Good morning everyone and welcome back to the Breakroom! I hope you have all had a great week because around here it really feels like a rollercoaster. We have been busy looking at houses, officially above twenty and still trying to find the right one in this high-priced market. It also seems to be a week where everyone still has holiday brains because I can’t tell you how many people I’ve spoken to with problems that seriously make me wonder how they can function as a person, let alone be allowed to leave their house each day. But, I think we all have those weeks where we would rather bang our head against a wall. It has thankfully been incredibly warm and sunny like a properly summer, although we are officially less than two weeks away from August so autumn will be here before we know it, I’m afraid. But August and September will bring plenty of fun events with Teeb Con in August here in Duluth, along with the Duluth Superior Pride Festival over Labor Day weekend. And then the Minnesota Renaissance Festival down in Shakopee over the next couple of months is a must attend! Now that I’ve vented, brought myself down, and brought myself back up again why don’t we jump into what has happened at the office!
For starters, Michael was busy earlier this week with a huge project. Not work-related, of course, but it was because of a near-death experience he had. He had shocked himself and it made him realize that he could die at any moment, and he was worried that he would not be there for his son (who presently only exists in his mind). He enlisted Dwight to assist him making tapes for his future son, most likely because he saw this done in some sort of movie or television show. The premise is simple, you film educational pieces so that if you should pass away before you can teach it to them, they can simply watch the video. I didn’t catch all of them but Michael did cover the most important ones such as how to jumpstart a car (which he didn’t do right) and how to take off a women’s bra (grab the clasp and twist until something breaks). I cannot guarantee Michael Jr. will walk away having learned a whole lot, but I’m sure he will enjoy Michael and Dwight’s bickering.
Now for the real news coming up, we are officially only a week away from the wedding of our very own Phyllis Lapin! He was so excited to celebrate the union between her and Bob Vance (of Vance Refrigeration) that he has arranged for wedding showers be thrown for them today. To initiate the festivities, he announces that he is instituting “prima nocta.” For those who have seen Braveheart, I have not but my husband has been trying to for years, this is when the king proclaims his right to deflower a bride on their wedding night. In reality, there is not a lot of evidence of this being as widespread as they claim. I had learned from listening to the podcast, Office Ladies, that Angela Kinsey found that it was created as fake history where countries would tear down other countries (such as the French claiming the English imposed this during the Dark Ages) to make them look barbaric. Thank you Jenna and Angela for looking this up because I think it’s pretty cool that the majority of this occurrence in history has simply been fabricated and was not nearly as prevalent as history has made us believe. Sort of like how many of us are still waiting to come across that random patch of quicksand that popular culture said would be so prevalent.1 If you’re interested in their entire episode, feel free to listen here. To be clear, Michael evidently has a very difference understanding of what this was so he was not trying to sleep with Phyllis. He backpedaled really fast, I do wish he would have mentioned what he had thought it was.
We were all pretty excited for the parties since it gave a nice break to the day from 2:30 to 3:45 since that was all that Bob had available. And they most likely would have been nice if it wasn’t for the fact that Todd Packer had to show up and ruin everything. It seems he put it into Michael’s head that the men’s shower needed a stripper to make it more exciting. And as long as he gets one for the women’s shower, then it couldn’t be considered sexual harassment since it’d be separate but equal (that is not what that means). What Todd is referring to are common with bachelor and bachelorette parties, but these were intended to be tasteful showers which are very different. But because Michael thought that this was expected, he decided to move forward with bring some naughty fun to the parties and tasked Jim and Dwight with hiring the strippers. Dwight was able to hire a dancer named Elizabeth, while Jim decided to instead contact the Scholastic Speakers of Pennsylvania, and hire Benjamin Franklin.
And just like that, our parties which are very inappropriate for the work day are officially underway. The ladies are in the office’s conference room with dainty finger sandwiches, champagne, and cake. I feel we had a nicer spread at my friends recent wedding shower but I’m not trying to say that I should be in charge of the Party Planning Committee (or maybe I should be). And in comes our former Founding Father (he was not actually president) to recall tales of his life for the ladies. It was pretty obvious they were all disappointed when they realized they didn’t actually get to have a stripper, although Michael didn’t seem to catch on. Right up until the end of the day he was convinced he was a Benjamin Franklin stripper because evidently he assumed women were into that (I don’t think many of them are). They do end up having a good time though, they had fun teasing him with naughty questions and even he got into the swing of things and did things like tying a cherry stem into a knot with this tongue. Perhaps the only thing funnier than Michael thinking he was a stripper is that Jim tried to convince Dwight that he was the real Ben Franklin and was almost positive that he wasn’t. For this wondering, it is possible to buy a Ben Franklin costume in case you want to do a similar party for someone.
Down in the warehouse we are enjoying steak (made with Michael’s George Foreman Grill) along with attempting to enjoy a game a poker when he brings in Elizabeth. She certainly is professional and tries to get the party going when it is pretty obvious that no one is really interested in a dance from her. Michael takes the bullet and accepts the first lap dance but he has a weird reaction and sort of freaks out and then calls the entire thing off.
It seems in the middle of the dance he started to feel guilty that he was having a girl dance up on him and was worried about what Jan would think, so he actually tries to get some advice from our visitors. Ben Franklin tells him to “not bother the womenfolk” and Michael sort of realized he wasn’t all that great. Sorry to disappoint a lot of you who might not realize this, but many of our Founding Fathers were sexist, philanderers, and had slaves so they were not necessarily paragons of virtue. Elizabeth (aka. Stripper) actually gave him so pretty good advice in the form of: “Secret secrets, are no fun. Secret secrets, hurt someone.” This actually convinces him to go and be honest with Jan about what happened (she was more upset about arranging these parties at work, which I feel is the bigger deal). For the record, this quote is actually part of the song “No Secrets” from the band No Secrets so if you were a fan of that quote, check them out!
And that brought us to the end of the work day! Oddly enough, this was a relatively tame day in that things did not spiral out of control too much. So what did we learn? Perhaps do not arrange for strippers to attend a party at work, and to also recognize the difference between a wedding shower and a bachelor/bachelorette party. And perhaps if you need advice, maybe consider going to a stripper instead of one of our Founding Fathers. Remember that next week will be Bob and Phyllis’s wedding day so I hope you don’t try and miss it. And in the meantime look up Breakroom Breakdown on Facebook and Instagram, not to mention catch up on our past posts if you haven’t done so. Please follow us, comment, or shoot us ideas on future topics.
And as always, I’ll see you around the Breakroom!
- Fischer, J. and Kinsey, A. (Host). (2020, September 2). Ben Franklin (No. 43) [Audio podcast episode]. In Office Ladies. Audacy. https://officeladies.com/episodes/2020/09/02/episode-43-ben-franklin ↩︎
