Good morning everyone and welcome back to the Breakroom! All I can say is thank goodness we are at the weekend because I am in short supply of patience for people this week. For those of you work in positions where you role is to help solve problems for people, I know you have all had those people who simply ask too much and expect to be taken care of. Someone is terminated, suddenly they decide they need their final check now instead of waiting for the next scheduled run. Someone forgets to log their time in and they need a check to have it cut because they cannot be bothered to review their time. A leader cannot be bothered to run reports themselves so they assume you can do it for them. I feel people simply have a problem with accepting their own responsibility and choose to then loop in someone else to perform extra work just to appease them. I think my biggest request to people this week is to learn to take responsibility for your actions, and live with the consequences instead of making extra work for someone. We all make mistakes and by dealing with the consequences you certainly learn to not make them anymore.
Having vented about people not being able to accept the inconveniences that go along with their mistakes, let us dive right into today’s Breakdown!
The morning started off with Michael storming into the office, firing on cylinders, because there was a batch of wet cement out in the parking lot. Evidently he has waited his entirely life for this moment because he wants to be able to leave a lasting mark of himself in the cement. I do want to point out that you can actually buy cement, so it is as simple as laying down your own layer someplace and doing whatever you want in it. For those of you who are like Michael and perhaps didn’t realize you have the ability to set this up yourself. Back to the office, there are plenty of ideas being floated around to what Michael should do. Phyllis suggested writing something; she had a really good idea from someone her sister and her did when they were younger, but the memory escaped her. Then Andy suggested doing a picture because of that old adage that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” With Michael not interested in those ideas, Kelly suggested Michael do handprints like they do in Hollywood. And Jim, in true Jim-fashion, said he should stick his whole face in the cement, to which he enthusiastically said yes to. Cut to us all outside as Dwight wrapped Michael’s head in plastic wrap and Vaseline, and proceeded to push his face into the wet cement to leave an impression. Considering this was in the pathway outside this building we rent, I can assure you it is not going to be around for Michael’s grandkids to witness, as he was hoping. This will assuredly become a problem because people will be trip on it, plus the entire thing will pool water and will ultimately be replaced. So to conclude, do not deface wet cement in public places like this. Set it up in a private setting like your home, and go nuts because it will not infringe on others.
In many ways, today was otherwise just like any other. Angela and Andy, still dating, were doing a MadLib on their break together. Personally, I feel like they were choosing very boring words to fill in the story, but that is the fun of MadLibs in that you can do whatever you want. I remember these being huge for awhile, though I haven’t heard or seen them in practice for awhile. For those of you who do not know what they are, they are a game in which a short story (usually only a paragraph or two) has keywords missing and it is up to the players to choose what to put in. For example, the story might have a space and simply say “noun” or “verb” and you must select a word of that type, meaning the story as a whole can change every time. They can be fun, they get old after awhile but certain a means of passing the time.
Besides playing with Angela, Andy’s big project for the day was he was attempting to sell his old car (a Nissan Xterra) and was trying to do so in at the office building. Dwight ended up being pretty interested, although he began to criticize the car and talked Andy into dramatically reducing the price. Sounds like a good deal, right? Dwight proceeded to clean the car up and jacked up the price, even going to Ebay in an attempt to make a profit. This is referred to as flipping, where you buy an item and then proceed to fix it up and sell it at a higher price. People devote their entire lives to this and can make some pretty good money. The most common example is usually houses but it seems there are more and more people who will go to thrift stores and rummage sales to buy items like furniture, only to see fix them up and resell them. There was a time that there was a pretty good market on this, but over the years I believe we can all agree that so many people seem to partake in these hobbies that it really is not that special. I know I have seen posts online of people claiming that thrift stores in their area are routinely sold out of the good items because they get picked over so quickly. Similarly, another theme is for people to head to stores like HomeGoods, or even Walmart, to buy items that are at discounted prices, only to resell them on platforms like Amazon. The logic is you buy them at the discounted rate, and sell them at their regular rate and pocket the money. This is referred to as reselling because you are not updating the product in question, simply choosing to resell it. While flipping requires you to be creative and put your own style to it, reselling seems to require people doing a lot of work, and in the end you are just selling some random product you got on clearance. I know people have made some good money doing this, but this is another avenue where the market as simply become so saturated with others doing it, it gets pretty hard for anyone new to truly enter and walk away making money.
Pam had a pretty interesting day herself in that she forgot contact solution after staying at the house of “a friend” so she had to wear her backup glasses. This doesn’t sound like news, but she was subjected to comments all day about them. Michael flat outside said she was ugly and her words were just “noise coming out of an ugly scientist.” In contrast, Kevin was too into her glasses because he has a librarian fantasy and was hoping she could play along. That was the last straw for her and she decided to just go the rest of the afternoon with no glasses at all. Unlike myself, where I can still see to a point without glasses, Pam must be legally blind because she cannot see anything without them.
Jim was having an equally rough day because he received a formal warning today on his job performance. This wasn’t from Michael, who adores him, but rather our old buddy Ryan. He sat him down with Toby and talked about how he knows about the time wasted pulling pranks on Dwight, or spent flirting with Pam. According to Jim, however, he believes it was because he had actually criticized Dunder Mifflin Infinity to David Wallace a while back, stating it wasn’t on brand with our customer service emphasis. I’m inclined to see both sides because Jim does waste quite a bit of time at work, but I do know Ryan has really let his power go to his head and isn’t necessarily doing things for the right reasons.
You can say that a lot of people are in a bit of a slump, which certainly makes sense this time of year so people are looking for something to mix it up. Michael knows this, so he had scheduled a meeting today specifically to focus on how to “Energize” the office. The only true idea on the table was Andy’s idea of doing a new outgoing message with a little more zing and pepe. Truthfully, I felt this was pretty lame because shouldn’t the goal be that customers rarely get our message? This was when Michael tried to loop in Stanley so he could weigh in on providing an “urban rap” to the idea, but Stanley was most interested in his crossword puzzle. Michael proceeded to try to draw his attention and Stanley continued to rebuke him, until he yelled “Did I stutter?” The silence of Stanley telling off Michael was deafening, and this quickly unraveled the rest of the meeting and set the tone for the rest of Michael’s day.
Michael had no idea how to deal with this because no one had ever actually confronted him like this. Even Toby went to Michael to ask how he was going to discipline him for this insubordination? Michael tries to play it off like Stanley was joking but when he speaks with him he makes it quite clear that it was not a joke and firmly was telling Michael to back off. This prompts Michael to try to come up with any sort of solution to the matter. He spoke with Darryl downstairs to on how to deal with such confrontation, and he recommended tickling Stanley because that’s how they handled those issues on the street when they were in gang. He referred to this as “fluffy fingers” but Michael couldn’t bring himself to try these out.
Next, Michael roped in Dwight for some assistance on if someone else could deal with this. He was actually ready because he had an organization chart of the office to show the hierarchy and who could step in. Unfortunately, the only good option was for Michael to do it so that was of little help. Dwight did have an “emergency plan” in which all power is given to Dwight to unilaterally oversee every person, but Michael wasn’t willing to do this.
Michael ultimately settles on teaching Stanley a lesson by fake firing him, thus giving him the chance to see how good things are and that he should apologize. He lets everyone know this ahead of time, and then proceeds to “fire” him when he gets back from the bathroom. This goes about as well as you’d expect because Stanley loses it and begins threatening to file a huge lawsuit, which prompts Michael to reveal the truth. With Stanley still worked up over everything, Michael immediately orders everyone else to clear out of the office and they confronted one another. I don’t know exactly what happened, but it would seem they did come to some sort of understanding.
When dealing with an employee like this, it is important to not paly games like Michael was trying to do, but you do need to confront the issue. Just because an employee might not like the leader, doesn’t mean they can disrespect them like this and Michael absolutely should have disciplined him with some sort of warning or correction action. He was not let go so Stanley really should count himself lucky as he could have also been terminated just as easily.
And just like that, everyone is inevitably back to normal. All too often, most of our days of work seem just like this one, don’t they? Things happen that ultimately seem pretty inconsequential that doesn’t result in a lasting impact.
Has anyone here ever had to do deal with a difficult employee? What sort of tactics did you use when disciplining them?
With that, I hope you all get through your Friday in once piece, have a great weekend, and as always I will see you around the Breakroom!
