Wonderful law. Behavior that we strongly disapprove of behind the scenes among television makers, we really like on the screens. We like to watch bosses on the verge of stress, who follow, correct, direct or reprimand their staff like a bloodhound. If they go crazy, we think that’s great. If the company collapses under their hands, that’s a laugh.
How else can I explain the continued ratings success of Mass is Cash (SBS6) where entrepreneur Peter Gillis does nothing but use foul language and clip his sons and employees? The man has numerous procedures for fraud or assault, but taking him off the air would be a loss for the channel. So he can stay.
There is also success for another, considerably more sympathetic entrepreneur, Oos Kesbeke. You might not expect 1, 2, 3 for a series about the boss of an Amsterdam pickle factory, but every Thursday the program reaches the most viewed top 3. The Gherkin King attracts between 400,00 and 500,000 viewers every week, which is not surprising for RTL5, and the postponed viewers of Videoland are on top of that.
Oos Kesbeke runs the Kesbeke family business. His grandfather Charles Kesbeke started brine and acid pickling in a cellar on Amsterdam’s Waterlooplein shortly after the Second World War. There was a gap in the market, because the acid depositors of the past were mainly Jews and they were no longer alive. Through father Camiel, it came into the hands of Oos, who is now 65 and intends to pass on the flourishing company to his sons Camiel and Silvian. In due course they will have to kick him out of the factory in Amsterdam-West, because letting go is not his strong suit.
Breakfast stools
Oos is quite on top of it. Literally, because he lives with his girlfriend Fara above the factory hall, and his employees know what time it is by the sliding of the breakfast stools above their heads. Half past 10. Oos makes his daily rounds past the machines where not only pickles are rolled off, but also kimchi, piccalilli, red cabbage, capers and pearl onions are made. Pickles. It sounds so beautifully old-fashioned. That nostalgic, that touch of the past is probably reason number 1 for the success of this program.
Reasons 2 to 100 are Oos’s temperament. Rarely do you see someone jump out of their tights in such a flowery manner. Also to his staff. Especially actually. “If I send him away for a piece of steel, he comes back with a box of screws.” Or it is “cough twice, sick for three days.” Now he also has special employees. Men with whom it is “difficult to play,” so to speak. Chef ‘fresh’ Daan gets everyone on their nerves, but Oos certainly does. The way he walks through the factory hall with his arms swinging in plastic boots. “30 to 40,000 steps per day.” That’s 25 kilometers (!).
Oos Kesbeke’s management skills sometimes leave a lot to be desired. What sense does it make to ask Daan, who is already over his head, 23 times in all keys how on earth he could have screwed up so much? But that’s the other side, he does take the man to the store to have him fitted with decent work shoes, with arch supports.
Of course there are setbacks, which Oos faces with infectious pessimism. The new packaging machine would require two weeks of training time. There were seven. It is a drama, a catastrophe. one bucket of misery and misery.
Hard-working Dutch people, independent entrepreneurs, family businesses where a tradition is honored despite the wind. We love it. And apparently you are allowed to be a bully from time to time.