Good morning everyone and welcome back to the Breakroom! Officially the final day of February and we are certainly feeling an early spring. Snow and ice is melting, my yard is filling with water, and it even smells like spring. But I wonder if we are in for more snow; I have seen some small snow showers in the forecast but there are rumors of a major snowfall so perhaps we shouldn’t put away those shovels just yet!
In other news, Apple became one of the most recent major companies who was pushed to evaluate their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives with a vote from the shareholders. Similar to Costco, they voted overwhelming in favor of keeping their policies in tact to show that not every company is prepared to backdown from politicians in opposition to diversity1.
In a further attempt for citizens to show their solidarity in opposition to how conservative politicians are allowing the federal government to be ran, there are calls for an “economic blackout” for today, February 28, 2025 by the People’s Union. They are calling to do no purchases other than for anything considered essential (food, medicine, emergency supplies). And for those purchases, we should try to keep them to in cash and at small, local businesses. There are those who point out that a single day protest may do little in the long run, but the hope is that it will showcase the power that people have when they come together2. Is anyone here taking part in the boycott in this blackout? Feel free to comment and let us know if you are standing with the People’s Union and others.
With those updates out of the way, let us get into the big news that has happened at the office this week!
Now, no day would be complete without a classic “Jim Prank” and naturally, it was directed at Dwight. I cannot tell how ingenious this was, but Jim started intercepting Dwight’s phones calls because he synced up his headset to Dwight’s cell phone. Calls would come in, and Jim would answer them from his Bluetooth and took over the call. Dwight thought he had him when he simply forwarded his mobile to his desk phone. Unfortunately, Jim had thought ahead and forwarded his desk phone to his own meaning he had all of his calls coming to him. Personally I feel like it wasn’t super creative, and could actually be very unprofessional for Jim to be answering calls that were meant for Dwight. As far as pranks go this was not one of the best, Jim.
The real news of the day is that today is the last day of our Human Resources representative, Toby Flenderson. You will recall that weeks ago he announced he was going to be leaving and moving down to Costa Rica and it is all officially happening. Michael was so excited about the big event that he could barely sleep the night before, he had gotten to work early, and was even setting the alarm on his watch so he could truly celebrate the moment. It has been no secret that Michael loathed Toby, so we really should not be surprised that he is seeing today as a happy occasion.
As with every major, and minor, event we decided to bring in the Party Planning Committee (PPC) to arrange the festivities. So important was this day, that Michael made it a point to sit down with the team to ensure everything was top notch. Angela, head of the PPC, arranged for there to be a buttercream cake along with a slideshow of Toby, consisting of two slides taken seconds apart. This was unacceptable to Michael and really wanted us to up the wow factor. He first thought of doing a New Orleans funeral party, where the celebration actually goes into the streets with music and dancing. His next idea was building off of the concept of what sort of party would you do if the devil were to explode, and evil was erased from the world. Evidently “beach theme” was the best he could come up with. Angela, clearly annoyed, tried to explain there was simply no more money in the budget. This was all Michael needed to proceed to take off his shoe and pull out a wad of cash that he had put in there for safekeeping. Evidently his grandma normally sends him $50 each year for his birthday, and she has begun to do it nine or ten times each year as her memory starts to go. Michael feels he has the problem resolved since he is going to bankroll the remainder of the party, but Angela simply refuses the extra work, not to mention the foot money. I personally think that this shows Angela really isn’t as amazing in her role as she likes to think she is. What is Michael’s solution? He offers the job to Phyllis, and she accepts without a second thought.
And like that, Phyllis is officially in charge of Toby’s party. One of her first trials is attempting to track down an antigravity machine, which Michael insists he has seen in a movie before. I assumed everyone knew this was not a real machine but with how much time Phyllis spent on trying to track it down, I am pretty sure she thought it was true. Now putting together a big party like this the day of can be a lot of work, so Phyllis did try to extend an olive branch to Angela and hoped she would share her list of vendors she normally works with. True to form, Angela chose to shred her contacts. It was quite obvious she chose to be petty because Phyllis usurped her role as head of the Party Planning Committee. But she didn’t allow herself to be defeated, and she marched off back to the conference room to get back to work. Well, after knocking Angela’s things off of her desk out of spite. I don’t really know what all Phyllis was lining up, but she seemed very busy and I completely have faith in her. More than anything, the overwhelming desire of rubbing your success in someone else’s face is a great motivator. While I don’t know what she was planning, but I did overhear Jim talking to her at one point. He was offering to help sponsor fireworks for the party because he really wanted to give Toby a great farewell. That is certainly generous of him, and while he didn’t hate Toby like Michael did I didn’t think he liked him that much.
With Toby leaving, you might be wondering if someone would be replacing him, and you would be right. Perhaps Toby chose to not warn Michael about it ahead of time, but we were all in for a surprise at the arrival of Holly Flax. Brought in to replace him, she was allotted one day of training alongside Toby to prepare her for the job. I didn’t get too much time to talk to her but I’m pretty sure she was already part of Dunder Mifflin but has now come here. She should be familiar with the company so it is this particular office she is being trained in on. I still think she should have been given more than one day but that is certainly not my call to make on how the company should be ran. Despite this being her first day, everyone here in Scranton is very quick to make judgements about other people so it makes sense everyone already has their own opinion of her.
Michael was immediately off her, comparing her to Toby, and described the relationship between him and her as an epic struggle where he wants to make the office fun, she wants to make it lame, and he will ultimately defeat her. Cut to Holly agreeing with Michael at how boring Toby is and she implies that is not her style at all. With that, you can immediately tell that Michael is smitten with her to the point that you can tell he has a full on crush on her. Dwight, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have received this message. He was still going by Michael’s last opinion that they need to mess with her, so he was going to make it happen. He decided it was important to haze her because as he puts it, “Hazing is a fun way to show someone that they are not welcome or liked.” For the record, hazing is seriously not okay and I have zero respect for anyone who does it. Whether it is a new colleague at work or a college student trying to join a frat, hazing is seriously not fun and not fair to them so don’t do it. In this case, Dwight seems to not be alone because Meredith expressed some incredible dislike for Holly. They seemed to be hitting it off but for some reason, Meredith just abhors the poor woman. Creed was also annoyed with her too, but that was more to do with the fact she wanted to know what he did. Creed seems to think that Human Resources should mind their own business rather than wanting to know what he does for a job. Oddly enough, Holly and Kevin seemed to have it off because she was paying extra attention to him. Naturally, Kevin was all into it and was starting to get a little gross because he assumed they were going to hook up.
With this all going on, the other big news was actually something good going on in Pam’s life. Weeks ago she had applied to the Pratt School of Design, and she has officially been accepting into their graphic design program. Super exciting for her because she is taking a chance and trying to follow her dreams in a career in art. Unfortunately, it is a three month long program and it will be in New York City so she is going to have spend most of the next few months out of Scranton. While a college degree, or any sort of advancement in a specific field or skill, is no guarantee I truly believe it is important to follow your goals, aspirations, and dreams. Has my college degree led to a new job yet? No, but it certainly can. And I try to find other aspects that I can use what I have learned to put it to use, such as writing a blog dedicated to working in an office and other business aspects.
With that being said, you should consider the rest of this event to be continued. With so much going on with Toby’s last day, I am going to need to break this up between two parts. Will Phyllis throw an amazing party? Will we find out why Jim was so eager to have fireworks? Will Toby have any major moments at his last day? Tune in next week to find out. And until then, I’ll see you around the Breakroom.
- Nellis, S. (2025, February 26). Apple shareholders vote to keep its diversity policies. Reuters. Retrieved February 27, 2025, from https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-investors-reject-proposal-against-dei-policies-2025-02-25/ ↩︎
- Danziger, P. (2025, February 25). People’s Union USA Calls For National Boycott In A ‘Feb 28 Economic Blackout’. Forbes. Retrieved February 27, 2025, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2025/02/25/peoples-union-usa-calls-for-national-boycott-in-a-feb-28-economic-blackout/ ↩︎
