The Office: Season 5, Episode 11 “Moroccan Christmas”

Good morning everyone and welcome back to the Breakroom! I am using up all the strength I have to be present today to ensure you get a proper Breakdown. Unfortunately, after a week of my husband being sick I have officially gotten the bug myself. Primarily it is weakness/exhaustion and my throat is so sore I don’t want to speak or swallow. Needless to say, it is not very fun and my sympathies to anyone else currently sick, especially heading into a holiday weekend. I was originally hoping to do some sort of barbecue get together but I’m leaning towards just getting rest and a movie marathon.

So I can get back to trying to rest, let us get down to the Breakdown this week!

You’re in for a festive treat this is the day of Dunder Mifflin’s Christmas Party! Naturally, such an event would be incomplete without one of Jim’s classic jokes. To really mess with Dwight, Jim decided to wrap his desk and all of his desk items in wrapping paper. He was able to get this done quickly because he is a black belt in gift wrapping, which Dwight shuts down as impossible because they do not give out black belts for things that are stupid. For the record, formal black belts are really only given out in martial arts although essentially the phrase would mean you are an expert at what you do. The closest example is Six Sigma which is a certification for various business leaders focusing on quality improvement. There are different levels of certification, each named after one of the belts seen in martial arts. I have long been critical of Six Sigma given that these certifications can get very expensive, not to mention very time intensive in comparison to others. And there has been criticisms that Six Sigma tends to stifle creativity or freedom to use concepts outside of the program. It is also much more focused on short term achievements rather than long term goals, and tends to breed the concept that leaders know what is best an their staff should simply follow suit. If I ever meet someone who lets me know they are a Six Sigma black belt, I would be sorely tempted to not respond with Dwight’s “They don’t give out black belts for things that are stupid.”

I would certainly give Jim’s prank a gold star over a black belt as while I find many of them ridiculous and mean, this particular one had creativity. As Dwight sat down at his desk to begin unwrapping it all, the entire mass collapsed into a heap. Turns out, Jim actually created a fake desk and chair from chicken wire that would fall apart as soon as Dwight sat down.

A Jim prank was about the most work-related thing we had going today because the majority of the shift really was dedicated to our Christmas party. With Phyllis the head of the Party Planning Committee (PPC) this was her first chance to host the holiday, and she went out all out. She went with “Night in Morocco” theme and completely transformed our office into a Moroccan Christmas. We have talked about doing Christmas parties before and Phyllis has really set the bar because rather than just going with a theme of Christmas, she has set up an entire other layer with Morocco. So what sort of details did Phyllis pay attention to?

Themed Decor
All around the office Phyllis arranged for Moroccan decor to be used; I am seriously wondering how much she spent on all of it. Makes me wonder if she is either renting it, or perhaps she has a Moroccan room in her house that she borrowed from. The floor is littered with ornate rugs as well as decorated pillows. I personally loved the magic lamp Jim was rubbing when he and Pam were hanging out at the reception desk. And, of course, some unique lighting can really add to the atmosphere.

Authentic Food
Rather than just traditional foods found in offices at Christmas, Phyllis made sure that we had food that would be found in Morocco. We had pita bread and hummus, and she even arranged for there to be Halwa Chebakia cookies which are often eaten during Ramadan. Do we think she made them herself with a book with Moroccan recipes or did she get it catered?

Music
At any party, the background music and sounds is absolutely key to maintaining the atmosphere. In additional to festive music playing, she also arranged for various instruments to be around the office such as hand drums and a sitar that Andy became obsessed with.

Stocked Bar
While this is not Moroccan, I do think having a fully stocked bar was a smart idea because it means there are a variety of options when it comes to drinks. Most interesting was how Michael took to being the bartender so quickly, and I think he may have have missed his calling. Perhaps his main fault was not knowing the names of existing drinks, such as how he thought he invented orange juice and vodka.

So Phyllis put a great deal of time and resources into making this one of the best Christmas parties I have ever seen. But if I was going to point out one error, it is how Phyllis claimed this would be just like your grandmother’s Christmas if she was from Morocco. Morocco is a Muslim country, so they do not actually celebrate Christmas there. Just a fun little factoid that I’m not sure many were aware of.

But no one seems to have noticed this inaccuracy and they are partying pretty hard. Andy is learning the sitar, Michael is making drinks for everyone, Jim and Pam are being all obnoxiously cute together, and Meredith is drinking just a bit too much. It is Dwight who stands out because he has a huge collection of a doll called Princess Unicorn. Turns out that each Christmas he figures out what the most popular toy is, buys the stock in the area, and then resells to desperate parents for an enormous profit. I have known about toy reselling for awhile, the big thing is for people to buy toys and other items for cheap from big box stores and then flip them on Amazon or Ebay for more than what they bought it for. Personally, I feel there was a time where this very lucrative but online shopping is so prevalent these days, with too many people trying to do this, that it is now much too much work. I think you’re better off looking for other options to make some extra money then having to sink everything in a toy that you hope you can flip.

But all good things come to an end, and this party came to a shocking end when we suddenly saw Meredith get her hair on fire on a candle while dancing in the breakroom. Thank goodness Dwight was in there within seconds with the extinguisher to put her out. It is hard to get back to a party after someone was set on fire but Michael was determined to find a way. His idea? To do an impromptu intervention for Meredith, what he describes as “a surprise party for people who have addictions.” This is mildly true, an intervention is when family and friends sit down with a person who is dealing with an addiction in an attempt to get them the tools to fight it. Most often the goal is to get them into some sort of recovery center to work licensed professionals. Michael attempts to kick one off and while most of the office agreed that Meredith has a drinking problem, we couldn’t come up with scenarios in which she hurt us with her drinking. And it didn’t help that Michael’s list he found online of what to look for in a drinking problem seems to have come from a Mormon church. Meredith is incredibly apprehensive until she and Michael spend some time along chatting and he is able to convince her to go with him and he drives her to the center. Or so we thought; it turns out Michael told her they were going for a drink and he was going to try to trap in a treatment center. That is the thing with these types of facilities, you do have to willingly go in because that is usually the first step; being able to admit you have a problem and need help.

Back at the office there was the argument between Phyllis and Angela. Leading the charge on the party, Phyllis had been barking orders at Angela all night long. In her defense, Angela often treated many of us the same way when she was head of the PPC so Phyllis got a bit power mad and wanted to get her revenge. But turns out there was another piece to it because something snapped in Phyllis, and she told the office that Angela and Dwight have been sleeping together. Considering that Angela is engaged to Andy, this is by no means a good thing. And as Andy was not in the room at the time, he is still completely unaware of this development. This did make it very awkward when he came out to give us a rendition of “Deck the Halls” that he figured out on the sitar. Angela quickly got them out and now we are all sort of trying to determine what we are supposed to do with this knowledge.

And that, everyone, is this week’s Breakdown! Thank you for bearing with me while I put this one together while ill and I hope it is still up to our high standards here at Breakroom Breakdown. Given the holiday coming up, feel free to share what your plans are for this weekend! Until next week, I’ll be sure to see you around the Breakroom.