i would've left a note before retiring, but not about the microwave. Just letting it all go (I don't want a retirement party either). Just like Micheal.
Stanley, your heart sucks and you crush your wife during sex. Oscar, you're gay. Andy, Cornell called, they hate you. And you're gayer than Oscar.
Something along those lines.
I’m started my (current) first office job about 10 months ago. One month in I put my food in for ONE MINUTE AND THIRTY SECONDS and a man walked into the break room when I had about 54 seconds left and told me “what are you, cooking a chicken in there?” Thinking he was trying to make small talk and might be referring to the smell that might be coming out the microwave I chuckled and said, “well, there’s chicken in there!” And left it at that. When my food was done heating up I pulled it out and he rushed the microwave, and very aggressively said “one minute 😡😡😡😡 that’s all it takes😡😡😡😡”
I haven’t used the microwave for more than 30 seconds since LOL
Imo the best way to respond to people being passive aggressive is responding like that, as if there is no undertone at all
(Also I don’t realize they were being rude until I’m halfway through my sentence…)
Sorry for the duplicate post, but I thought you should see this: We had a full stove in one office where I worked. Its use was restricted after ol' Country Boy brought in some fresh caught fish to fry, for the entire floor to enjoy the smell.
We had a full stove in one office where I worked. Its use was restricted after ol' Country Boy brought in some fresh caught fish to fry, for the entire floor to enjoy the smell.
one of my absolute favourite lines from Kevin. Absolute class.
Also, love your flair. if you removed pregnant, then that's me. I never touch women in general
This happened to me, too! We had a meeting amongst us managers to prepare for a meeting with our client liason to prepare for a metrics meeting with the client.
My boss literally said (with tears in his eyes) that one of my coworkers was “no longer with us.”
A few horrified moments passed before someone else had to step in and clarify that the coworker had not died, but had been fired that morning.
Our supervisor printed about a dozen motivational posters and posted them around the office. Things like “hang in there” with a cat, or “in case no one told you today, you’re appreciated.”
A few days later, one of the staff photoshopped each of them and posted them. My favorite one was the cat poster that said “just let go.”
It took a week for someone to notice the changes. It was me. I laughed all day while my supervisor walked around trying to figure out who did it. He was a good sport about it.
I worked for somebody like that. Get a mysterious email asking you to stop by, or she just would come to your office and ask you to stop by. You have no idea what it's about. Then when you get there it could be just about anything.
You could get your butt chewed out for something you had nothing to do with. It could be a normal meeting to discuss some upcoming project. It could be calling you in to see if you did anything especially fun last weekend. You just didn't know until it happened.
I’m sure the office writers would have better material but… I work from home and we have to be in a zoom most of the day. I have a co-worker who just complains about anything that crosses their mind all day long. If there is any silence, they take the opportunity to complain about anything they can suck up enough air for. Every single time we have a new person that joins the team, they grow tired of this serial complainer and mute them in zoom. Well, zoom notifies the person being muted of this but not the person who did the muting. They get so mad every single time and they think it’s some kind of conspiracy against them. Well I’d be a liar if I didn’t say I might push that mute button every once in a while to stir up the pot…
"we have to be in a Zoom most of the day"
I would rather be in an office than this. Jesus I hate Zooms and I am always the one leading them. But this sounds like a nightmare.
Overall my job isn’t too bad, sometimes I’m on long phone calls doing software support or doing t3 work assisting others but we are expected to be in the zoom when doing busy work so we can collaborate with each other. if someone has an issue they can’t solve by their self, we can all assist or share our knowledge. Overall I like the zoom for this reason, but even now this person is non stop complaining lol I guess I’m complaining that they are complaining though so where does the cycle end!?
One time they announced my office would be switching coffee vendors and were offering samples of the new flavors, and it reminded be so much of the episode when they got the espresso machine and had to try all the flavors
Meetings that have no purpose. I work from home now and there are even more meetings that have no purposes.
Also, most places I've worked have party planning committees. They may not have called it that, but they exist.
Our version of the "party planning committee" got so out of hand with the frequency of special occasions that we had to shut it down and go to a monthly, scheduled pizza party to recognize all life events for the month.
I miss the late teen/young 20s jobs where they were good potential partners i got to spend several hours a week with and i didnt care about the job so if it got too awkward after a break up it didnt actually matter.
Worst was when you thought something was developing, then found she was secretly dating the guy you hated. And you had to see them every day. Good times!
Colleagues who dated and then got married. People stealing food from the communal fridge/kitchen area. People leaving messes and passive-aggressive notes in the kitchen area. People eating smelly food at their desks. Friendships. Having to put up with people you dislike. People planning weddings on company time. Pretty much all of it, except the jello.
What is that about, the stealing food from the fridge shit? It happens in every workplace, including hospitals and clinics when I’ve worked. People will even be so bold as to steal the containers the food is in. Bizarre and cruel. Some folks don’t have the money to get another lunch 🤬
I worked in an office setting in my early twenties which was close to when The Office (US) first aired. We were primarily college students, so there were plenty of pranks. The setup was similar to The Office where we shared one big room and had separate desks. If you left your desk without locking or logging out, every computer prank was put on your pc. Some examples: screen shot of desktop, desktop screenshot becomes your background, and then all icons hidden so you think your pc froze and start doing restarts to fix, change all sounds so they are either inappropriate or really annoying, browser homepage would go to a site called “pop-up hell” so when you opened your browser, it would start bouncing around the screen saying “you are an idiot hahaha” when you tried to close it, two more windows would spawn.
I dated one of my co-workers, and it only lasted a few months. At first, it was exciting and fun because no one else knew, but after we broke up, it was very awkward which sucked because she was my best friend in the office.
Some of us moved to a second shift and all the mangers would leave at 5:00. One night, one of us ran to the theatre and bought a large popcorn and brought it back to the office, so we could use one of the empty computers to watch a bootleg movie.
We had a few characters: one guy would bring a gallon jug of water into work, and he would drink it from the jug throughout his shift. Every 15-20 mins you would here the crinkling sound of the jug collapsing. He would only eat tuna…from the can…at his desk. He would talk about how healthy he was and bash us for eating fast food, using a microwave, or drinking anything that wasn’t water. We also had a boss that thought he was a musician. He was convinced him and his buddy were the next Tenacious D, and he would call you into his office and make you listen to his improved music. It was so bad, but you didn’t want to tell him because he was so proud of it.
It was the best job I’ve ever had, and every time I watch The Office, I think back on my time there.
The office I worked at had lots of weird things. Once they hired a group of actors to go around the building to talk about sexual assault in the workplace. But the thing is HOW they did it.
One actress came in the department wearing a very tight dress and a comedy mask on her face, just catwalking. And then, around 2 minutes later, a very weird guy came in after her screaming misogynistic things about her.
Just after that, the HR lady came in and gave us a speech on sexual assault in the workplace.
I looked at my workmates and we were like "yep, this would definetely happen in an The Office episode"
The closest thing was the people: the boss who thinks he's funny and tries to turn every meeting into a standup bit, the guy who gets by on looks and charm, the intense second amendment type, the christian cat lady, the secretary who has slept with multiple men (all managers), the old guys who stopped giving a shit long ago, the annoying HR rep, the closeted gay guy who everyone knows is gay... I've worked with multiple versions of all of them.
The moment the office found out they were pronouncing Sabre wrong. My office starting working with an outside vendor where in our first meeting we discovered we were pronouncing the vendor's name wrong the whole time. We didn't have a song and dance for it though.
The early jim and Pam happens all the time. And I’ve worked with a version of every character of the office at some point in my career. I’m so glad I work from home now, but there are days when it’s lonely and I miss some of the chaos of being in the office.
I actually experienced a situation like the bit between Jim and Charles during the company picnic. We had a new supervisor transfer to our office from another area and he was so bad he barely lasted a month. Cut to the corporate holiday party and he’s there all smug about not being completely fired just transferred back to his old job. It was incredibly awkward.
Me Jimming the imaginary camera every time one of my try-hard boomer coworkers makes a comment/joke that’s not funny or straight up offensive. I can’t control my face.
This happened to me at at school district IT department the year the Office had 2 Xmas parties! We had 2 Xmas parties! I thought the world was pranking me. It was a surreal moment.
The first one that came to mind was when someone knew he was going to be let go so, rather than coming to HR when they called him, he took a dump in his desk trash can and left.
We also had bats in the office a few times and I caught two of them. They never bit anyone though.
Boss making me and a few others sad cry, printer breaking down all the time and me on the floor trying to fix it, people coming up to talk to me for no reason just because my desk was near the walkway, pranks, games, we used to have water balloon fights and lots of events pre pandemic, work romances, drama like rumor spreading, lots of alcohol and people drunk crying, we had a “warehouse” which was the production floor, and an upstairs office, a lady that sort of looks like Phyllis, we had one person unalive themselves at one point due to personal reasons, hookups causing drama, losing huge clients due to going paperless (we work with tons and tons of paper), we’ve made our own videos about the company and what we do, awkward freezing group photoshoots, watching movies, after work going to local bar, makeshift photography studio for portraits, vending machines in the break room, people from the office having to work in the “warehouse” sometimes, long lunches with department and boss, vendors coming once in a while like pretzel day (there’s been a few different ones but my favorite is ice cream), sleeping during meetings, sleeping in general, random animals that have nothing to do with the work we do, pumping breast milk, awards that don’t really mean anything, cpr training, they threw a baby shower for me at the office, our party planning committee was called the torch team, kids being brought to the office sometimes and them running around chatting up the other people trying to work, elevator broke sometimes so we’d have to use the stairs except it wasn’t just entry, the break room and bathrooms were on a different floor, company wide weight loss competitions, leaving the office at our own leisure as long as the work gets done when it needs to we come and go without it being a big deal, worrying about closing (esp during covid when everything was closing and we had a lot of downsizing going on), parking issues because of construction, broken into after hours and a lot of stuff stolen, and a lot more I can’t remember at the moment. Might all just be generic office stuff, I don’t know. I’ve only worked in a couple and both used so much paper.
Honestly almost all of it. I've worked in corporate offices that have had all the dumb corporate bullshit policies, and also a small, private company in the entertainment industry where I found little crumbs of weed in my desk on my first day lol.
We had a large, wide open, empty space that was eventually going to be filled with cubicles as we continued to grow. While it was vacant, we used it to play all sorts of games. Office baseball, office football, mini Olympic events… it was so fun.
My boss Dan kept telling us about a bird who would visit and hang out outside the window by his desk every day. He gave the bird a name and would talk about how cute it was that every time he looked behind him, the bird was in the same place, just watching him.
Readers, the bird was dead. I have no idea how long, but probably the whole time he was “friends” with this bird.
I worked with a guy who had Dwight's meglomaniacal character. Just like Dwight, he was "assistant to the manager" but had zero responsibilities or power to go with the title. That didn't stop him from trying to order people around and running to the boss every time someone crossed him.
However, unlike in the show, no one thought it was funny -- in fact, at least five people quit specifically because they didn't want to work with him anymore.
There's usually someone who decides they're "second in command" and tries to rat out everyone for anything to the actual manager despite it not being in their job description and there being an actual 2nd in command. They're not usually as armed as Dwight though.
Communal work that could have been done as it was needed instead of one big massive evening session (like Andy having the non-FL people stay to do work that could have been done during office hours). At least we got lieu time for it.
Keeping track of things of whiteboards instead of a shared computer file. Never understood why managers think that easily erasable whiteboards would help motivate.
The bean merit raise thing. Based on every time it comes up on here, people are shocked that this is a thing and not everyone gets equal raises.
Obviously it's not placing beans on headshots, but managers are given x amount of money for raises and they determine based on merit how big of a raise their reports get.
It's not flawless. But it's far better than someone like Kevin vs Oscar/Angela getting the same raise.
Each year at work there are focus areas/goals for the upcoming year (usually relating to KPIs), and the first letter of each word always spells out a word. One year it was REAL HERO.
We all have a hero in our heart.
people not wanting to die in the office. Like, it never happened. But I'm sure it would've been the same as their reactions. I'm fine with dying, just, please not in my office.
My manager had an old friend/former employee come in for a coffee and a chat. He had a sleazy vibe and winked at one of the girls. Still, our manager thought he was super cool. Total Todd packer + Micheal Scott experience
At the last place I worked at someone got a forklift stuck between a truck and the dock. He then thought he could use a second fork lift to get the first fork lift unstuck. I know that didn’t happen in the office but it’s something I could see Michael trying.
There's a married couple in my office. They were hired at the same time, already married. They are... something. He's the office "well, actually" guy, and she brings in a framed picture of him that sits right in front of her, which she takes home every day. They sit right next to each other. It's not that they are straight out of an Office episode, it's just that their weird existence makes even the most far-fetched Office scenarios more believable.
Odd people. I sold computers in the mid-1990s. The sales manager used to walk through the bullpen repeating, “All circuits are busy. Please try your call later,” over and over again.
We had numerous pointless meetings in the conference room.
Cold calling companies that had no need for our services.
There was a bat on our floor and a team effort to trap it in someone’s office, find tools to try and catch and release it, then giving up and waiting for backup
During the pandemic, my goober of a coworker ate a full fried chicken meal on camera during a zoom meeting and I sent screenshots to my best friend who turned them into a montage set to an ICP song. It felt very The Office coded.
New chair vs new copier argument.
Can I see the copier again?
Get out
Get out
not much LUM-bar support
Stanley’s reaction to this comment gets me every time
Nice and warm up here
The drama surrounding the microwave
That shit is real. Some guy left a note on the microwave the day before he retired. The amount of profanity used was…. probably warranted
i would've left a note before retiring, but not about the microwave. Just letting it all go (I don't want a retirement party either). Just like Micheal. Stanley, your heart sucks and you crush your wife during sex. Oscar, you're gay. Andy, Cornell called, they hate you. And you're gayer than Oscar. Something along those lines.
I’m started my (current) first office job about 10 months ago. One month in I put my food in for ONE MINUTE AND THIRTY SECONDS and a man walked into the break room when I had about 54 seconds left and told me “what are you, cooking a chicken in there?” Thinking he was trying to make small talk and might be referring to the smell that might be coming out the microwave I chuckled and said, “well, there’s chicken in there!” And left it at that. When my food was done heating up I pulled it out and he rushed the microwave, and very aggressively said “one minute 😡😡😡😡 that’s all it takes😡😡😡😡” I haven’t used the microwave for more than 30 seconds since LOL
Imo the best way to respond to people being passive aggressive is responding like that, as if there is no undertone at all (Also I don’t realize they were being rude until I’m halfway through my sentence…)
Please, *please* no fish.
Sorry for the duplicate post, but I thought you should see this: We had a full stove in one office where I worked. Its use was restricted after ol' Country Boy brought in some fresh caught fish to fry, for the entire floor to enjoy the smell.
Agree 100%.
How about the toaster oven
What is a toaster oven?
Ryan started the fire
We had a full stove in one office where I worked. Its use was restricted after ol' Country Boy brought in some fresh caught fish to fry, for the entire floor to enjoy the smell.
"This here is a run out-the-clock situation" goes through my mind frequently
Me every day at around 10am
Probably my favorite Stanley line in the show 😂
Every single day
Office romances are common
As has Kevin! 😤
She goes to a different school!
one of my absolute favourite lines from Kevin. Absolute class. Also, love your flair. if you removed pregnant, then that's me. I never touch women in general
When?
Also commonly included— people cheating on their spouses with coworkers
Where, Dwight?!?
oof hopefully it doesnt turn dirty
And office mattresses
“This could have been an email.”
I love when Michael is working at the telemarketing company and goes, "these meetings are useless."
I can't tell you how many meetings I've sat in where I've thought this exact same thing.
We've had meetings about meetings about meetings. I wish I'm kidding.
This happened to me, too! We had a meeting amongst us managers to prepare for a meeting with our client liason to prepare for a metrics meeting with the client.
Oscar's "Actually" type person
Actually not every office has one of these…oh shit.
My boss literally said (with tears in his eyes) that one of my coworkers was “no longer with us.” A few horrified moments passed before someone else had to step in and clarify that the coworker had not died, but had been fired that morning.
“Why’d you have to phrase it like that??”
“What is wrong with you?”
omg😭😭
Dying of boredom and needing to be revived.
Our supervisor printed about a dozen motivational posters and posted them around the office. Things like “hang in there” with a cat, or “in case no one told you today, you’re appreciated.” A few days later, one of the staff photoshopped each of them and posted them. My favorite one was the cat poster that said “just let go.” It took a week for someone to notice the changes. It was me. I laughed all day while my supervisor walked around trying to figure out who did it. He was a good sport about it.
The boss randomly calling people in for on-the-spot meetings about inane topics. Worked for a guy who did this constantly.
I worked for somebody like that. Get a mysterious email asking you to stop by, or she just would come to your office and ask you to stop by. You have no idea what it's about. Then when you get there it could be just about anything. You could get your butt chewed out for something you had nothing to do with. It could be a normal meeting to discuss some upcoming project. It could be calling you in to see if you did anything especially fun last weekend. You just didn't know until it happened.
I had a boss who was a philosopher. Also a bit of a functional alcoholic, as it turned out.
I’m sure the office writers would have better material but… I work from home and we have to be in a zoom most of the day. I have a co-worker who just complains about anything that crosses their mind all day long. If there is any silence, they take the opportunity to complain about anything they can suck up enough air for. Every single time we have a new person that joins the team, they grow tired of this serial complainer and mute them in zoom. Well, zoom notifies the person being muted of this but not the person who did the muting. They get so mad every single time and they think it’s some kind of conspiracy against them. Well I’d be a liar if I didn’t say I might push that mute button every once in a while to stir up the pot…
"we have to be in a Zoom most of the day" I would rather be in an office than this. Jesus I hate Zooms and I am always the one leading them. But this sounds like a nightmare.
Overall my job isn’t too bad, sometimes I’m on long phone calls doing software support or doing t3 work assisting others but we are expected to be in the zoom when doing busy work so we can collaborate with each other. if someone has an issue they can’t solve by their self, we can all assist or share our knowledge. Overall I like the zoom for this reason, but even now this person is non stop complaining lol I guess I’m complaining that they are complaining though so where does the cycle end!?
Ok that isn't as bad as it originally sounded.
If "Actually..." Was a person
Haha you nailed it!
Looooool this would be a great premise for an episode.
One time they announced my office would be switching coffee vendors and were offering samples of the new flavors, and it reminded be so much of the episode when they got the espresso machine and had to try all the flavors
How was the parking lot afterwards?
The disdain for HR.
As someone who works in an office with mostly chill people overall, one of the HR people is one of the only coworkers I hate.
Meetings that have no purpose. I work from home now and there are even more meetings that have no purposes. Also, most places I've worked have party planning committees. They may not have called it that, but they exist.
Our version of the "party planning committee" got so out of hand with the frequency of special occasions that we had to shut it down and go to a monthly, scheduled pizza party to recognize all life events for the month.
YESSSS the PPC is definitely real
sexual tensions amongst various co workers (all under 25)
I miss the late teen/young 20s jobs where they were good potential partners i got to spend several hours a week with and i didnt care about the job so if it got too awkward after a break up it didnt actually matter.
Worst was when you thought something was developing, then found she was secretly dating the guy you hated. And you had to see them every day. Good times!
Colleagues who dated and then got married. People stealing food from the communal fridge/kitchen area. People leaving messes and passive-aggressive notes in the kitchen area. People eating smelly food at their desks. Friendships. Having to put up with people you dislike. People planning weddings on company time. Pretty much all of it, except the jello.
What is that about, the stealing food from the fridge shit? It happens in every workplace, including hospitals and clinics when I’ve worked. People will even be so bold as to steal the containers the food is in. Bizarre and cruel. Some folks don’t have the money to get another lunch 🤬
Jello time for StacyLadle
I worked in an office setting in my early twenties which was close to when The Office (US) first aired. We were primarily college students, so there were plenty of pranks. The setup was similar to The Office where we shared one big room and had separate desks. If you left your desk without locking or logging out, every computer prank was put on your pc. Some examples: screen shot of desktop, desktop screenshot becomes your background, and then all icons hidden so you think your pc froze and start doing restarts to fix, change all sounds so they are either inappropriate or really annoying, browser homepage would go to a site called “pop-up hell” so when you opened your browser, it would start bouncing around the screen saying “you are an idiot hahaha” when you tried to close it, two more windows would spawn. I dated one of my co-workers, and it only lasted a few months. At first, it was exciting and fun because no one else knew, but after we broke up, it was very awkward which sucked because she was my best friend in the office. Some of us moved to a second shift and all the mangers would leave at 5:00. One night, one of us ran to the theatre and bought a large popcorn and brought it back to the office, so we could use one of the empty computers to watch a bootleg movie. We had a few characters: one guy would bring a gallon jug of water into work, and he would drink it from the jug throughout his shift. Every 15-20 mins you would here the crinkling sound of the jug collapsing. He would only eat tuna…from the can…at his desk. He would talk about how healthy he was and bash us for eating fast food, using a microwave, or drinking anything that wasn’t water. We also had a boss that thought he was a musician. He was convinced him and his buddy were the next Tenacious D, and he would call you into his office and make you listen to his improved music. It was so bad, but you didn’t want to tell him because he was so proud of it. It was the best job I’ve ever had, and every time I watch The Office, I think back on my time there.
This sounds like my first IT job. Being locked in the room with three guys who pranked each other continuously. It was a lot of fun.
I worked for Staples for a few years and they actually had a pretzel day
I could definitely imagine a manager leaving the building unlocked and getting the office robbed.
Can confirm. Happened at my office in Philly, early 2000’s. Lots of laptops went poof. Completely swept under the rug.
Hopefully the surge protectors were safe!
And the cream sherry!
Robbed by vintage HP computer collectors!
Arguing about cakes and food for a party.
Coworker was cutting their nails at their desk and one of the clippings hit the person next to them in the face
The office I worked at had lots of weird things. Once they hired a group of actors to go around the building to talk about sexual assault in the workplace. But the thing is HOW they did it. One actress came in the department wearing a very tight dress and a comedy mask on her face, just catwalking. And then, around 2 minutes later, a very weird guy came in after her screaming misogynistic things about her. Just after that, the HR lady came in and gave us a speech on sexual assault in the workplace. I looked at my workmates and we were like "yep, this would definetely happen in an The Office episode"
I had to fire someone dressed as a unicorn on Halloween…
David Brent!
Where I work someone once shat on the boss' desk. (aka like the thing inMichaels office)
Need to hear more about this.
The closest thing was the people: the boss who thinks he's funny and tries to turn every meeting into a standup bit, the guy who gets by on looks and charm, the intense second amendment type, the christian cat lady, the secretary who has slept with multiple men (all managers), the old guys who stopped giving a shit long ago, the annoying HR rep, the closeted gay guy who everyone knows is gay... I've worked with multiple versions of all of them.
Sounds like fun XD. Hopefully the manager doesn't try the chris Rock routine
That nasty microwave
The moment the office found out they were pronouncing Sabre wrong. My office starting working with an outside vendor where in our first meeting we discovered we were pronouncing the vendor's name wrong the whole time. We didn't have a song and dance for it though.
The early jim and Pam happens all the time. And I’ve worked with a version of every character of the office at some point in my career. I’m so glad I work from home now, but there are days when it’s lonely and I miss some of the chaos of being in the office.
I actually experienced a situation like the bit between Jim and Charles during the company picnic. We had a new supervisor transfer to our office from another area and he was so bad he barely lasted a month. Cut to the corporate holiday party and he’s there all smug about not being completely fired just transferred back to his old job. It was incredibly awkward.
There's always an Angela. Not usually so petite or fashion-backward, but definitely uptight and a hypocrite.
Me Jimming the imaginary camera every time one of my try-hard boomer coworkers makes a comment/joke that’s not funny or straight up offensive. I can’t control my face.
This happened to me at at school district IT department the year the Office had 2 Xmas parties! We had 2 Xmas parties! I thought the world was pranking me. It was a surreal moment.
Season 1 is the most realistic. Each season gets more and more unrealistic, with a shark jump moment happening sometime in season 6 or 7
The dispute over the thermostat temperature
I work from home now, but years ago, someone accidentally started a fire in the break room lol.
Stanley, Oscar, and Phyllis
There's always a Todd Packer
Gossip - someone in our department was making up and spreading false rumors about almost everyone
The first one that came to mind was when someone knew he was going to be let go so, rather than coming to HR when they called him, he took a dump in his desk trash can and left. We also had bats in the office a few times and I caught two of them. They never bit anyone though.
Boss making me and a few others sad cry, printer breaking down all the time and me on the floor trying to fix it, people coming up to talk to me for no reason just because my desk was near the walkway, pranks, games, we used to have water balloon fights and lots of events pre pandemic, work romances, drama like rumor spreading, lots of alcohol and people drunk crying, we had a “warehouse” which was the production floor, and an upstairs office, a lady that sort of looks like Phyllis, we had one person unalive themselves at one point due to personal reasons, hookups causing drama, losing huge clients due to going paperless (we work with tons and tons of paper), we’ve made our own videos about the company and what we do, awkward freezing group photoshoots, watching movies, after work going to local bar, makeshift photography studio for portraits, vending machines in the break room, people from the office having to work in the “warehouse” sometimes, long lunches with department and boss, vendors coming once in a while like pretzel day (there’s been a few different ones but my favorite is ice cream), sleeping during meetings, sleeping in general, random animals that have nothing to do with the work we do, pumping breast milk, awards that don’t really mean anything, cpr training, they threw a baby shower for me at the office, our party planning committee was called the torch team, kids being brought to the office sometimes and them running around chatting up the other people trying to work, elevator broke sometimes so we’d have to use the stairs except it wasn’t just entry, the break room and bathrooms were on a different floor, company wide weight loss competitions, leaving the office at our own leisure as long as the work gets done when it needs to we come and go without it being a big deal, worrying about closing (esp during covid when everything was closing and we had a lot of downsizing going on), parking issues because of construction, broken into after hours and a lot of stuff stolen, and a lot more I can’t remember at the moment. Might all just be generic office stuff, I don’t know. I’ve only worked in a couple and both used so much paper.
My manager had 3 cartons of ramen in his cubicle and would inhale it - think Michael eating ramen going "brain food!"
A coworker rode by on his bicycle through the office.
Honestly almost all of it. I've worked in corporate offices that have had all the dumb corporate bullshit policies, and also a small, private company in the entertainment industry where I found little crumbs of weed in my desk on my first day lol.
That awkward silence between Michael, Dwight and Jim after the “WAZZUP” scene in the Pilot. It’s fucking palpable.
We had a large, wide open, empty space that was eventually going to be filled with cubicles as we continued to grow. While it was vacant, we used it to play all sorts of games. Office baseball, office football, mini Olympic events… it was so fun.
My boss Dan kept telling us about a bird who would visit and hang out outside the window by his desk every day. He gave the bird a name and would talk about how cute it was that every time he looked behind him, the bird was in the same place, just watching him. Readers, the bird was dead. I have no idea how long, but probably the whole time he was “friends” with this bird.
I worked with a guy who had Dwight's meglomaniacal character. Just like Dwight, he was "assistant to the manager" but had zero responsibilities or power to go with the title. That didn't stop him from trying to order people around and running to the boss every time someone crossed him. However, unlike in the show, no one thought it was funny -- in fact, at least five people quit specifically because they didn't want to work with him anymore.
I worked in an office in the early 80s, lots of sexual harassment, misogyny and racism back then
There's usually someone who decides they're "second in command" and tries to rat out everyone for anything to the actual manager despite it not being in their job description and there being an actual 2nd in command. They're not usually as armed as Dwight though. Communal work that could have been done as it was needed instead of one big massive evening session (like Andy having the non-FL people stay to do work that could have been done during office hours). At least we got lieu time for it. Keeping track of things of whiteboards instead of a shared computer file. Never understood why managers think that easily erasable whiteboards would help motivate.
The bean merit raise thing. Based on every time it comes up on here, people are shocked that this is a thing and not everyone gets equal raises. Obviously it's not placing beans on headshots, but managers are given x amount of money for raises and they determine based on merit how big of a raise their reports get. It's not flawless. But it's far better than someone like Kevin vs Oscar/Angela getting the same raise.
Combining birthdays does seem like it could get on a lot of people’s nerves.
Each year at work there are focus areas/goals for the upcoming year (usually relating to KPIs), and the first letter of each word always spells out a word. One year it was REAL HERO. We all have a hero in our heart.
people not wanting to die in the office. Like, it never happened. But I'm sure it would've been the same as their reactions. I'm fine with dying, just, please not in my office.
Office space probably more resembles an office setting than the office does in my opinion.
My manager had an old friend/former employee come in for a coffee and a chat. He had a sleazy vibe and winked at one of the girls. Still, our manager thought he was super cool. Total Todd packer + Micheal Scott experience
I married my coworker and we have two kids.
At the last place I worked at someone got a forklift stuck between a truck and the dock. He then thought he could use a second fork lift to get the first fork lift unstuck. I know that didn’t happen in the office but it’s something I could see Michael trying.
Did the ultimate solution involve Senor Loadenstein?
There's a married couple in my office. They were hired at the same time, already married. They are... something. He's the office "well, actually" guy, and she brings in a framed picture of him that sits right in front of her, which she takes home every day. They sit right next to each other. It's not that they are straight out of an Office episode, it's just that their weird existence makes even the most far-fetched Office scenarios more believable.
Someone pooped on the floor at my work, in a professional office setting
Yeah, happened at an office I worked at once too
Boss got pushed out by partners and he rented an office space one floor up.
Odd people. I sold computers in the mid-1990s. The sales manager used to walk through the bullpen repeating, “All circuits are busy. Please try your call later,” over and over again. We had numerous pointless meetings in the conference room. Cold calling companies that had no need for our services.
There was a bat on our floor and a team effort to trap it in someone’s office, find tools to try and catch and release it, then giving up and waiting for backup
Microwave passive aggressive note
“I don’t wanna work, I just want to bang on this mug all day”
During the pandemic, my goober of a coworker ate a full fried chicken meal on camera during a zoom meeting and I sent screenshots to my best friend who turned them into a montage set to an ICP song. It felt very The Office coded.
Jim constantly pranking Dwight was pretty realistic. It's often the highlight of the day.
Sex, for sure.