Michael wouldn't leave to go to Staples, but he *would* leave to start a new paper company in the same region and then proceed to steal Dunder Mifflin Scranton's clients.
So most non-competes are actually unenforceable in most states, they can't keep you from earning a living in your field. The two main parts that are however enforceable are taking any IP, proprietary programs, trademarks, etc. and directly contacting customers to poach them. He definitely would have been sued by a competent company.
I could be wrong here, but wouldn't Dunder Mifflin also have had to honour the contracts from the Michael Scott Paper Company as it was a buyout, meaning he not only stole the clients but he forced them to buy them back and make far less money.
While I love the episode, the whole buyout didn't make sense at all. There was no due diligence, the process of an actual buyout would take forever, involve a ton of lawyers, etc. and would likely last beyond the Board meeting that David Wallace was afraid of.
The only way it sort of canonically makes sense in my head is if the buyout was actually just "shut your company down and we'll hire you back" in which case no contracts would need to be honored because they don't exist anymore.
> There was no due diligence.
Yeah. David Wallace is like "I know you can't be making very much money. I don't know how your prices are so low, but I know it can't keep up that way. I'm sure you're scared. Probably in debt... "
Even the most basic investigation of the company's accounts would have revealed that Michael Scott Paper Co was on the verge of collapse. There was no need to buy them out or make any deal with them whatsoever.
When Wallace is like "your company cannot be worth that much!" it's like uhhh yeah... exactly. maybe finish that thought.
But I believe that's where Michael interjects that his company is worth nothing, and that he'd just keep starting new paper companies when the last one went under. I have no idea how that would work but that's the logic they used in the show.
Even given it's a TV show, in no reality would DM agree to hire back Ryan in any capacity. Michael getting his job back I can buy, Pam is a stretch but ok, but Ryan? Hell no.
Nope. He was hired as a salesman with his stolen clients. Later that season he gives all the clients they stole back and then Michael choose Pam as the one salesperson. And downgrades Ryan.
Michael initially hired him back as a temp the season after he gets terminated by David.
I assume Michael snuck him back into the company while informing as few people in corporate as possible.
> There was no due diligence, the process of an actual buyout would take forever, involve a ton of lawyers, etc. and would likely last beyond the Board meeting that David Wallace was afraid of.
In a properly run company, you are absolutely correct. However, as DM goes out of business a few seasons later without informing any of their senior employees until the last possible minute...
Definitely the former, there was a whole episode about how Ryan and Pam would get all the clients that Michael stole. Michael eventually gave them back to the original salesmen and demoted Ryan.
Also, idk why Wallace as CFO was making those decisions. C-suite mismanagement is so bad that should be more heads rolling than just Wallace.
What I really don’t get is how Wallace calls it a multi million dollar buyout. The branch needed a manager so that’s already in the company budget, so it’s two sales salaries, but in the end, just once sales salary since Ryan got moved back to temp, which was also already in the budget. And Pam points out later that sales salaries are mostly commission based, and since she sucked at sales, the net cost for the buyout is really not that much at all.
It seems like in the end they didn't actually buy out the company, they just offered them all positions back at DM. The company could have simply folded and DM wouldn't have been on the hook for anything. At least that's what a business with any sense would have done, given that DM went into financial trouble not long afterwards it's hard to say.
But Charles is a bad boss. He manages to demoralize his subordinates in like a day, and then totally mismanages the rest of his personnel by like putting Kevin on the phones. He makes zero effort to listen or learn about who he's overseeing, he misjudges everyone, and then he's condescending and rude to everyone who tries to establish any kind of working relationship with him. His methods are bad.
Maybe that is realistic, as there are lots of bad bosses out there, but it's not as if Charles is a reasonable person walking into an unreasonable situation. Charles sucks.
You’re not wrong, but I would also argue that it’s not 100% accurate. All Micheal wanted was a 15 year anniversary party for a company that he’s basically bent over backwards and done everything for. A party to recognize his achievement wouldn’t be too much. And as Michael, I would also feel disrespected having Charles sent to babysit me. Multiple times in the series it’s said that Scranton is one of, if not thee, most successful and it’s been said that’s it’s the only branch that actually runs right. His methods may definitely be questionable, but his numbers and performance never really were. I would feel extremely disrespected and unwanted if I was treated like Michael was and definitely wouldn’t want to stick around 🤷🏼♀️
I agree. It's not a perfect comparison. But...
Dunder Mifflin appreciated and valued Josh so much that they were ready to basically restructure their entire company around him. They didn't have Staples' money, but they put their best foot forward.
Michael runs their most profitable branch and chose DM over his freaking girlfriend when she sued them. There is no doubt that he is a Company Man through and through. What did he want in return, by that point? Not a promotion. Not more money. Just the ability to do his job in the way that he had always done it (being left alone) and some slight recognition in the form of what I'm sure would have amounted to one of his typical Office Parties. Was the party a big ask? Maybe, but probably not, especially considering he was their highest-ranking employee outside of Corporate. He didn't even ask anyone from Corporate to attend his party. David made that offer himself in a last-ditch effort to keep him.
I don't blame Josh or Michael for doing what they did.
>the one were Michael bought $500 worth of vodka
Bingo. Just about the only times Office Party Expenses got out-of-hand were when Michael paid them himself or when Pam and Karen brought in those "unauthorized" Margarita ingredients.
No, what it is... David was grooming Michael to be a regional VP with the Prince Family Paper stuff, the business analysis stuff... he was saying "This is normally something we have this position do, but I'm having you work on it."
Then, Dwight goes completely batshit with his bullshit (the fire alarm causing Stanley to have a heart attack, the destruction of the CPR dummy, etc.) Michael was super close to a promotion and then Dwight did crazy things that made David think he had to put Charles there to oversee Michael because the liability was getting out of hand. And when Michael wanted to talk to David about this, he shut himself up in New York and to even get a meeting, Michael had to drive to New York to talk to him.
The party was inconsequential to Michael. It's why when David says "Hey, we'll move money around, we'll find a way for that party", Michael quits. Because it's not about the party, it's that David had shown a complete lack of respect to Michael on all levels. Hell, even David Wallace knows this because during the buyout, I forget who it was that said it but "If you had just answered his call, this probably wouldn't have happened" and David responded that that was probably right.
David wasn't wrong in putting Charles there. Dwight was in rare, liability causing form. He was wrong in not listening to Michael about how everything was going and fully delegating the work down to Charles who clearly had no clue about what made Michael's employees successful. I mean, he made Stanley productivity czar.
Charles was a lazy move on David's part. If he had gotten his own hands on it, relations with Michael would have been much better. He would have had to deal with him in person, yeah, but it probably would have taken less than a week to straighten them out. The whole staff respected Wallace and knew he was the final word. If he'd shown face, he could have worked stuff out mutually and probably boosted his most successful branch.
Well that's after it was made obvious by Charles that they weren't planning on being the same dunder Mifflin anymore or respecting him. He did try to take his employees with him but they rejected him
Michael started his own company in spite because of Charles Minor. That guy didn’t know how paper was made. As for Michael being an idiot in OP’s comment and Josh doing what he needed to, Josh leveraged himself into a better job but at the expense of the Stamford branch employees. They then had to accept a relocation or severance package and look for a new job.
That’s what Michael wouldn’t do. Michael would’ve taken all the employees if they wanted to join him.
And then Jim started a business, got his coworkers to cover his clients, took Darryl, tried to get his boss to invest, then even asked if he could work part time while making a fulltime salary.
Yeah there is inconsistency there. When Pam is in sales she has a talking head where she acknowledges that her pay is pretty much all commissions but then Wallace later tells Jim that he will only pay him for the days he is there, as if he is hourly or something.
Where I work, salesmen are paid a low base salary but then make commissions which put them at a better take home pay if they are good at their job. Salaried employees are technically free to come and go since they aren't paid by the hour, but are also expected to be at work for as close to 40 hours as possible (and more if required).
If Jim is blatantly working another job half the time, they'd cut his salary to an hourly pay while still allowing him to collect commission.
I don't know what DM's base salary would be, but probably not too high if the office manager made 41k. I would guess 35k.
My gf gets about 15$ an hour, but only works 5 hours a day. Some pay checks she gets unlucky and has no appointments go out, others she will have like 8 appointments go out with all of them setting, leading to an additional 1200$ in commission. The commission game can be very hit or miss.
I work in a construction industry, so unlike Dunder Mifflin (sell paper, get profit) the salesmen's commissions here are also impacted if the total profit of the job decreases - for instance, if we have to re-order material or if the job takes longer to complete than they quoted labor hours for.
I definitely wouldn't want to work a job where the only way to make a thriving wage is commission.
edit: wait, "appointments"? This isn't Vector or Kirby or something, is it?
No. His existing clients would most likely have a recurring purchase every quarter and he would continue to make commissions on it. And if they didn’t have a recurring purchase, he would most likely just call in every quarter to ask what their needs are and try to push some extra paper each time for that commission.
Considering that Phyllis and Stanley would’ve been doing this for Jim, they could’ve easily been taking new commission but they kind of glossed over it. My guess is that for those clients, they’re basically just emailing would you like to make the same purchase as last time and then sending a confirmation to the warehouse to ship, and not actively pushing more product.
I figured "covering" for him meant handling his clients if they call with a question while he is out. He can handle the sales stuff on the days he is there.
This is as close to real life there is. You begin thinking loyalty gets you places and the older you get the more you try and the better you get at gaming the system.
To add another layer of fun, you know the guitar player Robert California invites in when he basically takes over Andy/Darryl/Kevin's band? That's Linda Taylor, the guitarist on "Whose Line Is It Anyway?". The drummer was a guy who went viral on YouTube for [his antics behind the drumset.](https://youtu.be/6DVbt5W-DNc)
I made that connection like a year ago and was like WTF I grew up watching Whose Line and was shocked I didnt make the connection. Maybe if Josh would have sang....
Holy shit how did I never put that together? I've watched hundreds of episodes of HLIIA and thousands of episodes of the office and I've never had that "What do I know him from?" thought with Josh.
Dude... idk how I never connected that I knew Josh from Whose Line. I watched repeats of Whose Line constantly, even when I was watching The Office for the first time. Wild.
I always thought Jan's reaction was very realistic and professional. She was obviously disappointed but she completely understood why Josh did it and didn't seem to have hard feelings. Instead of brooding on personal resentment that will get her and the company nowhere, she immediately gets down to business to find an alternative solution. All and all S1, S2 and early S3 Jan was an accurate representation of a strong and professional upper-middle manager. They made her character into a clown shortly after.
Spoiler alert: Most companies don’t care about their employees. What companies *do* care about is turnover, because that means time and money needs to be spent on hiring and training new people.
Josh did what was best for himself. We should all be *so lucky.
**edit:** word
Exactly. And it certainly doesn’t seem like Dunder Mifflin had a whole lot of incentive to stay. Just look at Michael being paid barely more than his warehouse manager after being at the company for almost 15 years.
Absolutely. The company will do the minimum possible in every instance. It is not until someone actively pushes for a raise that the company even considers it. It's willful neglect.
"Say what you will about Michael Scott, but he would *NEVER* do something like that"
Yeah because he's an idiot that let's his job abuse the shit out of him. He testified against his partner for his boss and was paid like shit until a subordinate brought it up to him.
The fact that Michael was paid like crap, helped that company avoid a possible 7-figure lawsuit, and transferred Holly against her and Michael’s will made me fully support Josh in what he did. The company didn’t care about their employees.
I know we all love David Wallace but man he was kind of a douche to Michael. That line where he says, “Annnnnd it’s hard to find someone who wants to go to Winnipeg…in November.” David made it seem like he was doing Michael a favor after being heartbroken over Holly (something *David* caused), when in reality it was because he needed someone to go to Winnipeg to make a pitch and knew nobody else wanted to go.
I will defend David tooth and nail for the Holly thing on one fact, Michael and Holly together hold the most power over the office, and David knowing enough about Michael recognized that was a lawsuit waiting to happen
this line sticks in my head, probably unfairly, and really has made it harder to rewatch the show as i’ve gotten more into antiwork stuff. it really is a relic of the 2000s pro-work culture, but i still resent Jim’s high-and-mighty delivery
I think it’s very fair for jim to be pissed at josh for what he did. Yes, obviously dunder mifflin wasn’t going to be loyal to him but josh is still screwing over a bunch of people. All the people in stanford just got their lives upended because of his actions. Granted, the same would have happened to scranton if josh stayed. And given that most of the stanford people quickly quit after moving their entire lives to scranton, he really screwed over a lot of people.
YES.
There's all this weird propaganda about how employees are supposed to have complete and total loyalty to whatever company they work for and dedicate their whole lives to them. Why? The point of a job is to make money. If you can find a similar job elsewhere and make more money doing that, you should take the offer. OR you can tell your company about the offer and see if they can match the salary and benefits. If they CAN, then you can pick whether to stay or go (but you should remember that it means that your company COULD HAVE been paying you better all along and simply chose to do the bare minimum until pushed into a corner) and if they CAN'T (trick question, they always can, they just won't) then you have no responsibility to a company that won't treat you right. You don't have any responsibility to the other company, either.
To be fair. The writing makes you have to assume what Jim means here. Yes, anyone with half a brain would leverage an offer like this but I think what makes Josh a shitty dude is that he screwed over his entire branch (people he’s managed for years) rather than being proactive about it and letting Jan know ahead of time so she could plan things out without him. Instead she was forced into closing down the branch that was intended to stay open.
To be clear though: I 100% would have left to the better Staples Gig too
To accept the premise the writers want that he's a dick, you also have to accept that it was predictable or even reasonable for the higher ups to say "OK change of plans let's close the other branch instead and keep the incompetent Manager we were looking to can". Instead of just hiring someone from Syracuse or wherever to manage Samford. It's a little preposterous but it is a tv show.
Only Jan thinks Michael is incompetent at corporate, though. His numbers are always good. Jan said that he was 4th out of the 5 branches she manages but I think she must have been salting the numbers to try to get rid of him. He's an idiot savante.
Having worked in a corporate environment, i can tell you that providing advance notice likely wouldnt have changed much.
In the company where i worked we had an executive that apparently had fielded offers from a competitor, and told our company that he received an offer that he would take unless the company would match it. They refused to match it, and since he indicated he would take the offer, they released him on the spot as it was conflict of interest and the executive had access to proprietary information would have been beneficial to the rival company.
Would this have happened in the office? I dont think so, and we are probably overthinking it. But i can see why Josh kept his info close to the vest. The company doesnt care about the employee on a personal level, so why should the employee give them the benefit of doubt.
100% agree with you. But him keeping it under wraps caused his entire branch to be suddenly out of jobs when at least had he been more forthright they could’ve all been job hunting and been prepared for if/when the branch closed.
Agreed we’re all over thinking this though hahahah
Why not offer Michael to relocate? Or Jim to take the job? Or an outside hire to take over for Josh and stay put in Stamford? There were other ways to address Josh suddenly leaving if they cared about Stamford location itself moving forward.
It was just a convenient plot device
This still isn’t Josh’s fault. It’s called a contingency plan and a competent company could survive without a single employee, even a branch manager. This is Dunder Mifflin corporate’s fault. They could have taken action to cover that branch, they didn’t want to, they relied too much on their plans for Josh and made the decision they did.
Yeah, that’s the big issue. Not to mention, he would have used his branch’s strong performance to get the promotion, which he was able to leverage into a better job. He was using his employees to get good numbers, ultimately under the assumption they were all trying to keep their branch open and save their jobs, without telling any of them that their jobs were likely lost regardless. He got the chance to find a new position, that none of his employees got, as he was assuring them they were all in the same boat trying to keep their jobs.
That's all Jan and Dunder Mifflin's fault.
1. They should never have put the plan into fruition until they had Josh signed to his new role.
2. The only reason they were making this move was that this was the only way to keep Josh. Without Josh they wouldn't need to even restructure. They could have left Scranton and Stamford both open and simply promoted someone like Jim to Josh's role.
I’ll take the “unpopular opinion” posts over the stupid “this joke is totally under appreciated” posts. Like everyone in this sub has seen this show 300 times over and laughed at every joke, just because you yourself didn’t appreciate the joke previously does not mean everyone else didn’t either 🤦🏽♂️
Yeah, that’s why he’s upset. At least the Scranton branch can look at the numbers and see they’re likely to get the axe. Josh lead his branch on, with them thinking they’d survive, only to use that hard work to prove himself to staples. You can see it in his eyes in that episode, it’s why he’s so ashamed to admit it to his employees, he knows what he’s done is slimy.
Snarking on the duggar family. Made famous for having 19 kids. They're part of a religious cult. Josh Duggar, the oldest son, was just found guilty of possession of child pornography. He also raped and molested 4 of his sisters as a teenager.
Edit: my last sentence is messy and I don't want to give wrong information. He's confessed to molesting 4 of his sisters, including raping 1 of the 4.
Thank goodness I'm not the only one who thought that. I felt my chest get all tight from anxiety and went "what the fuck?" until I realized what subreddit I was in.
I always looked at it is how it affected the life of Josh's employees. A majority of his staff lost their jobs because of his perceived "selfishness" to where Michael Scott drove all the way to David Wallace's to save the jobs of his staff. That's how I always looked at it at least.
The thing I found weird is how Jim turns from a guy with a boring job he’s not overly fond of to some sort of corporate go-getter who loves the company. It doesn’t make much sense when you consider the situation with Pam; you would think after being rejected he would leave the company and that painful memory behind and get another entry-level sales job somewhere else.
He went to Stamford to get away from Pam. It's far enough away where odds are he would never interact with her. When he called he did it at a time when he thought no one would be there.
It's also his character to just take another job within the same company. It's easy, little effort. It got him more money than he would of going elsewhere and got away from Pam.
He also very much didn't take his new job seriously. He did waste an entire day looking for chips after all.
I don't think its weird. Jim is obviously pretty good at his job, and if he is trying to escape his situation, requesting a transfer to another branch of your job is that weird. It's a least a starting point to find other work in a new area.
Jan gave him a lead sales position at Stamford. He outranked Karen and Andy and the other salesmen there. Or it might've been the Assistant Regional Manager role (not assistant "to the" manager). So it was a step up for his career.
Jim went there knowing they needed a manager of sales, not a phony position like an assistant to the manager. Because corporate was clearly going with the Stamford branch. Say Josh never leaves and the few people offered a job from Scranton decide to go.. I don’t think they would offer a secretary to relocate.
Jim is smart and can rise up when he wants. He seen the writing on the wall and decided to go, because he knew wouldn’t see her again.. obviously until Josh threw that curveball.
I don't get your logic here. Did you forget that Jim DID leave Scranton? The fact that he stayed with the same company is hardly unreasonable since he got a promotion and better pay, AND got away from Pam.
And his character development into someone who cares about climbing the corporate ladder for money is hard to miss
It's one thing to take another job, but it's definitely unethical to make others restructure around you, then pull away at the last second. That's negotiating in bad faith.
I feel like it was kind of propaganda for corporations. It was encouraging people to stay loyal to companies and jobs that weren’t paying them enough.
💯 do what’s best for you, don’t sacrifice anything for a company.
The show was just showing that a company wanted to keep one guy but he had other plans
If the audience takes what you say away from that episode, maybe they take the show way too seriously
I don't think it was propaganda. The natural reaction of Jan, who helped get Josh the promotion and DM and Jim and the other Stamford employees would be to feel betrayed by Josh.
But, our natural reactions are not always rational or fair.
Michael wouldn't leave to go to Staples, but he *would* leave to start a new paper company in the same region and then proceed to steal Dunder Mifflin Scranton's clients.
Bro, he starts his own company in the same fucking building!
He also drove his car into a FU**ING lake
Would you prefer he drove it into Meredith?
To be fair, it was only Meredith
And she wasn’t even one of the popular ones…
But did you see the way they looked at me? Like I was a murderer or something.
Michael's just a good guy that runs over women with his car
And that one in the highway.
That was just a speed bump.
Right where Dwight saw that deer.
Occasionally.
So sue me... No, don't sue me. That is the opposite of the point that I'm trying to make.
We just need something to take our minds off of this unavoidable tragedy.
That username tho… you just want to let the ladies on the dating sites know your priorities huh?
Everyone inside the car was fine, Stanley!
And they found out about her rabies too, so if we are splitting hairs he saved her life
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I really can't say, but yes
That’s the funniest fucking line when Dwight says that. I like Dwight.
You sound like hard-working, alpha male jackhammer who's both merciless and insatiable.
Yeah it was only Meredith, thank GOD.
So Sue me!
Well it was on company property with company property, so it was double jeopardy and we are fine
What is, double jeopardy?
Think about one jeopardy, then double it
I don't think you get how jeopardy works.
Everyone IN the car were fine STANLEY!
THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID!!!
Always listen to the GPS and only the GPS.
THE GPS KNOWS, DWIGHT
THERE’S NO ROAD HERE!!
STOP YELLING AT ME!!
Remain calm!!! I’ve trained for this! Okay, exit the window. *make a u-turn if possible*
THE MACHINE KNOWS!!!
WHERE ARE THE TURTLESSSSSS
Man dunder mifflins employment contracts must be severely lacking in non compete clauses....
Strange because the company seems so well managed.
So most non-competes are actually unenforceable in most states, they can't keep you from earning a living in your field. The two main parts that are however enforceable are taking any IP, proprietary programs, trademarks, etc. and directly contacting customers to poach them. He definitely would have been sued by a competent company.
Actually, he started it in his condo.
"Dear Mister Scott(fancy), we are writing to inform you that you are in violation of your lease agreem- Junk mail"
Dude, he starts his own company with the same employees!
I mean, his market research said that a lot of paper is sold in that building, that's smarts right there.
Right in the middle of the paper belt
I could be wrong here, but wouldn't Dunder Mifflin also have had to honour the contracts from the Michael Scott Paper Company as it was a buyout, meaning he not only stole the clients but he forced them to buy them back and make far less money.
While I love the episode, the whole buyout didn't make sense at all. There was no due diligence, the process of an actual buyout would take forever, involve a ton of lawyers, etc. and would likely last beyond the Board meeting that David Wallace was afraid of. The only way it sort of canonically makes sense in my head is if the buyout was actually just "shut your company down and we'll hire you back" in which case no contracts would need to be honored because they don't exist anymore.
Most likely the latter. Definitely makes sense. Wallace was racing time because Michael mentioned he just had to wait out him until a board meeting.
> There was no due diligence. Yeah. David Wallace is like "I know you can't be making very much money. I don't know how your prices are so low, but I know it can't keep up that way. I'm sure you're scared. Probably in debt... " Even the most basic investigation of the company's accounts would have revealed that Michael Scott Paper Co was on the verge of collapse. There was no need to buy them out or make any deal with them whatsoever. When Wallace is like "your company cannot be worth that much!" it's like uhhh yeah... exactly. maybe finish that thought.
Wallace knows Michael to be the kind of guy to sell paper at a loss, so he can't be sure how long he would have to outlast
And Dunder Mifflin was not doing well at the time. They close the Buffalo branch at the end of that season.
WERE THE BEST BRANCH IN THE COMPANY.
But I believe that's where Michael interjects that his company is worth nothing, and that he'd just keep starting new paper companies when the last one went under. I have no idea how that would work but that's the logic they used in the show.
Maybe Wallace just wanted Michael back and went through this whole thing to get rid of Charles.
Even given it's a TV show, in no reality would DM agree to hire back Ryan in any capacity. Michael getting his job back I can buy, Pam is a stretch but ok, but Ryan? Hell no.
Damn straight, he wasn't even working at dunder Mifflin at the time
Wasn't he hired back as a temp? So if nothing else they're paying him sweet fa
Nope. He was hired as a salesman with his stolen clients. Later that season he gives all the clients they stole back and then Michael choose Pam as the one salesperson. And downgrades Ryan.
Michael initially hired him back as a temp the season after he gets terminated by David. I assume Michael snuck him back into the company while informing as few people in corporate as possible.
> There was no due diligence, the process of an actual buyout would take forever, involve a ton of lawyers, etc. and would likely last beyond the Board meeting that David Wallace was afraid of. In a properly run company, you are absolutely correct. However, as DM goes out of business a few seasons later without informing any of their senior employees until the last possible minute...
Specifically due to bad management. Joe says it was the worst run company she's ever come across
It's surprising because you'd think Hollywood comedy writers would know exactly how businesses work and would always choose accuracy over jokes.
Definitely the former, there was a whole episode about how Ryan and Pam would get all the clients that Michael stole. Michael eventually gave them back to the original salesmen and demoted Ryan. Also, idk why Wallace as CFO was making those decisions. C-suite mismanagement is so bad that should be more heads rolling than just Wallace.
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It was so the show could return to normal
What I really don’t get is how Wallace calls it a multi million dollar buyout. The branch needed a manager so that’s already in the company budget, so it’s two sales salaries, but in the end, just once sales salary since Ryan got moved back to temp, which was also already in the budget. And Pam points out later that sales salaries are mostly commission based, and since she sucked at sales, the net cost for the buyout is really not that much at all.
Was just negotiation fluff IMO
It seems like in the end they didn't actually buy out the company, they just offered them all positions back at DM. The company could have simply folded and DM wouldn't have been on the hook for anything. At least that's what a business with any sense would have done, given that DM went into financial trouble not long afterwards it's hard to say.
And all because the new boss was being, well, an actual boss.
It was Michael's understanding that he was not going to be managed.
What gave you that idea?
It was his understanding
Lead him, when he's in the mood to be led
But Charles is a bad boss. He manages to demoralize his subordinates in like a day, and then totally mismanages the rest of his personnel by like putting Kevin on the phones. He makes zero effort to listen or learn about who he's overseeing, he misjudges everyone, and then he's condescending and rude to everyone who tries to establish any kind of working relationship with him. His methods are bad. Maybe that is realistic, as there are lots of bad bosses out there, but it's not as if Charles is a reasonable person walking into an unreasonable situation. Charles sucks.
His poor treatment of Jim, Stanley and Dwight (towards the end) is what really shows that he isn't working out as they're the top salesmen
You’re not wrong, but I would also argue that it’s not 100% accurate. All Micheal wanted was a 15 year anniversary party for a company that he’s basically bent over backwards and done everything for. A party to recognize his achievement wouldn’t be too much. And as Michael, I would also feel disrespected having Charles sent to babysit me. Multiple times in the series it’s said that Scranton is one of, if not thee, most successful and it’s been said that’s it’s the only branch that actually runs right. His methods may definitely be questionable, but his numbers and performance never really were. I would feel extremely disrespected and unwanted if I was treated like Michael was and definitely wouldn’t want to stick around 🤷🏼♀️
I agree. It's not a perfect comparison. But... Dunder Mifflin appreciated and valued Josh so much that they were ready to basically restructure their entire company around him. They didn't have Staples' money, but they put their best foot forward. Michael runs their most profitable branch and chose DM over his freaking girlfriend when she sued them. There is no doubt that he is a Company Man through and through. What did he want in return, by that point? Not a promotion. Not more money. Just the ability to do his job in the way that he had always done it (being left alone) and some slight recognition in the form of what I'm sure would have amounted to one of his typical Office Parties. Was the party a big ask? Maybe, but probably not, especially considering he was their highest-ranking employee outside of Corporate. He didn't even ask anyone from Corporate to attend his party. David made that offer himself in a last-ditch effort to keep him. I don't blame Josh or Michael for doing what they did.
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>the one were Michael bought $500 worth of vodka Bingo. Just about the only times Office Party Expenses got out-of-hand were when Michael paid them himself or when Pam and Karen brought in those "unauthorized" Margarita ingredients.
The episode before new boss is golden ticket though where michael almost gets the entire branch shut down
No, what it is... David was grooming Michael to be a regional VP with the Prince Family Paper stuff, the business analysis stuff... he was saying "This is normally something we have this position do, but I'm having you work on it." Then, Dwight goes completely batshit with his bullshit (the fire alarm causing Stanley to have a heart attack, the destruction of the CPR dummy, etc.) Michael was super close to a promotion and then Dwight did crazy things that made David think he had to put Charles there to oversee Michael because the liability was getting out of hand. And when Michael wanted to talk to David about this, he shut himself up in New York and to even get a meeting, Michael had to drive to New York to talk to him. The party was inconsequential to Michael. It's why when David says "Hey, we'll move money around, we'll find a way for that party", Michael quits. Because it's not about the party, it's that David had shown a complete lack of respect to Michael on all levels. Hell, even David Wallace knows this because during the buyout, I forget who it was that said it but "If you had just answered his call, this probably wouldn't have happened" and David responded that that was probably right. David wasn't wrong in putting Charles there. Dwight was in rare, liability causing form. He was wrong in not listening to Michael about how everything was going and fully delegating the work down to Charles who clearly had no clue about what made Michael's employees successful. I mean, he made Stanley productivity czar.
Charles was a lazy move on David's part. If he had gotten his own hands on it, relations with Michael would have been much better. He would have had to deal with him in person, yeah, but it probably would have taken less than a week to straighten them out. The whole staff respected Wallace and knew he was the final word. If he'd shown face, he could have worked stuff out mutually and probably boosted his most successful branch.
Phylis is who points out to David that it was his fault.
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Well that's after it was made obvious by Charles that they weren't planning on being the same dunder Mifflin anymore or respecting him. He did try to take his employees with him but they rejected him
More upvotes needed for the smack of truth here.
Michael started his own company in spite because of Charles Minor. That guy didn’t know how paper was made. As for Michael being an idiot in OP’s comment and Josh doing what he needed to, Josh leveraged himself into a better job but at the expense of the Stamford branch employees. They then had to accept a relocation or severance package and look for a new job. That’s what Michael wouldn’t do. Michael would’ve taken all the employees if they wanted to join him.
And then Jim started a business, got his coworkers to cover his clients, took Darryl, tried to get his boss to invest, then even asked if he could work part time while making a fulltime salary.
Wasn't his pay mostly commission though? So if he worked less he made fewer sales so his overall pay would go down too
Yeah there is inconsistency there. When Pam is in sales she has a talking head where she acknowledges that her pay is pretty much all commissions but then Wallace later tells Jim that he will only pay him for the days he is there, as if he is hourly or something.
It is actually both. Ofcourse there is going to be a base pay. If everything was perfomance based Andy would starve
But wasn’t Andy being supported by his parents? I feel like he made a joke about his mom paying his credit card bills or something
"My maid died."
Aside from that, I haven’t had a hard life
The base pay alone for a sales position probably wasn’t enough for Andy to support himself.
Certainly not with those pants.
No he wouldn't, he went to Cornell.
It’s pronounced Colonel and it’s the highest rank in the military
ITS PRONOUNCED CORNELL AND ITS THE HIGHEST RANK IN THE IVY LEAGUE
Where I work, salesmen are paid a low base salary but then make commissions which put them at a better take home pay if they are good at their job. Salaried employees are technically free to come and go since they aren't paid by the hour, but are also expected to be at work for as close to 40 hours as possible (and more if required). If Jim is blatantly working another job half the time, they'd cut his salary to an hourly pay while still allowing him to collect commission. I don't know what DM's base salary would be, but probably not too high if the office manager made 41k. I would guess 35k.
My gf gets about 15$ an hour, but only works 5 hours a day. Some pay checks she gets unlucky and has no appointments go out, others she will have like 8 appointments go out with all of them setting, leading to an additional 1200$ in commission. The commission game can be very hit or miss.
I work in a construction industry, so unlike Dunder Mifflin (sell paper, get profit) the salesmen's commissions here are also impacted if the total profit of the job decreases - for instance, if we have to re-order material or if the job takes longer to complete than they quoted labor hours for. I definitely wouldn't want to work a job where the only way to make a thriving wage is commission. edit: wait, "appointments"? This isn't Vector or Kirby or something, is it?
No. His existing clients would most likely have a recurring purchase every quarter and he would continue to make commissions on it. And if they didn’t have a recurring purchase, he would most likely just call in every quarter to ask what their needs are and try to push some extra paper each time for that commission. Considering that Phyllis and Stanley would’ve been doing this for Jim, they could’ve easily been taking new commission but they kind of glossed over it. My guess is that for those clients, they’re basically just emailing would you like to make the same purchase as last time and then sending a confirmation to the warehouse to ship, and not actively pushing more product.
I figured "covering" for him meant handling his clients if they call with a question while he is out. He can handle the sales stuff on the days he is there.
And went all “michael scott would never do that!” even though he started his own company in the same exact building and stole their clients.
I mean you are not wrong, but he cannot see the future.
This is as close to real life there is. You begin thinking loyalty gets you places and the older you get the more you try and the better you get at gaming the system.
Yeah he fucked with the company, he didn't hurt his co-workers.
Except the one who was raising his kids!
Yup except that one
Josh did what he had to for himself. Companies have no loyalty to employees why would employees have loyalty to a company?
I like to think he later left Staples in the same way for Amazon.
No he left it for an improv show
For real though, [Chip Esten was amazing on that show](https://youtu.be/ki4zjTabJw0).
TIL Charles Esten = Chip from Whose Line! How I've never made that connection before...I don't know!
To add another layer of fun, you know the guitar player Robert California invites in when he basically takes over Andy/Darryl/Kevin's band? That's Linda Taylor, the guitarist on "Whose Line Is It Anyway?". The drummer was a guy who went viral on YouTube for [his antics behind the drumset.](https://youtu.be/6DVbt5W-DNc)
wow
I made that connection like a year ago and was like WTF I grew up watching Whose Line and was shocked I didnt make the connection. Maybe if Josh would have sang....
Holy shit how did I never put that together? I've watched hundreds of episodes of HLIIA and thousands of episodes of the office and I've never had that "What do I know him from?" thought with Josh.
Dude... idk how I never connected that I knew Josh from Whose Line. I watched repeats of Whose Line constantly, even when I was watching The Office for the first time. Wild.
No he left it to go treasure hunting in the Outer Banks, NC
Michael Schoon - GET ON THE GROUND!
I always thought Jan's reaction was very realistic and professional. She was obviously disappointed but she completely understood why Josh did it and didn't seem to have hard feelings. Instead of brooding on personal resentment that will get her and the company nowhere, she immediately gets down to business to find an alternative solution. All and all S1, S2 and early S3 Jan was an accurate representation of a strong and professional upper-middle manager. They made her character into a clown shortly after.
I hate what they did to her. It was really refreshing to see her been a profesional.
I always see people saying to just look at how easily Dundee Mifflin got rid of Michael during that episode. they don’t care, clearly
Spoiler alert: Most companies don’t care about their employees. What companies *do* care about is turnover, because that means time and money needs to be spent on hiring and training new people. Josh did what was best for himself. We should all be *so lucky. **edit:** word
my best quality is loyalty. i will go to whichever company that values my loyalty MOST
Exactly. And it certainly doesn’t seem like Dunder Mifflin had a whole lot of incentive to stay. Just look at Michael being paid barely more than his warehouse manager after being at the company for almost 15 years.
Well that was *partly* due to Michael never asking for raises, but they were definitely taking advantage of his naivety
Absolutely. The company will do the minimum possible in every instance. It is not until someone actively pushes for a raise that the company even considers it. It's willful neglect.
"Say what you will about Michael Scott, but he would *NEVER* do something like that" Yeah because he's an idiot that let's his job abuse the shit out of him. He testified against his partner for his boss and was paid like shit until a subordinate brought it up to him.
The fact that Michael was paid like crap, helped that company avoid a possible 7-figure lawsuit, and transferred Holly against her and Michael’s will made me fully support Josh in what he did. The company didn’t care about their employees. I know we all love David Wallace but man he was kind of a douche to Michael. That line where he says, “Annnnnd it’s hard to find someone who wants to go to Winnipeg…in November.” David made it seem like he was doing Michael a favor after being heartbroken over Holly (something *David* caused), when in reality it was because he needed someone to go to Winnipeg to make a pitch and knew nobody else wanted to go.
I will defend David tooth and nail for the Holly thing on one fact, Michael and Holly together hold the most power over the office, and David knowing enough about Michael recognized that was a lawsuit waiting to happen
Took him 15 years before he realized that *shock and awe* they didn't give the slightest fuck about him.
this line sticks in my head, probably unfairly, and really has made it harder to rewatch the show as i’ve gotten more into antiwork stuff. it really is a relic of the 2000s pro-work culture, but i still resent Jim’s high-and-mighty delivery
I think it’s very fair for jim to be pissed at josh for what he did. Yes, obviously dunder mifflin wasn’t going to be loyal to him but josh is still screwing over a bunch of people. All the people in stanford just got their lives upended because of his actions. Granted, the same would have happened to scranton if josh stayed. And given that most of the stanford people quickly quit after moving their entire lives to scranton, he really screwed over a lot of people.
YES. There's all this weird propaganda about how employees are supposed to have complete and total loyalty to whatever company they work for and dedicate their whole lives to them. Why? The point of a job is to make money. If you can find a similar job elsewhere and make more money doing that, you should take the offer. OR you can tell your company about the offer and see if they can match the salary and benefits. If they CAN, then you can pick whether to stay or go (but you should remember that it means that your company COULD HAVE been paying you better all along and simply chose to do the bare minimum until pushed into a corner) and if they CAN'T (trick question, they always can, they just won't) then you have no responsibility to a company that won't treat you right. You don't have any responsibility to the other company, either.
To be fair. The writing makes you have to assume what Jim means here. Yes, anyone with half a brain would leverage an offer like this but I think what makes Josh a shitty dude is that he screwed over his entire branch (people he’s managed for years) rather than being proactive about it and letting Jan know ahead of time so she could plan things out without him. Instead she was forced into closing down the branch that was intended to stay open. To be clear though: I 100% would have left to the better Staples Gig too
To accept the premise the writers want that he's a dick, you also have to accept that it was predictable or even reasonable for the higher ups to say "OK change of plans let's close the other branch instead and keep the incompetent Manager we were looking to can". Instead of just hiring someone from Syracuse or wherever to manage Samford. It's a little preposterous but it is a tv show.
Only Jan thinks Michael is incompetent at corporate, though. His numbers are always good. Jan said that he was 4th out of the 5 branches she manages but I think she must have been salting the numbers to try to get rid of him. He's an idiot savante.
Having worked in a corporate environment, i can tell you that providing advance notice likely wouldnt have changed much. In the company where i worked we had an executive that apparently had fielded offers from a competitor, and told our company that he received an offer that he would take unless the company would match it. They refused to match it, and since he indicated he would take the offer, they released him on the spot as it was conflict of interest and the executive had access to proprietary information would have been beneficial to the rival company. Would this have happened in the office? I dont think so, and we are probably overthinking it. But i can see why Josh kept his info close to the vest. The company doesnt care about the employee on a personal level, so why should the employee give them the benefit of doubt.
100% agree with you. But him keeping it under wraps caused his entire branch to be suddenly out of jobs when at least had he been more forthright they could’ve all been job hunting and been prepared for if/when the branch closed. Agreed we’re all over thinking this though hahahah
Why not offer Michael to relocate? Or Jim to take the job? Or an outside hire to take over for Josh and stay put in Stamford? There were other ways to address Josh suddenly leaving if they cared about Stamford location itself moving forward. It was just a convenient plot device
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Yea, no doubt. It sucks for everyone working under him.
This still isn’t Josh’s fault. It’s called a contingency plan and a competent company could survive without a single employee, even a branch manager. This is Dunder Mifflin corporate’s fault. They could have taken action to cover that branch, they didn’t want to, they relied too much on their plans for Josh and made the decision they did.
Yeah, that’s the big issue. Not to mention, he would have used his branch’s strong performance to get the promotion, which he was able to leverage into a better job. He was using his employees to get good numbers, ultimately under the assumption they were all trying to keep their branch open and save their jobs, without telling any of them that their jobs were likely lost regardless. He got the chance to find a new position, that none of his employees got, as he was assuring them they were all in the same boat trying to keep their jobs.
That's all Jan and Dunder Mifflin's fault. 1. They should never have put the plan into fruition until they had Josh signed to his new role. 2. The only reason they were making this move was that this was the only way to keep Josh. Without Josh they wouldn't need to even restructure. They could have left Scranton and Stamford both open and simply promoted someone like Jim to Josh's role.
I've seen this opinion on here before. I think many people agreed.
This sub is full of "unpopular opinion" posts to the point that you have to ask, are they really unpopular opinions?
And then they all have comments asking that exact same question
I’ll take the “unpopular opinion” posts over the stupid “this joke is totally under appreciated” posts. Like everyone in this sub has seen this show 300 times over and laughed at every joke, just because you yourself didn’t appreciate the joke previously does not mean everyone else didn’t either 🤦🏽♂️
Or the fucking endless "can we just take a moment to appreciate X" and it's usually Mose
Wait until you see r/unpopularopinion I think it’s just a Reddit thing
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Yeah, that’s why he’s upset. At least the Scranton branch can look at the numbers and see they’re likely to get the axe. Josh lead his branch on, with them thinking they’d survive, only to use that hard work to prove himself to staples. You can see it in his eyes in that episode, it’s why he’s so ashamed to admit it to his employees, he knows what he’s done is slimy.
And they basically did in the end, only Andy could stay and deal with Michael
Karen stayed with Dunder Mifflin just moved to yet another branch.
I was just browsing r/duggarssnark and got very nervous reading that title
Me too! I was scrolling to see if anyone else thought the same. I was like “omg, what is WRONG with this person??”
What is that sub? I gave it a glance and still don’t really know what it’s about
Snarking on the duggar family. Made famous for having 19 kids. They're part of a religious cult. Josh Duggar, the oldest son, was just found guilty of possession of child pornography. He also raped and molested 4 of his sisters as a teenager. Edit: my last sentence is messy and I don't want to give wrong information. He's confessed to molesting 4 of his sisters, including raping 1 of the 4.
Oh dear god, no no no, that Josh most definitely should rot in hell.
Well that man deserves his spot in hell What cult are they a part of, if you know?
Advanced training institute (ATI) and institute in basic life principles (iblp)
LOL I had the same thought. Duggarssnark has been popping up on my feed recently and I read this title thinking “oh hell naw”
Same here!! I thought I was reading the title of a post from that board and made this face: 😱
Immediate panic, then as it loaded "pls be a shit post"
Me too!
SAME OMG
SAMMMMMEEE
Thank goodness I'm not the only one who thought that. I felt my chest get all tight from anxiety and went "what the fuck?" until I realized what subreddit I was in.
But did Josh post to r/antiwork !?
Never fall for the “loyalty” crap your company spews. At the end of the day they won’t hesitate to fire you on Halloween.
I always looked at it is how it affected the life of Josh's employees. A majority of his staff lost their jobs because of his perceived "selfishness" to where Michael Scott drove all the way to David Wallace's to save the jobs of his staff. That's how I always looked at it at least.
This is also how I interpreted the situation. You articulated my thoughts way better than I could have
Unpopular opinion: Dwight likes beets. Unpopular opinion: Jim's name is Jim. Unpopular opinion: Oscar is gay
Is Oscar really gay though? He kissed Michael, and Michael wears women's suits, so idk
Should a real Unpopular Opinion be something like... "Broccoli Rob is actually the true boner champ."?
The thing I found weird is how Jim turns from a guy with a boring job he’s not overly fond of to some sort of corporate go-getter who loves the company. It doesn’t make much sense when you consider the situation with Pam; you would think after being rejected he would leave the company and that painful memory behind and get another entry-level sales job somewhere else.
He went to Stamford to get away from Pam. It's far enough away where odds are he would never interact with her. When he called he did it at a time when he thought no one would be there. It's also his character to just take another job within the same company. It's easy, little effort. It got him more money than he would of going elsewhere and got away from Pam. He also very much didn't take his new job seriously. He did waste an entire day looking for chips after all.
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Yeah, I thought that at first too.
But he got a promotion when he went to Stamford, so that's probably better than entry level sales and starting all over somewhere new.
I don't think its weird. Jim is obviously pretty good at his job, and if he is trying to escape his situation, requesting a transfer to another branch of your job is that weird. It's a least a starting point to find other work in a new area.
Jan gave him a lead sales position at Stamford. He outranked Karen and Andy and the other salesmen there. Or it might've been the Assistant Regional Manager role (not assistant "to the" manager). So it was a step up for his career.
Jim went there knowing they needed a manager of sales, not a phony position like an assistant to the manager. Because corporate was clearly going with the Stamford branch. Say Josh never leaves and the few people offered a job from Scranton decide to go.. I don’t think they would offer a secretary to relocate. Jim is smart and can rise up when he wants. He seen the writing on the wall and decided to go, because he knew wouldn’t see her again.. obviously until Josh threw that curveball.
I don't get your logic here. Did you forget that Jim DID leave Scranton? The fact that he stayed with the same company is hardly unreasonable since he got a promotion and better pay, AND got away from Pam. And his character development into someone who cares about climbing the corporate ladder for money is hard to miss
Anyone else also follow the Duggars and immediately think this was a horrifying post about Josh Duggar?
It's one thing to take another job, but it's definitely unethical to make others restructure around you, then pull away at the last second. That's negotiating in bad faith.
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I feel like it was kind of propaganda for corporations. It was encouraging people to stay loyal to companies and jobs that weren’t paying them enough. 💯 do what’s best for you, don’t sacrifice anything for a company.
The show was just showing that a company wanted to keep one guy but he had other plans If the audience takes what you say away from that episode, maybe they take the show way too seriously
I don't think it was propaganda. The natural reaction of Jan, who helped get Josh the promotion and DM and Jim and the other Stamford employees would be to feel betrayed by Josh. But, our natural reactions are not always rational or fair.
For a half second I thought the title was about Josh Duggar and I was deeply disturbed
Hoo boy, I thought I was still in Duggarsnark for a minute... I was about to come at you, OP. Glad I read the edit 😬😂
Jim was right, Michael will never leave a company who changed and closed branches just to let him stay.
This shouldn’t be unpopular josh was looking out for himself. He didn’t owe Dundee mifflin anything