Good morning everyone and welcome back to the Breakroom! Yet again, I’m afraid this is shaping up to be one of those weeks where I just cannot get wait to get to the weekend. Work has certainly not been bad, just it is a week where there is far too much “how did you make that problem?” But aside from that, the workload has been mellow so I really shouldn’t be complaining too much. So what is new in my world otherwise? Well we got the new Dungeons and Dragons handbook, so I’m excited together with people to play that again. Agatha All Along just came out and while I haven’t watched it yet, I’m eager to so please no spoilers! And otherwise we are still settling into our new house, although we haven’t really touched any of our remaining boxes quite yet. But enough about that, you are here for the office Breakdown and boy did we have a big day!
So it all started the other day where Michael was having one of his mysterious medical situations. Basically, around 40 times a year Michael is suddenly very sick and unable to work but with no real symptoms. Each time Dwight is incredibly worried and spends a solid hour with him on WebMD. But I think we can all agree that each of us has spent a lot of accumulative time on WebMD trying to diagnosis ourselves and others. For those not familiar with the site, you can pinpoint parts of your body which are not well, choose symptoms, and it will try to offer you possible diagnoses. In all honesty, I’m sure most of the people who were using the site were not sick at all. This is interrupted when Pam tells Michael that he has a call from David Wallace at corporate, and he urges everyone out of his office for this mysterious call. Later that day, Michael announces that we are going to do a Beach Day! That’s right, the entire office is being closed down (except for Toby) and we get to go spend the day at the beach. Yes this might sound odd, but as soon as you call it a team building exercise then corporate cannot approve it fast enough.
After a nice bus ride, filled with group singing, we arrive at the beach and quickly move to stake out our spots on the beach. But Michael quickly decides to make it clear that we are not there to have fun but partake in a serious of group games. He first appoints leaders of teams who then choose from the remainder to be their teams. We have Team Voldemort led by Jim, who also has Karen and Kevin. Team Gryffindor is led by Dwight who recruited Creed and Ryan. We have the Blue Team with Stanley who is joined by Phyllis and Oscar. And, of course, Team USA with Andy at the helm and supported by Angela, Kelly, and Meredith. You will notice that Pam wasn’t included to join, and this is because he got to be tasked with diligent note taking. To help offer an explanation to this, Michael was actually invited to interview for a job with corporate. Michael is very confident in his abilities and assume he is getting the job, so he needs to figure out who to recommend for his job. And that is the purpose of the Beach Day, he is using it as a chance to put his top candidates through a series of trials so that they can prove themselves.
So what does Michael thing of his candidates? To him Jim is the cool, smart, good-looking guy like himself and would be a great role model. Con is that he can be pretty lazy; he will often spend only half an hour doing a job that takes Michael a whole day. We have Dwight who has the best sales record and loves the work more than anyone, but he is an idiot. We have Stanley in the mix because of all the important contributions black people have given society. And then Andy who is classy, went to Cornell, he trusts him; downside is he doesn’t really trust him. So those are the candidates, each got various scores from the days of the event; at point Jim had 10 points, Dwight got a gold star, and Stanley a thumbs up. Michael insisted Pam look for a conversion table but her notebook didn’t have one. If I had to grade them I’d say a gold star would be worth 30 points while a thumbs up is 20 points. Do you agree or do you have a better comparison?
So what is Michael basing his decision on? A big fan of the television show, Survivor, he has designed a serious of challenges, each more daunting than the last.
Egg and Spoon Race
A great manager has to be able to lead, so in this race the leader has to give instructions to one of their teammates to escort an egg in a spoon to the finish line. If that wasn’t hard enough, they are also blindfolded which is why they need the directions. At the end of this event, no one successfully completed the race (and quite a few didn’t take it seriously).
Hot Dog Eating Contest
A good manager must also be hungry and be fueled by that hunger in the workforce. Michael personally cooked over 800 hot dogs (it was actually Pam) so each person can beat the world record (the current record is 83 hot dogs by Joey Chestnut1). No one is enthused about this because there are no condiments and most people would rather have something like a turkey burger (Michael had only one made for himself). But once it was revealed that this would result in someone being made manager, they found their motivation. Andy actually walks away victorious in this event.
Sumo Wrestling
Next up, Michael brings out a serious of inflatable sumo suits that people will wrestle and force each other out of the sumo circle. Stanley certainly comes alive and goes crazy on Jim, scoring any easy win! But, in the end, it is Dwight who emerges victorious from the entire event. Oddly enough, it was shortly after this even concluded that Andy simply disappeared. I didn’t think he would just go home but I knew he was pretty upset about losing. And then I overheard Dwight and Angela talking about sabotage and how it was and ancient Dutch art. For the record, the word “sabotage” is actually French, coming from the word “saboter” which means “to wreck, bungle, or botch.”
Coal Walk
That is right, Michael commissioned someone to come out and set up as a coal walk, where we must face our fears and walk on a path of fire. No one is interested for even a moment, although we urge Michael to do it himself. He seems to think burning his foot on his Foreman Grill was enough and I will confirm, it is not the same thing at all. Michael cannot do but Dwight actually rises to the occasion and says he will stand out there until he is made manager. Ultimately, he collapses from pain and we have a whole problem of trying to get him out of there before he burns. So how exactly does this work? Well I have seen it mentioned in a television show and did find a study on it. So first, the theory is you move very fast so your foot does not last on the ember that long (Dwight shouldn’t have lingered) and the second piece is that embers do not store up enough heat to injure you as long as you move fast enough. So that is the physics reason, but now on to the study. The overall belief is that the firewalker can get so stimulated that they are fueled by adrenaline that this allows them to move through the fire without harm. When we often see these rituals conducted, there is a great deal of fanfare with music, dancing, and a crowd of people to work the firewalker into a state of frenzy2. Dwight had none of this so this was his second mistake in attempting to do the walk. In the end, this was not a great group to try to accomplish this.
“Bob Hope” Factor
Going into the lightning round and that is people need to prove that they can inspire the troops like Bob Hope (or Amanda Bynes) and Michael insists they get in front of everyone to motivate us. Jim starts but he reveals that he doesn’t think he should go for this job and is actually going to be interviewing for the corporate job, alongside Karen. With him out of the running, we have Dwight get up with his version of the Aristocrats joke. This joke has been around a long time, if you go to Youtube you can find it told by numerous comedians. The premise is this: a family is trying to book their routine with a talent scout so they beg for them let them audition. The family then proceeds to perform all sorts of unsettling acts, this is where the comedian really makes it their own joke but it can involve sexual acts, violence, murder, and gross bodily processes. At the end of this horrific explanation, the talent agent can but mutter “and what are you called?” To which the family excitedly replies, “The Aristocrats!” Dwight’s performance was not the greatest, so I’d recommend looking up a proper performance.
So while we are all busy listening to Dwight, it turns out that Pam decided to do the firewalking and was able to make it across. So then, empowered by this, she came down and really laid into everyone. She brought up that most of us didn’t go to her art show months ago despite the fact that she tries to show up for everyone else. And she zeroed in on Jim and how they used to be such close friends and they don’t even talk anymore and she misses him. She sort of petered off after this because her feet started to hurt but that was the overall situation. And that sort of brought the rest of the day to a big of a standstill.
And that, everyone, was what happened at the office! You know understand a bit about how firewalking is possible, it is a combination of physics as well as psychology. So I do not recommend trying it unless you can speed through as well as be properly psyched up. We also learned about how Michael judges the qualities a manager needs to have. If you were designing a series of events to test people for such a job, what might you choose? And what about yourself with Michael’s challenges, how well do you think you would have done? Tell us in the comments!
I hope you call can get through your Friday, and until next week I’ll see you around the Breakroom!
- (2024, September 3). Top dog Joey Chestnut beats his archrival and his own hot dog-eating world record. NPR. Retrieved September 19, 2024, from https://www.npr.org/2024/09/03/nx-s1-5098967/joey-chestnut-hot-dog-eating-world-record#:~:text=And%20Chestnut%20did.,at%20Coney%20Island%20in%202021. ↩︎
- Konvalinka, I., Xygalatas, D., Bulbulia, J., Schjoedt, U., Jegindø, E-M., Wallot, S., Van Orden, G. & Roepstorff, A. 2011. “Synchronized arousal between performers and related spectators in a fire-walking ritual”, ‘’Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108’’(20): 8514-8519 ↩︎
