the show brought three major opportunities: to showcase YESCO and Utah's economy, to examine company workings on the granular level in preparation for further expansion before YESCO's centennial in 2020, and to help individual employees. Producers from the show chose the employees who would show Young's undercover persona the ropes, with preference to those whose loyalty to the company was second only to the personal struggles they had to face.

To go undercover, Young grew a beard, donned glasses and dyed part of his hair to make an electric purple fauxhawk. For his first job encounter, a service and maintenance technician named Sal taught "Alex" to repair an LED signboard in Chicago. The job was particularly tough for Young, who has a fear of heights.

As they worked, Sal expressed frustration at a lack of training between the YESCO home office in Salt Lake City and the franchise location in Chicago. Those troubles were only compounded by the sometimes 20-hour workdays, especially for Sal, who has a genetic heart condition.

At the end of the show, after re-dying his hair to its customary brown, Young revealed his true identity to Sal and the other employees he interacted...