When I first started at Dunder Mifflin, I was kicking butt and taking names. I got twice as much work done as everyone else and I would challenge myself to see how much I could do every day. I was convinced I would get a raise within a few months…Then I got laid off.

A few months later, things picked up again and I was brought back in –with a smaller hourly rate than I had started with. At this point, I needed the work, but I was certainly too frustrated to work hard any more. I cut my productivity in half. As I did the job more and more though, I kept getting faster at it, so I made sure I only completed one assignment per hour. For the other 40 minutes of every hour, I started this blog, played games on FaceBook and wrote short stories. Life was good.

Even though 2/3 of my time was spent slacking off, I started getting compliments on my work, which was the exact same quality as it was before I was laid off. Apparently Michael Scott and my other boss are of the opinion that if you take more time on something, it must be better.

Fast forward to Jan leaving and I decide that I need to get out of this place before I kill myself. I approach Michael with the full intent to quit and start of by saying, “I know you don’t let people work from home…” Before I finish my sentence, he cuts me off and says, “no, I’ve been reconsidering that. I know you’re a hard worker and we’re going to move into a smaller officer, so I was going to ask you if you want to work from home.”

Of course I said yes so I can now work on other freelance work while pretending to do my job without having to hide my screen every time someone walks by.  Just goes to show that in a real Office, hard work only hurts you.

I’m not sure if crazy hijinks will continue to occur now that I’m out of the office, but I’m sure to let you all know if they do.

Image courtesy of Legozilla’s wonderful Flickr stream.

Kevin is our office strange duck. Big, lumpy, mostly harmless yet off-putting. There is simply very little about this socially awkward man that would make you want to befriend him and yet you feel a little bad for feeling that way. Until you find yourself in the men’s room, standing at the urinal with Kevin standing behind you.

For reasons I don’t begin to know, Kevin can’t/won’t use the toilets in the closed stalls when doing Number One. This creates an awkward situation where the person who got to the urinal first, say, Jim, is left with the uncomfortable but unmistakable presence of Kevin standing directly behind him as Jim tries to do his business in an otherwise empty lavatory. As though this wasn’t enough, Kevin will then try to hurry Jim along by grunting, mumbling, shifting his feet, jingling the change in his pocket, etc… If Jim was in any way pee-shy (sometimes he is), it pretty well guarantees that an uncomfortable situation will become unbearable.

Eventually Kevin just leaves without using the facility at all.

Weird.

Image by mulmatsherm [Flickr].

This all seems like it should be common sense, but it is, apparently, not.

Image courtesy of Vagamundos [Flickr].

Michael decided to hold a last-minute lunchtime meeting, complete with an always-too-long PowerPoint. In a rare moment of thoughtfulness, recognizing that the meeting ran over the lunch hour, he ordered in deli sandwiches from the local Italian joint down the street.

The sandwiches largely consisted of pork luncheon meats, a problem for the two Kosher-keeping Jews, one observant Muslim and three vegetarians in the group of about 20.

Because he wanted to have a discussion after the PowerPoint but also wanted people to focus on the PowerPoint, he forbade the attendees from eating until after the presentation. Except him. Because his sandwich was hot veal. And as he went to great lengths to explain, he did not want to have to deal with a lukewarm, soggy bun. So everyone got to watch as he masticated a very yummy smelling sandwich as we waited (and waited and waited) for our food.

Except the Jews, Muslim and vegetarians. They waited longer.

Image via lrangerich [Flickr].

Michael: We’re getting KFC for lunch today. Angela, you eat chicken right?

Angela: I’m a vegetarian.

Michael: I know, that’s why I was thinking chicken would be good.

Angela: That means I don’t eat meat.

Michael (flustered): Oh…well, you still eat corn and mashed potatoes right? They’re organic. (not joking)

Angela: Since when does KFC offer anything organic?

Michael: I was joking. (He wasn’t)

Image by red5standingby [Flickr]

It shouldn’t be surprising then, that Michael blamed the employee who has been here longer than anyone else for a mistake that was not only entirely the client’s fault, but also happened when she wasn’t even here. After three years of dealing with a boss who considered moving the company to Tijuana until he decided it was too dirty, she finally was fed up with his insanity and quit.

After three years of dealing with Michael, Jan was (not surprisingly) pretty much the only person in the office who could kind of keep his crazy in check. Unfortunately, she’s gone now and the company’s prospect of one day becoming something other than a living hell have dropped dramatically.

Image Via funnypancake [Flickr]

Skip ahead to our moving into a new office, where they put me behind a table (not a desk), where a giant fluorescent light shoots straight into my eyes all day, letting me know that, apparently, fluorescent lights help trigger more migraines. I ask if I can just turn off the two lights directly over my head, Michael says “no, then someone will trip and fall and sue me.” (Despite the massive amount of light from the windows and other lights).

I tell Michael that research has confirmed fluorescent lights make migraines worse because they have constant flickering action, which other lights don’t have, and, which is highly irritating to the heightened nervous system of a migraine sufferer. He says, “how weird, that’s interesting.”

Jan (who in this case is his inferior, but still my superior) tries to talk reason in him and asks if I can be moved to another desk (yes, an actual desk this time) that has abundant natural light and at least a little less fluorescent lighting. Michael says, “no, I’m trying to get everyone out of that area.”

A month passes and suddenly everyone decides to move and Michael allows it. I mention how much I’ve been vying to move into said desk because it won’t irritate my migraines as much. Michael says, “why didn’t you ask to move there before.” I pull my hair our and point out that Jan asked, “well you should have asked me yourself,” says Michael. I let it go.

The one fluorescent light at my new desk still irritates me, but Michael’s rule for our moving desks was we can never change anything or complain about our desks ever again (no, I’m not exaggerating).  To deal with the new light, I put up a bright pink parasol, which Michael talks crap about as though I just want to adorn my cubicle with umbrellas for no reason.

After all this, someone forgot one of the light banks yesterday. It affected the light right over my desk and one light behind the girl next to me. That’s it. Because we’re next to the window, no one even noticed the light was off. Today, it’s back on. I mention this to Michael, ask to have it off again, and he explains that someone will trip and fall and sue him.

I start wondering how bad my migraines have to be before I can sue for disability discrimination.

Thank you drobertsc for the image.

A colleague of mine has an allergy to tree nuts, and accidentally bit in to one hidden in a supposedly nut-free muffin. Upon reporting this to Michael, he turned to me in annoyance and replied “Oh, please don’t do this to me right now”! – Because when someone in the office has a life threatening issues, all our attention and concern should be directed at whether Michael can handle the situation; it’s all always about him after all!

WTF!

Later in the series, she reports:

In an attempt to determine if a particular work printer was compatible with Michael’s computer at home, I inquired if it operated on Vista or XP, to which Michael replied “Oh, neither, it uses Microsoft Word”. No, I was not able to keep a straight face.

I had to call his 9 year old daughter to find out.

My boss is Michael Scott, and I’m living in “The Office”!

Image Via chotda [Flickr]

Last Sunday I woke up with a sore throat, runny nose and too little energy to get out of bed to brush my teeth in the morning. I soon started coughing as though I was suffering from tuberculous and then I knew… I had the dreaded H1N1. Fortunately, I don’t live based on the information on Fox News, so I new that like all flus, the best thing to do was to stay home, drink lots of fluids, stay warm and relax while my body took care of the healing process.

Monday morning rolled around though and I had to call work. By this point, I hardly had any voice left after coughing non-stop for the last 24 hours, so I scratch out that I can’t come in because I believe I have the swine flu. The office manager (aka glorified receptionist) pauses for a second to collect her bitchiness, “you think you have the swine flu or you actually do?” “Well, I haven’t been to a doctor, but I have all the symptoms of the swine flu.” ::Pause, then a huff:: “Fine. I’ll tell Michael you’ll be out.”

Day two comes around and thanks to the miracle of Nyquill, my voice is slightly more audible, but still horrendously scratchy. I call my work again, because they won’t let you call in for more than one day at a time. This time no one answers the phone, so I leave a message saying I am still sick and, thus, will not be in. Fast forward two hours to when I actually wake up and check my voice message to find a lovely snarky message telling me that since this is my second day out of the office, I’ll need a doctor’s note if I hope to return. So even though I know I have the swine flu and I know the doctor cannot do anything for me, I need to spend money (which is in short supply since I’ll probably have to spend the whole week out of work due to sickness) to see the doctor to get a peice of paper saying, “this employee is not full of shit.”

The next day, I go to the doctor, she tells me I do have swine flu and that I can’t come back to work until Monday. I call my work and tell them this, but this still isn’t good enough. I have to fax or email it so they can have a copy immediately, never mind the fact that I’m so sick I had to have my senior citizen dad drive me to the doctor because I can’t drive since I get dizzy every time I stand up for more than two minutes at a time. No, I need to do more work to ensure they can be sure I’m not full of shit RIGHT NOW.

So I email them the note and return to work on Monday, only to discover they still hired another person in my position just in case. Of course, they hate him and now they intend to fire him shortly, but it doesn’t exactly make me brim over with love for the company.

The awkward sexual harassment I could handle. The cheapskate pizza shit was pathetic but harmless. This is too much though. God I need a new job.

Image via Ben Chau [Flickr]