Good morning everyone and welcome back to the Breakroom! I don’t know about you all but I really am glad this week is coming to close. Every so often you have those days or even a full week where work is just not cutting it and you just are sort of miserable with it and that was unfortunately this week. We had a couple chilly days in comparison to what it has been so perhaps that was part of it. This has also been a week of dealing with pretty ridiculous employees so I cannot tell you how low my patience has been. Not wanting to dwell on that too much, as I am adamantly opposed to people stressing over work when they are off the clock, let us get right into the Breakdown!
A bit of good news for the office, Michael Scott is currently out of the office out on a lecture circuit! Scranton continues to have the highest sales in the company and corporate is desperate to try to spread those numbers along to the rest of the branches. So Michael has been asked to go to the branches (except Nashua, where Holly is at) to teach everyone his secret recipe to making it all work. And he is not alone out there as he recruited Pam to be his assistant, by offering her time and a half pay for 24 hours a day for three days. I think she agrees it is worth it to be his chauffer and be in charge of hauling around his many props. This does also mean that Pam will need to come face-to-face with Karen at the Utica branch where she is still the manager at. That happened to have been the branch they were at most recently and she had to face her fears in an attempt to bury the past with her.
Most of the other managers have likely not spent as much time with Michael as Karen has so she was pretty quick to shoot down some of interesting methods. He begins his lecture with pretending to have received a phone call letting him know that his father was dead, so he pretends to be upset over the news. He then has Pam throw out some mini Mounds bars to the audience; all of this is to sell an experience. I will agree with that statement because if you are attempting to sell a product or service, you need to be memorable and form a bond with that customer. He then moves on to talk about how he is able to memorize people’s names using a mnemonic technique. He takes a memorable feature about them, such as being bald, and finds a means to tie it to their name. Such as: Bald – No Hair – Head is Reflective – Like a Mirror – M – Mark. Naturally he tends to pick aspects about people which are a bit insulting but it is only truly insulting when you say the train of thought outload. Again, I would argue this could be a handy tool to try because I also struggle to remember names of people I meet for the first time. A lot of his tips do seem a bit more designed for new sales staff but they are certainly still interesting. And if anything, this trip did allow Pam and Karen to see each other again and move past everything that happened with Jim. Karen is actually married now and she is pregnant, so needless to say she has been able to move past everything and said she was very happy for Pam and Jim.
This actually sparked something in Michael in how he really wants that for him and Holly. He is very conflicted on what to do but, in a surprise twist, Pam convinces him they should travel up to Nashua so he can try to find resolution with Holly. This requires them to blow off their lecture at Rochester, but no one really cares about those guys so Nashua it is!
You may be wondering what all was happening back at the office while Michael and Pam were having fun on their lecture circuit. Perhaps the most awkward part was in that Stanley brought in one of his clients to do a sales call at the office. This girl happened to be pretty attractive and caught the eye of Andy, so much so he spent the entire day trying to work up the courage to ask her out. He went so far as to peak into her car to find out what music she listens to, then traded two of his clients to Stanley to take on her account, and then spent the entire meeting trying to flirt with her. In the end he tries to kiss her (because that was how Creed got Squeaky Fromme back in the day) and she is mortified at this abruptness and smoothly exits the situation. Not only did Andy then lose that account, but wasted the two he gave to Stanley and didn’t get a date. I’m just going to throw this out there for who needs to hear it, you should not be trying to date your clients/customers and many companies do have policies against this. Some people do but they certainly choose better moments than how Andy handled this situation. He came on too strong, was unprofessional, and you should certainly not initiate the moment by trying to kiss her at your work place. For those out there, do not take love advise from Andy; or Creed for that matter.
At the same time, we were having some major Party Planning Committee (PPC) drama at the office. To recap, Angela Martin had been the head of the PPC for years but then Phyllis was put in charge after she discovered Angela and Dwight’s affair and was blackmailing them. Once everything came out, Michael decided that neither of them could be trusted to run the PPC and he should put two people in charge because one person becomes too powerful. So he put both Jim and Dwight in charge of the committee (I’m still bitter I wasn’t considered) and they are both livid over the whole notion of having to plan parties. They are already doing poorly at this role because they did not realize the previous day was Kelly’s birthday, and she came in today yelling at them over their thoughtlessness. It was actually Phyllis who pointed this out to Jim and Dwight, so I will point out that even though she knew it was Kelly’s birthday she still chose to not say anything. That is some stone cold bitterness over being taken off the PPC, but I do respect her bitterness. They are finally able to calm Kelly down by assuring her they are going to make up for this with throwing her a birthday party and it will be amazing.
It is now we get to see how Dwight and Jim can rise to the challenge of planning an office party. Now I do enjoy planning an event and I do put a lot pressure on myself, but an office birthday really should be pretty simple and not require the level of stress they suffered. Jim first had ask Kelly what sort of cake she wanted, and she asked for an ice cream cake. The majority of the employees here have been around for years and I would have thought there would be binder someplace which lists the favorite cake flavor and similar questions on employees. That being said, if anyone had such a book it would be Angela Martin who is likely withholding it out of her own spite for having the position taken away. Jim also was in charge of collecting the party dues from people ($3 per person) and is struggling very hard to get anyone to cough up the money. I did find this interesting because most of the time it would be the company which pays the cake and party. In my current job, when we still worked in an office our leader would go out and get cupcakes or a cake for the birthday person and she would put it on a company card. Of course, Angela Martin is also head of Accounting so is possible she neglected to tell them about the party fund they could draw from.
While Jim is working on the cake, Dwight was put in charge of decorating for the party so he is working tirelessly on getting the conference room to look nice. For signage he settled on printing a sign which says “It is your birthday.” He also is blowing up balloons to hang around the office, which he is barely filling up. I cannot tell if he doesn’t have the lung capacity, or maybe he decided these balloons are not worth his breath. He also choose to use grey and brown because they would accent the conference room best, and is hanging them up masking tape. He dated Angela for a long time, I would have believed that some of her party planning should have rubbed off on him. Or perhaps he is ignoring everything he did learn because he misses Angela too much; or he is just bad at it. Much like keeping a record of the cake flavors, I would have imagined favorite colors should have documented as well. I know that Angela keeps records and minutes from everything with the PPC, so I am not sure if she didn’t share all of that information, or if Jim and Dwight simply didn’t use any of it.
Now they are not done with the party yet, they are still trying to keep on planning so make it the highlight so stay tuned for second party of this. Do we think Jim and Dwight can actually throw a good party for Kelly? Will Michael and Holly be able patch things up and become friends? Will Andy ever find a girl who wants to be with him? You’ll have to wait until next week back here at the Breakroom to find out. I hope you all have a great weekend, and until next time I’ll see you at the Breakroom.
