Nicknames

This week in the episode of The Office you see the blending of the dysfunctional characteristics of the characters.

Michael was selfish, Pam was bossy, Dwight was mischievous, Jim was stubborn, Angela was devious and Andy was oblivious.

One witnesses this throughout the complications of choosing a new copy machine versus new chairs, Dwight’s trickery with Angela during wedding planning and Michael’s selfish desire to keep the money for himself without upsetting his subordinates.

The lesson here is that people will always be dysfunctional to some degree and will need to work together to get around that. This reminds me of a story.

In the same way that The Office characters have dysfunctional characteristics, people in the work place have these same types of traits. My father chooses to tell us stories based off of his coworker’s dysfunctional characteristics.

Everyday my dad comes home from work with another story about the people from work. But he has gone to an extreme in that, he doesn’t tell us their real names, rather a name given to them based off of these traits.

There is the anger management guy, the compulsive liar, the old bitty, the opera guy, the jerk, the alternative medicine guy, the ex-bus driver genius guy, the VP’s, the wardrobe change lady and the guy with only four teeth.

The above nicknames show that these are the traits that stand out the most about these people. I don’t know any of their real names, but I know about them through their character trait that has stood out to my father.

Similarly, in The Office, the writers have developed their characters around certain character traits that one witnesses in them every episode – which I have come to discover through my dad, really is true about people.

In reality, you come to see people with only a few of those traits. You are thrown together in a work situation and have to learn to get along with these people, that’s the way life is.

When asking my dad his opinion on these nicknames, his comment was, “I wonder what nickname they all have for me?”

The Unsuspecting Phone Salesman

In this week’s episode of The Office, Michael makes Dwight and Jim role play a sales call due to the fact that they got poor customer ratings. Jim plays the part of the difficult potential customer, all the while tormenting Dwight with his unreasonable responses. They proceed to get so involved in this role play that they obviously think it is real and Dwight actually gets upset. This reminds me of a particularly funny story that happened some years ago when a salesman called into our house and my then fourteen year old brother, Peter, answered the call.

Peter answered the phone and proceeded to say that we were not interested in what he had to offer. The salesman then demanded to know if he was eighteen years of age or older. “Are you able to make the financial decisions of your household?” asked the salesman.

Obviously my brother did not sound old enough to take the call. My brother then proceeded to criticize and grill the poor salesman by asking him if he thought there was something wrong with his voice. My brother then continued on with the charade by saying that, “If you just had throat surgery, you would sound like this too!” The salesman apologized profusely and my brother ended the phone call abruptly.

“Well, I was fairly young, and had always heard of people talking about how annoying telephone salesmen were, so I thought I’d get rid of one,” said Peter, when asked why he responded to the salesman that way.

Moral of the story: it is fun to prank or torment salesmen over the phone.

Frustration

This week on The Office, we discover that Holly has to move to a new branch. In this episode there are multiple clips of Holly, Michael and Darryl while driving to Holly’s new home in Nashua, New Hampshire. For Darryl this eight hour car ride was an excruciating experience. During this trip it slowly gets more painful for Darryl as Michael and Holly are arguing, crying, and upset. Once again, this is where I would like to draw a connection to my personal life experience.

When I was nine years old I went on a trip to England with my aunt, uncle and cousin. During this trip we somehow managed to get lost at a very late hour. The road was winding, with a cliff to our right and a corn field to our left. After driving for several hours in the pitch black my uncle decides to try to bring some humor to this situation by flipping the headlights off and back on again. This makes my already frustrated aunt so upset that she will no longer read the map for my uncle. And of course, the map is too small for my uncle to read. The situation is increasingly frustrating to my cousin and I who are in the back seat and end up eating a loaf of bread for dinner (which I might add was the best loaf of bread I’ve ever tasted). At one point my uncle pulls to the side of the road, opens the door and walks away (with the corn field on our left and the cliff on our right). Us three girls start worrying and thinking he has decided to ditch us and walk. But he comes back and we learn he simply had to go to the bathroom. In the end, I found our way home by remembering one of the road signs. The little nine year old niece was the one who found our way home and provided comfort to those who were upset. Similarly, Darryl, the one who you do not expect to be the comforting type provides comfort to Michael towards the end of the trip.

When asking my cousin Candace about this experience her sole comment was: “Till this day I will never forget the taste of that bread.”

So I guess the moral of the story is, sometimes the people you least expects to come through in times of frustration end up being the exact person that you needed.

This is a picture of me prior to our frustrating experience of getting lost.

Astird or Astrid?

In The Office this week, Jan brings into work her baby, Astird…or is it Astrid? Michael has told Angela the name and asked her to put “Astird” on the gift M&M’s. He says that Jan said it was the name of a Viking Princess. Michael got it wrong. The baby’s real name is Astrid, who was a Viking Princess.

So first of all, Michael gets the name wrong. Secondly, he does not realize that the name has possible bad connotations. This reminds me of a story from my life.

When my brother, Peter and I were young, around six or seven years old, we had these little stuffed beanie baby turtles. We decided to name them. We wanted to come up with a better name than the other one could; sibling rivalry of course.

Since Peter is three years older and quicker than I am at these things, he came up with the name, “Turd.” It made sense to him of course. And I was jealous that he had come up with such a clever name that I decided I wanted my turtle to also be named “Turd.”

“I was young,” said Peter, “and I thought it sounded cool, and I wasn’t aware of the connotation of what it meant. ‘Turd’ rhymed with ‘turtle’ so it made sense when I was a little kid.”

Similarly to Michael in The Office, Peter and I did not understand the negative connotations associated with the name, “Turd.” Our little Turd’s accompanied us everywhere and we shared their names with everyone along the way.

It was not till years later that we discovered the real meaning of the name of our little turds.

My parents secretly laughed about this behind our backs but did not have the hearts to tell us.

“I couldn’t bring myself to tell them the names they were so proud of actually meant something you might step in,” said my mom.

Naivety in a child can be excused, forgiven and even laughed upon. What is Michael’s excuse?

Business Ethics

Quick Summary
The episode this week was focused on ethics. Holly is holding a seminar on ethics in the office. This leads to Jim trying to prove to Dwight that he does waste the company’s time which is against the ethics policy. Jim proceeds to time everything that Dwight does.

Let me tell you what exact moment I want to draw your attention to. Jim is timing everything Dwight does. So of course, Dwight takes it to the extreme by wasting not even a second after Jim starts timing him. Even going to the point of peeing in a bottle. This…is the connection to my life.

How it connects to me
I want to share with you a little story which I was reminded of. One day I got into my mother’s car with my mother and also my brother. I proceed to see a bottle of what I assumed was apple juice and went to reach for it. This was followed very quickly by, “DOOOONN’TTT!!!” It turns out that while my brother and his friend were out, his friend needed to use the bathroom and neither one of them wanted to stop. Which resulted in the bottle of what I assumed was apple juice. What I do not understand is why it was left in the car until the next day…

Could one consider peeing in the office, or in a car, unethical? The definition of ethics according to www.dictionary.com is: “1. a system of moral principles: the ethics of a culture. 2. the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture, etc…” If our culture considers peeing in the office, or in a car, unethical then Dwight would once again be going against the ethics police. Personally, I consider peeing anywhere outside of the bathroom to be unethical.

A few extras:
Dwights blog: http://blog.nbc.com/DwightsBlog/
Adventures with Angela: http://www.nbc.com/The_Office/angela/
Meredith’s blog: http://blog.nbc.com/MeredithsBlog/

About this blog

The TV show “The Office” has becoming phenomenally popular, especially amongst college aged students. This TV show can relate in multiple ways to many different types of people. Each week a new problem is faced in the show, a new personality trait dealt with, and usually Michael doing something incredibly annoying. Personally, I can relate to this TV show almost perfectly.

This blog is going to be about how “The Office” relates to my life and the peoples lives around me. I am going to be analyzing different characters and how they reflect people in my life. Also, different situations and how I have personally experienced situations like them, or how I know of people who have. People will be interviewed, stories will be shared, and analysis will be done.

I hope you are able to enjoy and relate to the situations in “The Office” and also in my life.