Good morning everyone and welcome back to the Breakroom. This is absolutely been one of those weeks that seems to drag on and the weekend cannot come soon enough, or is that just me? This has mostly been an uneventful week, although I’m looking forward to celebrating my brother graduating his college program this coming week. He has been working on it for a couple of years now and I know what it is like when it feels like it will never end.
So one thing I wanted to bring up was related to a conversation I had earlier. There was discussion about incorporating an AI tool into our processes. It sounds like there is some push from senior leadership that because we have access to these tools with the programs we use, departments should find ways of using them to improve productivity. This is where I chose to speak up because I am still very much on the side that is hesitant towards the use of AI. My problem with using AI in the business world for helping with audits and catching problems is that I question if it really makes us more productive. I would argue that we end up using the same amount of time training the AI and reviewing what the program has compiled or completed. A big part of this is because at the end of the day, AI will never be able to compete with a human as they do not have the capability to apply critical thinking and make proper decisions. And one of my leaders pointed out, what happens if the AI makes a sizeable mistake. Who should be held responsible? I was honest and said that the blame should be placed on the senior leader who is pushing this need for AI. I will say that I believe this belief that AI should be used everywhere is proof that the business world has very few leaders and instead everyone wants to jump on whatever is considered trendy. Working in the healthcare industry, I would argue it is very prevalent because no healthcare organization wants to be the first to do something and will only follow suit with whatever is the current trend in the industry. Furthermore, there is increasing evidence that while AI might make many tasks easier and could be good for a company’s bottom line, it is having negative impacts on our brain. By becoming reliant on AI being there for us, we begin to forget how to do certain tasks and areas of our brain can begin to atrophy. According to this article by Lars Daniel, we need to be cognizant with how we use and interact with AI. Perhaps one of the biggest examples of where we are not interacting accurately is where we hold this belief that if go to an AI tool with a question, they will always give us the right answer1. Instead it is not uncommon for AI to make information up because it is trying to fabricate an answer, or it begins to mesh information together into a confusing amalgamation of details. The AI industry has been given too much power too fast so it is impossible to put that genie back into the bottle, but it is not too late for us to be mindful with what AI should be used for. We talk about how to train AI so often, we forget to focus on training ourselves on how to properly use it. I would love to hear opinions from the rest of you on where you stand with our obsession with AI. How do you think businesses bringing AI into their organization can ensure it does develop AI-fueled brain rot?
I know you did not stop by today just to hear my opinion on AI in the business sphere, so let us get to the details of what happened at the office this week. The topic is, the surplus.
The day started off with what should have been a fairly simple event. Oscar brought in the final budget projections for the year since the fiscal year was about to end, and he wanted Michael to know what he found. Turns out we are set to have a budget surplus of $4,300 and Oscar wanted to make sure Michael was aware of it so he could spend it. Unfortunately, Michael is pretty lost and not quite sure on what the heck a surplus is, so Oscar comes up with a great analogy. Which reads as:
“Oscar: Your mommy and daddy give you ten dollars to open up a lemonade stand. So you go out and you buy cups and you buy lemons and you buy sugar. And now you find out that it only costs you nine dollars.
Michael: Ho-oh!
Oscar: So you have an extra dollar.
Michael: Yeah.
Oscar: So you can give that dollar back to mommy and daddy, but guess what? Next summer…
Michael: I’ll be six.
Oscar: And you ask them for money, they’re gonna give you nine dollars. ‘Cause that’s what they think it costs to run the stand. So what you want to do is spend that dollar on something now, so that your parents think it costs ten dollars to run the lemonade stand.
Michael: So the dollar’s a surplus. This is a surplus.”
This is a great example of offering a simplified explanation of a surplus which is when a company, government, or similar entity when the revenue exceeds your expenditures. This is related to the budget of a specific branch so basically it means that although we were budgeted out for a set amount for the year, we did not need to spend as much and we have this leftover amount. And if we chose to return it to the corporate office, then next year they will assume we can manage on a smaller budget. Obviously, this does not actually work in my opinion because you have to factor in for inflation so a budget always needs to go up. Additionally, just because we came in under this time around doesn’t mean it can happen every single year. Not to go back to my personal discussion up above but I feel it always goes back to senior leaders who only care about profits and productivity, but never question if their personal paycheck or budget could be trimmed back.
So now that Michael understands a surplus, what should be done about it? Well, Michael comes out and lets us all know that he was grateful to Oscar who suggested investing in a new copier for us to use in the office because the current one is terrible. I mean terrible because it rips paper, doesn’t work properly, and should be considered broken. I don’t even believe it is an issue about finding it in the budget because I believe this falls under the category of broken technology but here we are finding it in the budget.
This is where Pam interjects and insists that we are overdue for new chairs and the surplus should be used to replace the chairs in the office. She does point out she was meant to get Michael’s old chair before but he never actually got around to getting a new chair. Toby also interjected with suggesting we get the building air quality checked but no one agrees with him. Instead we see teams start to form, with Jim siding with Oscar in favor of the copier while Stanley joins Pam. Michael is now more confused than ever because he is unsure which side he should go with. And that leads to the rest of the day with us all trying to convince Michael that he should agree with our side.
And with that, the office essentially tries to become a masterclass of How to Win Friends and Influence People in using every possible technique we can. Jim and Oscar take him out to lunch at a fancy Italian restaurant, laughing at everything he says. Pam changes up her hair and makeup and gets pretty flirty with him, commenting on his clothes even. Kevin tries to bribe him with hot chocolate from the vending machine while Stanley and Kelly try to hold open every door. True to form, it only makes it harder on Michael in how to decide what to do. This is when he decides to look outside the office for help.
He first calls up Hank from security to come up and fully make the decision for the office. He mulls over the copier and the chairs, but it becomes pretty obvious he has no clue and is just up there killing time to get up from his desk. Michael then decides that he doesn’t think we need a copier or chairs and instead is just going to turn in the surplus. But Oscar catches on and we find out that Michael reached out to David Wallace and discovers that when a branch comes in under budget, the manager gets a bonus of 15% of the surplus. In this case Michael would be owed $645 which he immediately has lined up for something at Burlington Coat Factory. Obviously we are all pretty upset because we would much rather have some sort of contributions to the office rather than seeing Michael get a bonus. But he wasn’t going to budge and instead he decides that we need to make a unanimous decision of what to do with the surplus or else he gets the bonus.
I can see where he was going with this plan. We had to decide by the end of the work day what to do and because neither side was letting up, Michael assumed we would be stuck in a deadlock and he could get the bonus without it being his fault. It is a great idea, but I’m afraid Michael was not prepared for how quickly we can compromise. We ultimately were able to come to an agreement and settled on chairs for the office. It was done through popular vote as we all agreed that we didn’t want Michael to get it so might as well let the popular vote determine what we do with the money.
So we are getting new chairs so that is pretty exciting! So the real question, are you Team Chairs or Team Copier? My husband would have gone for chairs but personally I think I would have gone for the copier. My logic is the copier it absolute trash, and with a bad chair I could at least get a special cushion or something to make it more comfortable. That being said, I believe that allocating funds for a new copier would be easier and more feasible in the new year than trying to buy the entire office chairs, and I suspect that Oscar figured that out as well.
And that, everyone, is today’s Breakdown! Personally I cannot believe that Michael chose to go out of the office to get insight into the problem, but I suppose he was simply hoping an impartial person could make the decision for him. I suppose if I were him, I pry would have tried to use two methods of making the decision. I would do a pros-and-con list to go through my options to ascertain if one is inherently better than the other. Second, I would have brought in each person to get their personal opinion. Michael doesn’t make decisions by popular decision nearly as much as I would expect him to and I think it is because he doesn’t like to appease or disappoint a majority. He is absolutely an “all or nothing” type of person.
I hope you all have a great weekend, we are finally set to get some rain which is great because the green has set almost overnight and I believe some rain will help just that much more. Until next week, I’ll be sure to see you around the Breakroom.
- Daniel, L. (2025, February 14). Your Brain On AI: ‘Atrophied And Unprepared’. Forbes. Retrieved May 16, 2025, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/larsdaniel/2025/02/14/your-brain-on-ai-atrophied-and-unprepared-warns-microsoft-study/ ↩︎
