Good morning and welcome back to the Breakroom! This week has certainly shaped up to be a pretty decent week so I really have nothing to complain about! No major fires at work, pretty quiet in terms of calls, and now starting a three day weekend! Just a good mental health day to use up my PTO, plus I’ve got to prepare food for that wedding party on Sunday. All-in-all, cannot complain! I also was lucky enough to stumble across a Staff of Power in my Dungeons&Dragons session, but I think that piece of news is more exciting to a smaller group of readers so some of you may find that impressive. With my personal recap complete, why don’t I pivot over to how things have been in the office.
Following the holiday party, Michael has been out on vacation. It seems he decided to still see through his reservations at Sandals in Jamaica, so the energy has been a bit calmer as of late. Our meetings have more in line with what the topic at hand should be, with fewer distractions since Jim has been leading the charge as our Number 2 in the office. Well, the other day Dwight decided to turn on a tape recorder to record the meeting and I think you can guess that this sort of took over the meeting. I guess Michael instructed Dwight with recording the meetings, and then he would transcribe them for him later. Naturally, Jim decided to use this piece to his advantage and pulled an impromptu Jim Prank on him. He declared that Dwight was stripping off his closes, was pressing a knife to Stanley’s throat, Karen chimed in that he has a tattoo on his chest of Animal from the Muppet Babies, and even Phyllis claimed that Jim Carrey just walked into the office. True to form, Andy took the joke a bit too far when detailed how he was cutting of Phyllis’s head with a chainsaw, and the joke fizzled from there. As I said, meetings have been more in line with the topic but with some room for deviation.
Fast forward to Michael officially returning from his vacation and it must have left an impression on him because I have seldom seen him as excited. He had all sort of souvenirs for people, as well as a steel drum he brought him for himself and he was quick to show the beads he had put into his hair. And within ten seconds Pam is quick to bring him down because of all sorts of messages he needs to follow up on, and he found out that Hannah had quit while he was gone. I don’t know the entire story but evidently she was pursuing legal action because the company was not making it easy on her as a working mother. I will admit that many businesses don’t make it easy but plenty of them do and having only known Hannah a short while, I sense she was more regretting her decision to come to Scranton and was using this as an out. She was never one of the most welcoming or understanding of individuals, as you may recall. Michael tries to get her to “mellow out” and he wants to start incorporating some of things that were commonplace in Jamaica like pina coladas every day at 3pm. For the record, staying at an all inclusive resort is vastly different than experiencing the true culture of a country. He is, in no way, actually describing how true Jamaicans live especially because, as Pam points out, it is a pretty impoverished country. With one final piece of disappointing news, we also have to perform our annual inventory. While Michael was intentionally trying to get out of having to do it, which is why he scheduled his vacation when he did, we were unable to complete it without him.
This is all a classic representation of coming back to work and the real-world after returning from vacation. The last couple of years when we vacationed in France, it was a difficult transition because you really do get swept up with all sorts of ideas of practices you want to bring back with you. I believe my last trip had me inspired to learn French baking as well as becoming an artist. But no aspect is worse than having to return to work, especially when you start to dread what sort of problems are waiting for you return. Flexjobs actually has a list of several tactics you can use in an attempt to making this transition easier. First, schedule a buffer day before going back to work or even a couple days if you can. This way you can catch up on sleep and just mentally settle back in to the normalcy before hitting the office. Tying into this, do not try to tackle everything at once. Take your time as you adjust back to life rather than being “inspired” to shake up your entire life, or office life, like bringing in pina coladas. Third, if you can sort of fly under the radar as you ease into work, try to do so! Try not to overwhelm yourself with too many projects, especially since going through emails will be a big priority. If you cannot, at least try to clear your morning so you can create this quiet period in the day. Finally, learn to set boundaries for yourself. Part of that euphoria and motivation is because you were able to focus on your personal life1. It is important for all of us to learn a healthy work-life balance, and especially to remember we need to take our vacation time. While many countries encourage their employees to take long vacations and simply stop focusing on work, it is too common in the United States that we rarely take off extended periods of time and many still find reasons to work while on vacation. Your office will still be there so trust that someone else can assist with whatever might come up and focus on yourself.
Michaels deserves credit for not giving up on his goal to bring Jamaica back with him, because he truly tries to make lemonade out of lemons. He tasks the Party Planning Committee to turn our inventory night into an Inventory Luau as motivation for the office. Angela is livid at this last minute request and is adamant that it could not possibly be done in time. Enter in Michael Scott because happens to be a bit of an expert on luaus, so here is a list of everything you need to put one on, and they are actually very simple. What is most curious, however, is if Michael understands that a luau is a Hawaiian tradition, and not one of Jamaican-descent.
Michael Scott’s Guide to Throwing a Luau
- Grass skirts
- Pineapple
- Poi
- Tiki Torches
- Suckling Pig
- Fire Dancers
As the PPC is working on tracking these requirements down, Michael is doing his best to pass on the spirit of Sandals to us so we can get excited. As with any person fresh from vacation, he has a series of photos to show everyone in the form of a slideshow. As a sidenote, one of the greatest things about social media is the ability to post your vacation photos online. This way your friends and colleagues can look at them at their leisure, or not at all because I’m realistic and know that not everyone will necessarily want to see your pictures from vacation. Save your physical pictures for your album, and do not subject your coworkers to pretending to want to devote ten minutes to you narrating every picture for them. But Michael does love to make us watch his slideshow and talk about what he was thinking during those moments, but we were in for a big surprise. It was Pam who noticed that in one of the pictures was Jan Levinson, Michael’s boss! He tried to explain this away because it was a German woman named Urkel-Gru but somehow we were able to see through this deception. Now, a normal person could have perhaps tried to explain it away as two friends went away for a vacation together when they were both feeling lonely. He could have chosen to hide these photos and not mention the trip again, but Michael is not your normal person because he couldn’t keep it to himself. If I am following the situation, he was trying to send a photo of him with a topless Jan to Packer but accidentally sent it to the warehouse downstairs, and this is ultimately forwarded to anyone and everyone within the company (and outside the company).
Within minutes the entire office now knows exactly what was happening, and emotions are mixed. Some of us thought it was not of our business, some were horrified, and others thought good for Michael (“Get that corporate booty,” as the warehouse said). Michael is in a panic, even enlisting Dwight to try to recapture the image or at least mitigate it around the office in fear of Jan finding out. During our inventory party, he isn’t even able to enjoy all that he helped create (which is fine since it is by no means a proper luau) although we did get some cocktails so cannot complain too much. We’d barely started, when suddenly Jan appears at the door having driven here from New York and takes Michael with him upstairs. She didn’t mention Jamaica at all, saying she was in Scottsdale, AZ visiting her sister. We later find out that she didn’t mention the photo and truth is, it seems she has no idea it was sent out. Not the big blowout some people were hoping for but at least Michael was able to shake things up a bit like he intended.
And that was the office Breakdown! Our theme for the day is vacations, I encourage you to use your vacation time and to never let it disappear. We take fewer vacation days than most of the rest of the world and we need to stop living for work and realize we need to focus on ourselves. But be prepared for that terrible transition back to work because if you are not careful, you will end up like Michael. And you know, if you get inspired to take up art or to incorporate new routines from the trip, do not give that up!
I hope you all have a great weekend, and as always I will see you around the Breakroom!
- Braccio Hering, B. (n.d.). Going Back to Work After Vacation: 5 Tips for Easing Back In. Flexjobs. Retrieved June 27, 2024, from https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/going-back-to-work-after-vacation-tips/ ↩︎
