Tag: The Office

Good morning, everyone, and welcome back to the Breakroom! When I say we have had a busy week over here, we have. As part of our originally scheduled plans, we have a wedding this weekend to go to for my brother-in-law. Obviously, this is very exciting, but it means we have a lot of involvement including hosting a few people at the house, meaning I’ve got to tidy up and play host. And then of course my husband will be with the bride on the morning of the wedding to get her hair gorgeous. Speaking of the husband, he is going through so big changes in that he is at a brand new location. He accepted a new position involving management and education with a new salon and while he was going to stay for several weeks at his old salon, they instead asked him to leave. Evidently this is not uncommon for the industry and while it was not ideal, he has been moving non-stop this week to get onboarded and start welcoming his clients as soon as possible. I am incredibly impressed with how he hasn’t let anything slow him down and instead is seeing it as an opportunity to get his career on track. On top of it all I am mildly sick so the timing of that is impeccable. But I am about to have a four day weekend so thank goodness I can attempt to find to rest. Eventually, that is.

With so much going on I need to get into this Breakdown so I can get back to my errands! You might recall that last week we saw Dunder Mifflin admit that as long as the Michael Scott Paper Company was in business, they were too much of a threat to their Scranton branch. In a stunning decision, they agreed to absorb them in a buyout which reinstates Michael as the regional manager with Pam and Ryan joining sales. And most importantly, the need for Charles to no longer oversee this branch. But now we have the question, will Dunder Mifflin be as excited to welcome them back as they assume they will be?

Before the day started, we ended up having one of the most heart-wrenching incidents. Kevin arrived with a huge vat of his homemade chili. He uses a family recipe that he spends days on, and he considers this the thing that he does best in the world. But as soon as he got into the office, he tripped and spilled the entire vat on the ground. I don’t know how many people have dropped such meals that you spent so long putting together, but I can confirm that it is a true travesty. Not to mention I’m sure everyone was looking forward to chili, and truth is I could go for a big bowl right now. Incidentally, if you are a big fan of chili too you should check out this collection of chili recipes from Brian Baumgartner, Kevin himself!

Once everyone was formally at the office, Michael arrived back with his signature flair by climbing through a hula hoop covered with paper, held aloft by Ryan and Pam. He immediately insisted on a conference room meeting where it began to be clear that he was expecting something from all of us. While most of the office was pretty clueless, I could tell that Michael was expecting us to apologize to him. In his mind, we essentially betrayed him by not choosing to follow him when he left to form his own company. While I do not necessarily agree that we owe him an apology for not taking that gamble with our careers, I can still see where he is coming from. Any chance of apologizing quickly disappears once Michael explains that any clients he was able to take from Dunder Mifflin will remain with Pam and Ryan as they are both stepping into sales positions. Dwight and the rest of the sales team are adamant that those clients should return to them now that they are with Dunder Mifflin again. Personally, I can see both sides to the situation but if I had to provide some sort of compromise then perhaps it should be up to the clienets to decide if they have a preference over who is managing their account. But this is simplu an indicator of a larger divide and that is the formerly Michael Scott Paper Company against the rest of the office and people are not pleased.

Dwight decides to take it upon himself to rally the sales department and decide how to best handle this issue. In true Dwight fashion, he decides to call a secret meeting and encodes the message on a memo using invisible ink. In this case the invisible ink is urine which appears when held over heat. For those wondering, yes urine can be used as invisible ink and has reportedly been used throughout history to encode messages. The science being that when held above heat, the acid in the urine heats up and oxidizes so it becomes visible. Being this is the 21st century in a modern office, there are plenty of other substances that Dwight could have used. Similar materials include lemon juice, vinegar, onion juice, and even milk. These all have acids in various forms and have the same effect of oxidizing when exposed to heat. Basically if you want to do some covert nonsense and send secret messages, there are much better options than using your own urine.

Ultimately, no one was able to figure out that Dwight had used invisible ink so they didn’t know to check for that sort of thing. Going forward it might be safe to assume anything from Dwight has a code embedded in it, but this time around he had call Andy to bring everyone down. So they met in the warehouse to discuss how to interact with Michael and address all of their concerns. Much like everything else Dwight attempted, nothing really was resolved. Jim tried to convince them all to just talk to him directly while Dwight wanted something more along the lines of a coup or taking Ryan hostage. Not those exactly, but something impressive and hands on like those. Leaving them to plot, Jim made his way back upstairs to confront Michael, Pam, and Ryan to warn them about what was going on down in the warehouse. While he was hoping they would see some sense, instead it only enflamed tensions and escalated the situation more.

So now we have the sales staff versus the Michael Scott Paper Company, and everyone is prepared to take no prisoners. Michael asks where they all disappeared to and they explained they were simply out to lunch. Hearing this, Michael uses it as an excuse to take and eat their lunch since they no longer were going to need what they brought in. He finally formally laid out that he was expecting an apology from all of them for not coming with him. This was when the sales team decided they could no longer silently brood. They threatened to walk out and form their own paper company the Schrute-Bernard-Lapin Vance-Stanley Paper Company. But it is Phyllis who gets honest in how hurt they were by Michael when he left. They understand he was trying to get revenge against corporate but it was all of them who really suffered and that’s when it sets in for Michael. He arranges to meet them privately down in the warehouse to try to make it right; he goes in thinking an apology and some free peppermint bark will do the trick. They only care about getting their clients back and are fully okay with having the apology taken back to do so. Defeated, Michael agrees and this means someone will not be able to be a sales person and he settles on Pam, meaning Ryan will have to back to being a temp.

The other big event that was going on at the office, particularly for those of us not involved with sales, was the reintroduction of Casual Friday. I previously did a in depth look at the history of Casual Friday back on The Office: Season 2, Episode 7 “The Client” so please head over for a read. The cliff notes version is that it can best be traced back to businesses in Hawaii implementing Aloha Fridays in which people could wear aloha shirts to work on Fridays starting in the 1940s. This eventually made its way to the continental United States before transitioning casual wear rather than specifically aloha shirts. Obviously companies are not required to offer this and it is usually reserved for companies which perhaps do not have a lot direct customer interaction. I work for a healthcare organization, for instance, and we do not have Casual Friday’s since those working on site need to always adhere to their uniform policies.

Casual Friday had disappeared for a period, I am not entirely sure what happened to it but it has been formally reinstated. Not everyone is thrilled, however, which is quickly made clear by Angela. She is upset that no one is dressed professionally, and takes particular offense to the fact that Oscar is wearing sandals and she must look at this feet. I don’t really know how she can see his feet since he is at his desk most of the day but evidently she can. Personally I had more problems with Meredith’s outfit which was much too revealing. And since she chose to not wear underwear we could see her boob, butt, and genitals. I think this is a pretty good example of what it is important to set guidelines when offering Casual Friday. Yes you are able to dress casually but you do still need to meet a certain degree of professionalism in your dress. Toby ultimately gets tired of policing everyone and decides to cancel Casual Fridays because he feels he was the only one who dressed appropriately. I think I am starting to sense why Casual Fridays were cancelled originally and I bet we will not see them come back.

This goes to show that sometimes returning to a place of work is not always as easy as you expect. And it really does go to show that if you can leave on a professional note, please do because it is wise to maintain those connections whenever you can.

I hope you all enjoyed this week’s Breakdown, and that you get out and enjoy what sounds like will be a pretty nice weekend. And if you are in the mood why don’t you share your go-to Casual Friday outfits, or chili recipes.

And as always, we’ll see you around the Breakroom.

Good morning everyone and welcome back to the Breakroom! So has been going on this week? We’ve been diligent about getting back to the gym after a few days of struggling with motivation to get there on top of everything else that is going on. Despite being sore and tired right now, I’m still extremely happy that I was able to get out and accomplish something, because that is what counts. We were at the gym yesterday and by the time it came to the cardio we were both ready to just call it there but I was adamant that we should at least do something. I may have only did the treadmill for about 10 minutes but I still did a bit of running because I was able to find that motivation to keep going on. I like to talk about these moments because I’m sure you see the same “influencers” out there who make it look so easy for them to workout (or whatever their niche is) but they do not talk about those times that they struggle and feel like giving up. The truth is that my reader(s) are like me and that means life is hard and too often we feel like failures because our lives do not seem as easy as those of the people we see online. So how I have tackled failures in my life this week? I was passed on a couple of jobs I applied for with no interviews, I go out and apply for more jobs. My blogs are not getting the traction I want, I research new ways on how to get them out there more. I haven’t got more podcasts up, I keep on preparing for more episodes and developing my release plan so that once I start they can keep on going. They say we learn more from our failures than our successes; while that is true, it is very easy for people to say who have succeeded more than many of us so it is not easy to hear. Rather than blaming ourselves and giving up, I think a better course of action is evaluating our support system and being able to ask for help, vent about our struggles, and come back more motivated than ever. Don’t have a strong support system? Than reach out to us at the Breakdown (we are on Facebook in addition to being here) and let us find support from one another.

Besides support, we can also support you by jumping in today’s Breakdown and I have to tell you, we have some pretty big updates from the Michael Scott Paper Company.

The morning started off the same as it has been, with a paper route. Having been in operation for about four weeks, the Michael Scott Paper Company has been performing their own deliveries in the early morning before even getting to the office. Michael starts the day going around and picking everyone up in a used van that they got (which seems to say “Hallelujah Church of Scranton” on the side in Korean). Given that this has been the norm, I find it funny that Pam and Ryan still are not prepared each morning, not even bringing their own coffee for the drive. Michael is always set to go, although this is likely because he kicks off the morning with a mug of milk and sugar. No coffee with that, only milk and sugar. Needless to say, these early morning deliveries to then work a full day at the office has been taxing on them and they decide it would be wise to hire a delivery guy.

They meet up with their accountant and he has to be the bearer of bad news, and that is that they are broke. He explains that their price point they are charging is so low they losing money instead of making it. Ryan tries to explain that he, with his business school knowledge, did the numbers himself and their business model becomes profitable with enough sales. The accountant explains that in a fixed cost pricing model this makes sense but he should have used a variable cost pricing model, which seems to fly over everyone’s heads.

Here I can make use of my business degree and break these down. A fixed cost price model has the price of the product at a set rate across the board which does not change regardless of factors such as how much is produced or sold. What the accountant is combining into this is fixed costs which are costs that a company pays on their end which remain the same and are unaffected based on how successful the company is. Common examples would be rent for an office space since that is set as the same each month. On the other side is the variable cost price model in which the price of the product can and will move based on market demand, competitor pricing, and changes on production/sales. Then we have variable costs which are costs a company pays that are affected based on how much the company makes, and this is where we have the problem. So Michael Scott Paper Company makes money as they take on mor clients. However, the more clients they take on they start to require more money to spend on needs for the company, such as looking at a delivery person. And that is just today because as they take on more clients they will continue to take on more costs which will wipe them out. If they had designed their company around a variable model, they would have predicted how much is necessary and would be able to accommodate those needs.

Devastated at the news of all of this, the Michael Scott Paper Company headed back to their office to grapple with this news. Their days are numbered and now they have to deal with the fact that they are once again facing uncertainty. This is all occurring without them having any inkling with how bad it is on the Dunder Mifflin side.

Charles is in a mild panic because their branch lost another client to Michael Scott and no one seems to have any strategy. So nervous is the company that even David Wallace from corporate comes to the office to strategize the situation. For him to have come all the way here for this, it says a lot about how worried they are. So besides Charles and David, they also bring in Jim and Dwight to come up with options. Jim suggests offering a temporary price reduction for returning companies. Certainly could work but there is still isn’t much incentive for companies to leave. We have Dwight’s idea of filling Michael’s office with a swarm of bees. Not sure what the end goal is as this could just keep them from working for maybe a few days while they get the office exterminated. And then we have David who admits that their only good offer is to see if they would accept a buyout. That is where Jim comes up as they send him on down to see if he could convince them to sitting down.

Cut to Jim letting the Michael Scott Paper Company know there is a buyout option because of how successful they have been. Interestingly, Jim is relaying this information to them after Pam already revealed to him the company was in trouble, which I think we all know what Jim is doing. Marching in like victors, Michael and his team return to Dunder Mifflin in an effort to turn the turntables (or whatever Michael was trying to say).

Negotiations were pretty tense, as these sorts of things often do. Before David could even give them their offer, Michael immediately rejects it. As he explains, you should never accept the first offer which seems to include not even listening to it. David’s second offer was for $12,000 which is also declined as being too low. David tries to tear Michael down knowing full well that they cannot be that profitable and do not have a ton of time. Michael comes in with one of this greatest moments of his entire career. He points out that there is a shareholder meeting coming up soon and David will be expected to explain why their most profitable branch is suddenly bleeding money. And this might lead them to thinking they need a better CFO at the helm. I think this was David had to admit that he underestimated Michael a little too much, and offered a buyout of $60,000. I thought for sure they would take it, as it seemed that they would and were serious about it. But Michael had another stroke of genius in him, and chose to renegotiate. His terms were to have his job back and to have Ryan and Pam return in sales. David is pretty against this, besides the fact that Ryan cost the company a great deal of money but this starts to look like a multimillion dollar buyout between salaries and benefits. But he knows he is stuck and needs to get this issue resolved quickly, so he caves and the Michael Scott Paper Company is successful.

This has been a wild ride and from a personal comment as a watcher of The Office, the Michael Scott Paper Company stories is among my all time favorite arcs and I wish it lasted longer. If you were as big of a fan as I was, maybe consider getting a Michael Scott Paper Company shirt!

I hope you enjoyed this Breakdown, and I hope you all have an amazing weekend! I’ll be working more on the blog and promise to have an a update on the podcast soon. I also am officially ready for autumn over here so I may be finding a chance to pop into Spirit Halloween and Home Goods for some Halloween decorations.

As always, I’ll see you around the Breakroom.

Good morning everyone and welcome back to the Breakroom! Hope you are all doing well this week, especially given that it does feel like fall this week. While I have not officially started decorating for Halloween (although parts of my house already have this aesthetic) I did make some chicken noodle soup with a leftover rotisserie chicken so I can officially say I’ve gone into soup and stew season.

What I want to talk about this week, which has been a bit of a pattern it seems, is about motivation. What do we do to keep ourselves motivated for our personal goals and ambitions. This week my husband and I have not actually made it to the gym since Saturday. We have been busy with things around the house, work has been busy, and just in general some personal things have left us without the motivation. This is certainly one of the reasons we stopped working out before, and it is quite common with anyone trying to stay active. But what happens is you get out of the routine and you start to think of yourself as a failure and before you know it you are spiraling. And the old me certainly used to be like that and even as I write this, I am reminding myself that I have not failed. Life happens and despite what we do, it is impossible to control every aspect of our lives and sometimes it means we have to make compromises. But I am planning on going to the gym after this so that is my new goal and I intend on following through. Another example of motivation? I had interviewed for a job a couple of weeks ago and yesterday I got a phone call back on it and was told that they were going with another candidate. Evidently I surprised the recruiter with how calm I was over it, explaining that because I knew the interviewing manager, if they went with someone else I trust that it was someone who was a better fit for the position. I admitted that of course I was disappointed, but given that I had no negative feedback on my interview and I believe I did the best I could there wasn’t much use putting myself down. So what did I do? I went ahead and found another position or two and applied for them, trying to stay confident and motivated that I will achieve my professional goals. I know I sound incredibly confident and optimistic like (like the vast majority of LinkedIn “influencers”) but truth is I am also scared and struggle with remaining so confident in my skills. I tell you all to remain motivated and confident because that is what most of have. We have the world making us feel like we are not good enough, so we have support each other and come back with a reaffirming “yes we are.” To reaffirm my confidence I full intend to spend a good half hour of cardio listening to some inspiring music (thinking TX2 and Arrows in Action) and then track down a couple other jobs I meant to apply to before the weekend.

So, to my readers, how do you inspire yourself to stay confident and motivated when you feel like giving up?

I have either inspired you or thoroughly made you depressed, hopefully the former because here at the Breakroom the only ones allowed to be depressed are those working for Dunder Mifflin. Speaking of which let us jump into what recently happened in Scranton!

In an interesting twist when I went to stop by the Michael Scott Paper Company, I came across the three of them (Michael, Pam, and Ryan) throwing cheese balls at each other to catch in their mouths. As Pam explains it, while there is a limit to how much cold calling you can do in a day there is no limit to the amount of cheese balls you can throw at a face. This ties in a well to what I posted above with motivation. Sometimes the key to remaining motivated is by not thinking of the task at hand and stepping away to clear your mind. This is also a great example of bonding for the team, which being such a small company it is important that have a strong relationship. Reminder that work doesn’t necessarily mean working every second you are on the clock.

Today was a pretty odd day around Dunder Mifflin, namely with Andy. You will recall that upon finding out Dwight and Angela had been sleeping together, he called off the wedding. Because he put down so many non-refundable deposits, he is attempting to pawn off anything he can to recoup some money. In a big swing, he tries to convince Jim and Pam to pay $9,000 for Andy’s Acapella band he had booked. As in the one he was in during college and would be himself and his friends from college. In a shocking twist Pam gave a hard no to this, for which Andy was quick to judge her. Obviously still scorn by Angela, he starts trying to explain to Jim that Pam is not good for him and he should (essentially) call off the wedding. He even spent the entire day trying to console and take care of Jim so he could find the strength to move on from Pam. Naturally this is just a Jim prank, pretending to be an emotional wreck only to turn it around on Andy as a lesson that he cannot let what happened with Angela control him. Andy seemed touched after it all, and I suppose it allowed Jim to really get his attention. Still seemed like a waste of day to me.

First things first, Charles has implemented a new dress code at Dunder Mifflin, namely requiring Dwight to wear a long sleeve, white shirt instead of his usual short sleeve yellows. He describes it as cutting off his attack readiness and is not thrilled. Obviously a dress code is nothing new, many companies require some form of code to ensure employees meet the minimum level of professionalism in the workplace. In recent years I have seen more of a push to focus on gender neutral guidelines which I find incredibly refreshing as there was a time that almost every company had separate rules for men versus women. It is hard to give major recommendations since each company is different but I can recommend starting at with this article, Guide To Business Attire (With Examples)
by Hanne Keiling, where they breakdown the different types of business attire to evaluate what is best for your company. But typically a button down shirt, some slacks, nice shoes, maybe a cardigan or jacket, and then well kept hair and jewelry will be accepted most offices.¹

Because of his disdain with these changes, Dwight has been dabbling in some corporate espionage and passing information to Michael about suitable clients to target. I was surprised by this given that Dwight should be more loyal to Dunder Mifflin than Michael. This changes once he gets called into a meeting with Charles who raves about his work ethic and even suggests they go out for a drink sometime to discuss his future. This is more than Michael ever did for him and in an instant, he is prepared to take down the Michael Scott Paper Company. Even revealing to Charles the next time Michael tries to meet and they ambush him, letting him know he is cut off from further information. Michael decides to get his revenge on Dwight by going after his biggest client, to which Dwight was actually nervous. Michael is able to get a last minute meeting using his Rolodex. I did have one in a previous position and they are not terrible, but what I think the key piece to remember is that Michael uses his for more than just contact information. He has personally written down information like family members, dislikes, and hobbies to ensure he can maintain that personal touch and show he knows them. I think everyone should do this, especially if they work in sales and every sale is important. If you wanted one for myself you could write “Nathan: gay, three dogs, loves to cook, don’t call Nate.” That’s what such notes should be in that it gives a couple of things to talk about and clarifies to not call me by a nickname.

Dwight tries to call a truce over this and insists on meeting the team for lunch so they can come to an agreement, but in typical Dwight fashion this was all a ruse. With the Company out of the office, he sneaks in to steal Michael’s Rolodex in an effort to defeat him. But it would take more than that to bring down Michael, and he proves that by taking the meeting with Dwight’s client. Best of all, he calls Dwight from his cell and lets him listen in as he talks with him. And he actually does an amazing job at spinning why Michael is the better option and that Dwight simply doesn’t meet what he needs anymore. Dwight tries to stop him and actually shows up to the meeting (getting past the secretary with a “spin move”) but a big part ultimately comes down to price and that was what they are looking at. As a publishing company they do use a lot of paper, and it really doesn’t feel like many of these companies care about this paper war that is going on behind the scenes.

And that everyone, was this week’s Breakdown!. We leave this week seeing Michael Scott Paper Company slowly taking over the region and siphoning off some of Bunder Mifflin’s top clients. Will they keep this up or will Dwight be able to get his revenge. Stop by next week to find out! And in the meantime, I hope to have a nice podcast update for you very soon, I have absolutely not stopped thinking about it and have been working away at getting this frontier ready to go.

I hope you all have a great weekend, stay motivated, and I’ll look for you around the Breakroom!

Good morning everyone and welcome back to the Breakdown! So what have we had happen this week? Well, we survived the bachelor party last weekend so that was a good start to the week. Also I have a hot tip for people doing a summer party; if you are planning on doing Jello shots, make sure to also do alcohol-free shots as well. Not everyone wants to have alcohol, but very few people will turn down some Jello. I chose to do this and they were pretty popular. I also tried my hand at making some alcohol-free Fireball as part of a drinking game, I will have to include the recipes that I did in the future because they also ended up being pretty dang popular. While I have hosted plenty of times, I haven’t spent much time getting very creative when it came to the drinks so I feel like I got to get out my inner mixologist.

What about some good business advice, I think the piece I want to call out is what to do when you are feeling anxious and stressed at work. We all have those times where we feel overwhelmed, and truth is that a lot of the time it probably has very little to do with work itself. There are certainly times where it actually is nice to have some work to keep you busy and take your mind off things, but it is important to be able to recognize when it is necessary to step away for a mental health break. Step outside for some fresh air, treat yourself to a sweet snack, find funny videos on your phone, do whatever you need to calm your brain down. If you can line it up on your regular breaks, then great! If you cannot, I hope you have a leader as understanding as my own where you can let them know you need to take a personal few minutes and need to step away. If we don’t take the time to acknowledge where our headspace is or if you have the mental bandwidth to deal with the tasks at hand, it could ultimately result in a messier situation. Your work will still be there when you come back so grab that chocolate, turn on some music, and look at the silly memes being sent your way.

With that said, let us get into today’s Breakdown. Picking up from last week, we are officially unveiling the office space of the Michael Scott Paper Company. Michael, Pam, and Ryan all show up fully prepared to take on their first formal day in the space. Ryan simply brought himself and his lunch, Pam showed up giddy to start and brought a plant for the space, and Michael brought in a goldfish and a giant barrel of cheese puffs. But he did more than that as he took the time to update contacts, lined up product distributers, and sent out an evite (electronic invitation) to people for their pancake luncheon later that day. Overall I feel like this was a good setup to a first day in the office, but that doesn’t mean things cannot go down hill from there.

I feel each of them really had their own internal struggles. Ryan simply didn’t seem like he wanted to be there. He is kind of a brat and spent the whole day talking on the phone or putting pictures on the computer. I do believe that deep down, his internal conflict was a combination of he still didn’t believe the company was real and perhaps he is struggling to let himself feel inspired by work again. Or he is simply a punk who thinks he is too cool for this group and just wants to get with friends and hang out “Scranton Style,” whatever that means. Pam was very much trying to remain excited but the day just showed her that the job wasn’t what she had hoped it would be. She was arguing with Ryan the entire day, felt cold in the closet/office, and felt pressured to take on the secretarial duties in the office. At the height of their discord, Michael suggested each person gets to pick a corner of the office and that becomes their private space. Since Michael needs two, Pam gets stuck with the corner with the copier (which coincidentally was the old copier from Dunder Mifflin that was tossed out). In a fit she actually stormed out and came up to the Dunder Mifflin off and essentially begged Charles for a job. There wasn’t anything available, unfortunately, so he had to return back to Michael. Michael also felt a strong sense of gloom today as well. Between seeing Ryan and Pam argue, then suspect Pam was trying to leave, and a very disappointing turnout to the luncheon he felt like he had made a huge mistake.

It was the end of the day and you could have almost bet money that the company was going to give up then, everyone seemed so defeated. But then Pam received a phone call from the one non-Dunder Mifflin person who showed up to their sad little luncheon. He has his own company and, as it turns out, he was in the market for a paper company and chose to place an order. The mood completely shifted after that, you’d swear they never had any doubt. It is true that the world isn’t always fair and that good things do not always happen to good people. But they sometimes do and when they do, it reminds us to not give up on ourselves. Sometimes it is that one win which is all that is needed to propel you forward to keep moving on.

It was a straightforward day at the Michael Scott Paper Company, but what about Dunder Mifflin? Charles hired a new secretary who is coincidentally named Kelly. So our original Kelly has taken it upon herself to rush to Charles and say “yes, you wanted me” each time he would call out for the other Kelly. Her logic is that if he hears this enough, he will actually want her. As silly as this sounds, it can happen because a person will start to associate a feeling or phrase with a person if it happens enough. But new Kelly decides to go by her middle name, Erin, to make it easier. Kelly Kapoor just gets angry because her middle name is Rajnigandha which she absolutely hates. Contrary to what Kevin believes, my research tells me this does come off as a girl’s name.

Andy and Dwight have started to spend a lot of time together and are actually going camping together after work. Despite having been rivals for so long, they found a mutual admiration for one another which seems to happen a lot (according to Dwight). Even when they discover they both have a thing for Erin, they quickly pivot and focus on their friendship. Frankly there isn’t much more to it, they are annoying apart and more annoying together playing music and singing together in the break room.

Finally, perhaps the most annoying part of the day has to do with our very own Jim. Early on in the morning, Jim was asked by Charles to put together a rundown of his client list and to then get it faxed over to the distribution list. And I have an entire series of questions and confusion about this. First, Jim has no idea what a rundown is and he didn’t bother to ask. It is true that a rundown could mean a variety of things, but he should have been able to figure out the gist of what Charles expected from this. But still, it would have been as simple as asking him what specifics does he want to see in this rundown? Charles actually should have clarified this because unless the company routinely has a format referred to as “a rundown” then he is simply asking for a summary but without any parameters. Another issue I have is, there should already be a report or list someplace which is a rundown of Jim’s clients. Charles should be able to look it up or pull from a file and he would have it all; or Jim could’ve done this as well. I do not believe there isn’t a master list of their clients someplace in the office. Finally, why is Charles only asking Jim to do this? I would imagine that Charles should want this from everyone, in which case he would have sent out an email specifying the parameters of what he wants to see in “a rundown.” I will sum this up as Jim is lame for not asking for insight, and Charles for assuming that every company uses the same lingo. Both of them should just get over themselves because they are not being productive. For those reading this, we are actually in a much better place than Jim is. If someone gave me a vague request like that, I very easily could use an AI program to take the information I have and give me a pretty good example of a rundown. But still, I think my key advice with this is if you are tasked with something you are unsure about, take the time to ask. I am very routinely tasked with running certain reports or audits to then provide to leaders or employees. Very often their requests are very vague, likely because they do not realize how many variations I could answer such a request. I take the time to respond to breakdown what I believe they are looking for and will prepare, but to correct me if I need to include a different piece. For example, I am often asked to provide an employee’s worked hours. This might sound simple, but the phrase “worked hours” carries a few different meanings. Are they trying to figure out their placement to their next wage increase? Maybe they need a breakdown of their paid hours to ensure they aren’t short hours. Or perhaps they to provide the hours to renew a license so it must be specifically worked and exclude any sort of paid time off. By taking five minutes at the start, I could save a hour’s worth of extra work later on. So do not be afraid to ask for clarification, a good leader or customer will usually appreciate that extra effort you are making.

I’ve been holding in my frustration of that all day so I just had to get that out.

But that today’s Breakdown! I know I have done longer and was hoping for some brilliant insight but I am afraid I just do not have the bandwidth today. I hope you all have a fantastic weekend, hoping to relax and still be productive so wish me luck! As always, I look forward to seeing you around the Breakroom!