Litigation Value: Probably neglible, seeing as no one seemed to be offended by Michael’s Irish jokes, and Michael himself looked slightly flattered by the long hug with Todd “PacMan” Packer and Meredith.
Who knew that St. Patrick’s Day was such an important holiday at Dunder Mifflin? This week on The Office, we saw our favorite regional paper (and now printer) supplier’s office and employees decked out in their green colors. As Michael put it, “it’s the closest the Irish will ever get to Christmas.” (Points for cultural awareness, Michael, as always.) But the gang almost didn’t make it to the bar for their green beer-soaked celebration, because new boss Jo had them all working late by suggesting that Michael (and everyone else, by extension) should leave work only if he is completely satisfied with the work he has done for the day. What’s a group of Irish-for-the-day salespeople and accountants to do?
My first thought was, Jo makes a bit of a good point. How many days should Michael really be satisfied with the work he does at Dunder Mifflin? Most of the time, Michael tends to prevent work from being done — not facilitate it. Employers do expect their employees to give 100% effort on the job, and Michael rarely delivers on that front. The success of his branch largely seems to be attributable to his staff’s talent for finding “little moments,” as Phyllis put it several seasons ago, in which to get their work done.
But as the Scranton employees watched their St. Patrick’s Day plans evaporating faster than spilled Guinness, I truly felt for them. (Maybe more so for Jim than for everyone else, I must admit. Dwight’s mind games — making Jim feel like baby Cecilia will grow up thinking the refrigerator is her father in the hopes that Jim will quit and give Dwight back his Megadesk — were just not cool. And taking advantage of Andy’s a cappella compulsion was beyond the pale.) This week at Dunder Mifflin Scranton, everyone had work-life balance on the brain.
These days, it seems that more and more employers are recognizing that work-life balance is important for many reasons. Keeping employees chained to their desks for unpredictable (but predictably long) hours — as Gabe described — is a recipe for burnout, and generally doesn’t help their productivity. As employers start to incorporate wellness and balance into the workday, with everything from conference-room yoga to paying for gym memberships to alternative work schedules and telecommuting options, they may be rewarded with lower burnout rates, less turnover, and a happier, more productive workforce. So yes, it’s important for employees to go home proud of the work they do each day. But it’s also important for them to hit their reset buttons so they can come into the office and give their all again tomorrow. Printers will eventually burn out if you run them all night, Jo, and so will people.
[hulu:http://www.hulu.com/embed/kod9cbUqyJv3Fnw49vrdfw]
Always love these write-ups. Thought I’d share something interesting- Cornell Law is using Andy Bernard as a marketing tool. Apparently, he is now a “notable alumna”-
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/03/11/cornell
Does anyone else think that Dwight is just getting worse and worse? More thoughtless and inconsiderate. Not that Jim is being any nicer to him, either.
Joe, Dwight’s move to realign Jim’s and Pam’s desks into his own “megadesk” while they were away was funny the first time he did it. When he did it twice in the same episode, well, it did seem a lot meaner the second time. Not very funny. Rather hateful.
Sonia, thanks for the tip! As a Cornell alum myself, it always cracks me up when Andy brags about the Big Red. It’s better than the typical not-Harvard cracks!
Joe and Tony, I completely agree – I have personally found Dwight to be overly nasty recently. He has his moments that are still amusing, such as when he “escorted” Jim and Pam to the hospital, but for the most part I have felt the character was taking the “war” with Jim too far. Jim is certainly reciprocating, but the characters’ active dislike of each other may be escalating to the point where Toby should become involved. At some point, one of Jim’s or Dwight’s pranks could go very, very wrong and someone could end up getting hurt – and Michael seems either disinclined or powerless to fix the situation. Given that we know they have extra desks available – they haven’t hired anyone to replace the departed Stamford employees – it seems to me that the first step should be moving either Dwight or Jim so that they aren’t breathing down each other’s neck’s all day. I love seeing the characters bicker but occasionally team up, but it seems there hasn’t been much of that recently. NBC Writers, are you listening??
Our monthly leadership development meeting was scheduled for Wednesday night – it’s been on the calendar for a year. I think I remained a step ahead when I rescheduled it… something tells me there was going to be a widespread case of the “green flu” that night.
When Jo had Darryl move his office upstairs for his productivity, Michael asked Darryl if Jo’s family “owes” Darryl’s family any favors–an obvious reference to slave reparations.
I’m wondering if there’s any potential litigation value there…
Matt, that’s a great point. One comment generally is not enough to create a hostile work environment for a racial harassment claim, but of course with Michael, we know there have been many more comments than that. Certainly Darryl could bring a racial harassment claim; so could Kelly, Oscar and Stanley, for other comments Michael has made over the life of the show. That raises another point as well – I didn’t actually agree with Jo’s decision to move Darryl upstairs – unless she put someone else in the warehouse supervisor position. I always thought Darryl was the reason the warehouse ran as safely and efficiently as it did, so why she would want to remove him from that supervision, I’m not sure…