Author: Nathan Westerberg

Good morning everyone and welcome back to the Breakroom. It is Friday and this weekend couldn’t have come at a better time. Like many people in the country, we here in Minnesota have had some fun weather this week. It was so sunny and warm that I was actually starting to see grass, then it snowed a few inches and covered it all up and created some slick roads, and then it warmed up again and is quickly melting it all over again. We are pretty lucky because I have seen that the weather is significantly worse around the country. Some locations are reporting greater amounts of snow, others have had wildfires which is often linked to too little water, and I thought there were even mudslides perhaps down south. If the weather wasn’t bad enough, there has also been a great deal of political discord across the board. One of the most recent issues is a series of tariffs being imposed across the board; the United States is imposing them on Canada, Mexico, and China who are planning on returning the favor. I am not sure everyone understands what tariffs are and the impact they have. Simply put, tariffs are a type of tax imposed on goods imported from another country. I think it is important to mention that if a tariff is placed on a good, such as lumber from Canada, the tariff is paid by the business who is importing the lumber from Canada into the United States. Now that a business is paying extra for the lumber, it is not uncommon for that extra tax to be charged to the end goods or services offered to their customers. Tariffs traditionally do not see a lot of benefit in the end, and if anything their goal is to promote businesses and consumers to look at domestic goods rather than international. Our biggest concern should be who will actually “win” the tariff war because more than likely some countries will be feeling the pressure more than others¹. If you have been watching the news or social media, Canada in particular has chosen to rise to the challenge of going out of their way to not purchase goods from the United States. We are even seeing them remove such products from the stores, with liquor being removed being one of the most prominent as items like whiskey and wine are important exports to Canada². I know that not everyone understands how the economy works or the mindset behind such political decisions, but a tariff war is a sign of a leader who does not understand, or care, about such things. For those of you who think that Donald Trump is being smart with putting us at odds with ally countries are very wrong and need to educate yourself on the economy. And not from rightwing, conspiracy blogs but from textbooks and business journals.

With your homework assigned to you, let us get to the business at hand and talk about the conclusion of Toby’s last day.

Picking up, Toby had reached out to Michael to initiate his exit interview and I was very surprised at this. While I have not left too many positions, I have never formally had such an interview. The purpose of an exit interview is to get feedback from the outgoing employee to learn their overall satisfaction and get any insight on how things could be done better going forward. The types of questions you will receive will vary but they are typically tied to your overall time with the company. One might be asking why you are choosing to leave the company and/or position, basically trying to find out if there was a problem with one rather than simply time to move on. Other examples could be what could be done better, what did we do right, do you have feedback for leadership, and so on. It is important to point out the importance of going into the interview calm, collected, and not see this as a chance to “let loose” your opinions. Knowing you are leaving a company makes it very tempting to tell off everyone you had problems with and let them know everything you have been holding in for potentially years. But just because you may have a new job lined up, doesn’t mean you want to instantly leave the company with a grudge. Anytime you leave a company, it is important to be able to call upon them as a future reference, and that is only possible be keeping your reputation in tact. If you have only good memories and things to say, then that is great and the interview would go smoothly. But certainly provide a bit of honest feedback because in many larger companies we do not always get the chance to give our insight into certain aspects of the company³.

Toby’s exit interview was a bit of a whirlwind and interesting in that it wasn’t Toby who trying to get stuff off his chest. It started with Michael and Toby, and Michael was fired up and really motivated. Just as he was getting ready to let off some steam, Holly pops in because normally Human Resources would be there so she needs to start doing her job. Before Michael could argue, Pam also stepped inside assuming that Michael would like her to take notes. Now Michael, as he told me later, had to watch what he said because he was evidently trying to be a good guy in front of Holly. Despite the multitude of possible questions that could be asked, Michael went with:

1. Who do you think you are?
2. What gives you the right?
3. What would you do to improve the company? (Michael quickly backtracked on this one)

Perhaps realizing that Michael was not feeling these questions, it was suggested that Toby open up the going away present Michael had picked out for him. Turns out it was rock that said “Suck on this” to which Michael acts completely unaware. He tried to pass this off on someone else but then, of course, Dwight informs everyone it was Michael’s idea. Quickly pivoting, Michael tries to pass this off as a joke and was not his real present. Seemingly at a loss of what the real gift was, Pam queries if it was his watch, to which he admits it was. Certainly not the sort of exit interview Michael was hoping for, he didn’t get to berate Toby as he’d hoped and he had to give away his watch.

The rest of the interview was forgotten because at that precise moment, we all were alerted to the fact that our own Ryan Howard was seen being arrested in a video online. It seems that because Ryan was banking his entire job on the expensive website he designed, he was nervous when it wasn’t producing the amount of sales he needed. This was when he started having people, including us, take any sale made by a salesman and then add it into the website as well. This is also known as misleading the shareholders, better known as fraud. I am amazed this wasn’t caught sooner because that entire business was suspicious and I’ve been voicing my concerns over it. Now, if you ask Oscar he will say he thinks the true crime was Ryan’s beard; personally I didn’t mind it so much, although it did add a touch of villainy to his appearance. Most of us really were not to brokenhearted over this news. Jim and Pam were laughing over it, especially since Ryan was very obviously trying to get Jim fired. Kelly was excited to be able to stop by and visit Ryan in prison to show off what he gave up. But it was Michael who actually was broken up over the situation and was incredibly worried about him. Cut to Holly dropping everything to make sure he was okay and offer him some support, which certainly seemed to cheer him up.

Michael wasn’t down for long because Phyllis let us know that Toby’s party was officially ready, and we should come out to the parking lot. I do not know how she got it all arranged, but she converted the entire parking lot to this mini carnival. There was a Ferris wheel, food trucks with things like corn dogs and funnel cakes, a bouncy house, barbecue, dance floor, and Darryl was there with his band. As Michael explained, this was potentially the best party we had every had (much to Angela’s chagrin). He really got into it the festivities with his parody song, Goodbye Toby (from Goodbye Stranger). Honestly, the only rough part of the party was when Michael caught Dwight, Meredith, and Mose (Dwight’s cousin) loading a raccoon into Holly’s car. They try to explain this was some friendly hazing, to which Michael explains there is no such thing as friendly hazing and that Holly was the greatest thing to happen to the company since World War 2. As I said last week, hazing is not fun or funny and I am adamantly opposed to any form of hazing. It isn’t funny when a fraternity does it in college, and even less so when adults try to do it in the workplace so just don’t even try it.

Michael was deep in conversation with Holly, with some major flirting going on, when he got a call from Kevin who had ran to the grocery store for more barbecue sauce. Michael didn’t show up until the end of the party and didn’t say much, but Kevin had been all too eager to share the dirt. He ran into Jan at the store and immediately called Michael to swing by because he wanted him to see that she was very pregnant. By “very” I mean she obviously had to have gotten pregnant while she was still with Michael. Given that he never told us about this, the assumption was that Michael had no idea and that the two of them had some things they needed to talk about.

The party came to a close with a big firework display that was a perfect ending to the festivities. At least it was, until our own Andy Bernard decided to use this as the opportunity to formally propose to Angela in front of us all. Well, us all plus his parents who had appeared out of no where (likely at Andy’s invitation). After a slightly awkward silence, Angela gave a resounding “okay.” They really haven’t been going out very long and honestly, I cannot imagine that their relationship is that intense that they are there yet. But they are both odd and honestly, cannot imagine they have many other options out there so good for them.

And that was the wrap up of Toby’s final day at the office, and his going away party! Does anyone have any going away parties that can compare to all of that? How about any business owners who are facing struggles with the recent tariffs and how is your company responding to them? Or if you’d rather answer a fun one, if you could have any one thing at a going away party for yourself, what would it be?

Until next time, have a great weekend and I’ll see you around the Breakroom.

1. Buchwald, E. (2025, March 5). What is a tariff and who pays it? CNN. Retrieved March 6, 2025, from https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/05/business/what-is-tariff-who-pays-imports/index.html ↩︎
2. Boak, J. (2025, March 6). Trump’s trade war draws swift retaliation with new tariffs from Mexico, Canada and China. Associated Press. Retrieved March 6, 2025, from https://apnews.com/article/trump-tariffs-canada-mexico-china-643086a6dc7ff716d876b3c83e3255b0 ↩︎
3. Herrity, J. (2025, March 3). 12 Exit Interview Questions To Expect and How To Prepare. Indeed. Retrieved March 6, 2025, from https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/starting-new-job/exit-interview-questions ↩︎

Good morning everyone and welcome back to the Breakroom! I hope you have all had a great week, I feel like every week lately seems to be a rollercoaster of emotions. Usually the week starts off productive and passing by quickly, and the second part of the week just drags on and the weekend is just out of reach. Thankfully the weekend is right around the corner so you just need to make it through today! Not a whole lot of updates otherwise, so why don’t we get right to the Breakdown?

The big event of the day was that Dunder Mifflin decided to take part in a local high school job fair. Michael attended along with Oscar, Pam, and Darryl in an effort to get some interns to work at the office over the summer. Now I personally have a major gripe with how internships tend to work, specifically those that are unpaid. Our particular ones have not been approved for any pay, and they are not even eligible to receive college credit which means all it is will be work experience. Now experience sounds great and might be there to pad your resume, but very few people can actually do an unpaid internship without still needing to have additional jobs that allow them to be paid. I personally will voice my belief that unpaid internships should be illegal; you are doing work and deserve to be paid during those hours. As far as I am concerned, if you cannot afford to pay someone for working for you then you cannot be considered a company suitable to host interns and teach them about the business world. Given that these internships would not be paid, I was not truly expecting them to return with anyone willing to accept such position.

Now job fairs are a very real thing and high schools and colleges do try to host them at least once or twice a year. Besides trying to get entry level positions filled, a big part of them is it gets students thinking about their future. They can speak to experts in various fields and they can make some decisions on what sort of majors the should be considering as they plan for their future. But these fairs do happen for more than just students as local communities will routinely have them where businesses in the area can meet with potential candidates looking for jobs. If you are looking for a new job and are not having luck with finding open positions, maybe consider looking to see if there are any job fairs on the calendar in your area. Not even company uses online job boards, especially small businesses, so this might give you the chance to find jobs that were never even posted. Plus, it allows you to speak directly to leaders and recruiters can allow you to ask questions and get a better feel on if they line up with what you are looking for in an employer.

This particular fair is being hosted at Pam’s old high school, so she is really excited to return where she had “fond” memories. Truthfully, I do like that old adage that you know you peaked in high school if you actually miss it because I certainly do not miss it. Besides Pam going because it is her alma mater, Darryl was selected because he is looking for help in the warehouse while Oscar is there for a possible intern for accounting. What is really interesting is the differences in how they are approaching today’s events. Darryl is dressed up more than he normally is as he hopes to give a sense of professionalism. Michael, on the other hand, has dressed down because he is trying to pass along the impression that they are the cool, fun office. I believe Michael’s philosophy is, people will overlook the fact they are not getting paid because they will have so much fun simply being there. This is truly a terrible expectation to give to kids and exactly what is wrong with the United States work ethic. We need to get away from the belief of working off the clock or for free and focus on you should earn your livable wage, and then go home and focus on yourself. I can assure you, the majority of the world focuses on the “work to live” philosophy rather than “work to live.”

Ultimately, the job fair goes exactly as I anticipated it would in that they walk away with no interns. They had one kid interested but Michael scared him away because he didn’t feel he was cool enough to work at Dunder Mifflin. Michael gets so upset with the disrespect he feels the company is getting that he got up in front of the entire gymnasium of companies and students to tell them all why none of them are as good as them. Needless to say, the rest of the team there was pretty mortified to be associated with Michael after all of that.

While that was going on, Jim was off with his own team of Andy and Kevin at the local golf course trying to court a potentially big client. His company is responsible for a great deal of junk mail, so that is a pretty lucrative client for those working in the paper industry. You can tell that Jim is pretty motivated to woo this client given that they are going golfing rather than a simple pitch meeting. I am not fully sure how golf became synonymous with doing business, I did some online searching and found mixed reviews. Some articles talked about because of their relation to country clubs while others talked about how a few major tycoons were into the sport and it simply got popular because of it. Or it may be because there are not a lot of sports that allow people to spend a few hours together, walking and chatting. Personally I think golf is tedious and boring, so you will not catch me out on a golf course trying to network. I think we should normalize large miniature golf courses, because those are actually interesting and fun. Or why not normalize doing business at a zoo or aquarium? You can still walk around but this time you can look at animals while you talk your shoptalk. Someone get a letter out to Forbes on that!

It sounds like this potential client is a big golfer and he was the one who suggested it. Talking to Jim after, I don’t think the client had any intention of signing on and was simply using this as excuse to get out of the office. That is terrible excuse; you own a company, you shouldn’t be at the golf course. Likewise if you are in charge of running a country as the leader, you shouldn’t be allowed to set foot on a golf course until your term is over because you have more important things to do than wasting it on a tedious sport. No offense, but there is reason why golf is often referred to as “a good walk wasted.”

Jim pesters him all day long but to no avail, he continues to talk down his offers because it is simply not a good time. Kevin and Andy are not really any help at the moment. Andy is complaining the entire time because his hands are full of “blisties” from all of his golf practice the night before, and Kevin is focused on their bets they have on the golf game, convinced he can make a profit. But Jim does not relent and in the end, he explains that he will continue to pester him every single day until he gives Jim his business and he agrees. This is huge! Jim was recently put on notice by our old buddy Ryan because he isn’t trying hard enough, so this is the type of sale that can truly make a difference.

With all of these fun outings, you might be wondering about the rest of us at the office. Naturally, with Michael and Jim not there we don’t think we should have to be stuck at work. Dwight doesn’t agree and he is adamant that we need to work the entire day. Stanly just walked right out without heeding him any attention. The rest of us? As soon as Dwight got up to go the bathroom, we booked it an took off for the rest of the day; I knew Michael wouldn’t care, mainly because his focus would’ve been on the job fair. I will admit that not everyone bailed, Angela remained the stickler as always and stayed behind to see her work day out.

And that was our office day. We took part in a job fair, a business deal at the golf course, and partook in a small walkout. Which do you think sounded the most fun? I would love to know if any of you have your own “golf course.” As in, where you you like to do business? Do you like my idea of doing business at the zoo or do you have an even better idea that should replace the golf course?

I hope you all have a great weekend, and as always I’ll be sure to see you around the Breakroom!

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!