Ah, the wonderness of it all

Come on guys. You know. Wonderness!

Roy made one of his rare visits up from the warehouse yesterday. They are always a … treat. So awkward.

“Hey Pam, how would you use the word ‘wonderness’ in a sentence?”

“Uhhhh, I don’t think I’ve ever used that word.”

He explained that one of the warehouse guys was arguing with him that it wasn’t a real word.

“Did you look it up?”

“Yeah”

“What did the dictionary say?”

“It wasn’t in the dictionary.”

“Then it probably isn’t a word.”

“I just thought I had heard it used before.”

“I think you’re thinking of ‘wonderment.'”

“Maybe.”

“Well I’m going to have to side with the dictionary on this one.”

“I just really was sure I had seen it.”

“Well you know, they add words to the dictionary every year. Maybe you could submit it to Webster’s.”

“Thanks.”

“Yeah you could become famous for coining the word ‘wonderness!'”

“Yeah OK, thanks, Pam.”

“Take the world by a storm of wonderness!

He starts to walk away as I begin to lose control over my giggles.

Sorry, Roy. I couldn’t help myself. You really came up to ask me how to use a word that wasn’t in the dictionary?

Neverending story

Stop me if you've heard this one ... no, on second thought, don't.

Michael usually comes into the office each day prepared with a canned story. He will go from desk to desk repeating the same story almost verbatim, with maybe a different hook each time to get the person into it.

“Well I didn’t have a very restful weekend.”

“Didn’t get to see much of that golf game this weekend.”

“Gosh it feels good to be in the air conditioning after this weekend.”

All of these intros lead to the exact same story about Michael helping to paint Jan’s brother’s house. I heard the story four times, once to me, and three times to the people within earshot … though I did hear more snippets of it as he told it to people sitting farther away. Each item almost identical. Smooth and polished as if he were rehearsing lines for a play.

My theory is that Michael practices his story of the day on the way to work. Because he is so articulate when he tells it. But if he has to tell you a story on the fly, it comes out something like this:

“That reminds me of the time… Once when I was a kid… Well we lived in one of the suburbs… And my brother… He was older… And this one time… Well we were going to the… Well you see there was this ballfield… It was…It was…The ballfield was right down… It was a few blocks away from our… The ballfield was right in our neighborhood…We would play…All the kids would play baseball there.”

So I won’t make fun of him telling the same story word for word anymore. Because I think I’d rather hear the same rehearsed boring story four times than a boring story once that never ends.

Unnecessary

Michael honing his management skills.

Michael left for a conference yesterday afternoon. He was chatting with a couple of people from Vance Refrigeration about it in the hallway.

“Yeah I can leave my staff alone and everything still runs smoothly. That either means I’m unnecessary or I’m a good manager. I think I must be doing something right.”

Happy Birthday, Michael

Look what a cool boss I am!

After “the confrontation” I bad-mouthed Michael for several weeks for giving me a hard time about the little box of doughnuts I brought in while he was away when he NEVER brings in treats for anyone.

So I felt bad when on his birthday last week, he brought in three giant boxes of doughnuts, enough to share with the warehouse and even Vance Refrigeration.

Considering Michael’s obsession with free food, Jim and I were flabbergasted. We figured he would have asked Dwight to bring him doughnuts and staged it as if he didn’t know about it. Was this a new, less selfish Michael?

Instead of putting the doughnuts in the breakroom, Michael set up the doughnuts right by his office. He then went to the other departments in the building and told them they could come up and get birthday doughnuts any time they wanted.

So all day, Michael had a parade of people walking by his office, thanking him and telling him how nice it was for him to do this and talking to him about pastries.

He was in heaven. It was a very happy birthday indeed.

Yesterday, Ryan was visiting our office. He pulled Michael aside and I overheard him ask him about an unusually high charge at a bakery that turned up on his expense report last week. Ryan never would have approved of Michael buying himself birthday doughnuts on the company dime. So Michael sputtered something about some morale-boosting initiative, and Ryan seemed to buy it.

Bravo, Michael. You managed to find a way to get your free food and come off as the cool “friend” boss.

Your cheapness never ceases to amaze me.

Guest blog: Angela and the … Oh my God!

LaLaLa. I can't hear you defile the Lord.

Kelly has landed on my last nerve.

Being a customer service rep, she has a lot of down time in between calls from grumpy clients.

When she’s not slinking around the office being a gossip monger, she’s usually reading magazines at her desk. And using the good Lord’s name in vain.

“Oh my God. OH my GOD. ohmygodohmygodohmygod.”

All day that’s all I here from her over there. Every time she hits a new headline or a fact that blows her little mind, she comments out loud using different variations of “Oh my God.” The emphasis will change depending on the intensity of the story.

When she makes God into two syllables (GAW-DUH), you know she’s really hit upon some shocking news. Like Brad and Angelina broke up — and then were abducted by aliens who blew them into space with a slingshot.

At first people would turn and stare at her during her unholy exclamations. But she wouldn’t say anything unless someone asked her what she was reading. I never cared, but other people would condone her careless heathen outbursts and ask for details.

Soon though people learned to just ignore her.

But she couldn’t have that.

“Oh MY God!” Kelly exclaimed.

No one looked up. Everyone kept typing.

“OH my GOD!” she said again.

A phone rang and Oscar answered it.

“Isn’t anyone going to ask me what I’m reading?!” Kelly demanded.

Everyone looked up and stared unsure what to do. Karen jumped in and rescued us from the awkward moment by asking Kelly to tell her about it. Kelly was totally pleased having any audience in front of her … even a reluctant one.

I quietly asked God to smite her.

Situation Four

I sent Jim an article I found posted on CNN.com yesterday. It was put together by Career Builder and covered how to handle office politics.

I alerted him especially to “Situation Four”:

Situation four: Working for a boss who is not respected
If your boss is viewed as ineffective, it can derail your career, Essex warns. Look for other opportunities to work elsewhere in your organization.
Search for managers who can help you, teach you and support you, thereby catapulting your career success. If you can’t move within your organization, look for options somewhere else.

Jim replied: “What, you don’t feel as if you’re being “helped, supported and educated” here, thus catapulting your career to success?”

Harsh truths you’re dispensing Career Builder. Perhaps I should take these words to heart. Dang.

Soup with the fur

How Michael imagines people react to his singing.

Ah. Michael loves his hip-hop. And I believe his enjoyment of it is genuine — that it’s not just some midlife crisis thing.

However, singing the songs to himself at his desk — definitely trying to prove something to us about what a cool boss we have.

The song of the week this week was “Apple Bottom Jeans” (OK it’s called “Low” but it’s the Apple Bottom Jeans song to me)

Suddenly I hear in a half whisper as he walks past my desk:

“Apple Bottom Jeans [Jeans]
Boots with the fur [With the fur]

Shorty got low low low low low low low low”

Except I swear instead of “boots” he said something about soup.

Rather than making Michael look cooler, he managed to just make the song less cool. A lot less cool.

Sorry T-Pain. (excuse me, my bad, FLO-RIDA)

Kevin and the long-winded “hellos”

Kevin's 20-minute-long "good-morning"

Kevin sits in a fairly central location in our office.

Which makes it hard to avoid his desk as hard as I try.

He’s a nice guy, I enjoy talking to him. But unless I pass his desk looking really busy and flustered, he says “Hey how you doing Pam?”

Innocent enough, right?

Except when I answer with the generic “Good, how are you?” he always answers… In detail.

He’ll transition right into a conversation about his weekend plans or something bad that happened to him the day before or something he is currently working on.

Which, again, is fine. Except, I don’t want to get into an in-depth conversation with him every time I have to pass his desk to make copies or use the bathroom. And then I have to gracefully find a way to say I can’t talk anymore because I’m ready to pee myself.

And if I manage to dodge his desk long enough, he’ll come over to my area and kick-start the routine.

Sometimes a “good morning” or “Hey” is good enough.

Keep it simple, Kevin.

Jim gets confronted

Jim and Michael in the good ol' days.

Things have been tense between Jim and Michael for quite a while. They used to kind of be buddies. Played golf together, had lunch, etc. But Jim became overwhelmed by Michael’s neediness consuming both his work and personal life and had to sever ties. I wasn’t at Dunder Mifflin when all this happened. But apparently it was pretty dramatic.

Now Michael tip-toes around Jim, barely able to gather the courage to ask him to take on assignments and constantly trying to start conversations he thinks will earn Jim’s approval. Jim struggles with these encounters, torn between the unpleasant memory of the way things were when they were friends and the guilt he feels over giving the guy the cold shoulder.

Like I said. Tense.

Jim and I will often vent about Michael together on lunch breaks or while he is away from the office, hoping that it will help get the frustrations out of our system when we see him in person.

While it works to some degree, Michael can sense the unease among us even if he tries his hardest to pretend like all of us are best friends.

And last week … it all broke down.

Jim asked me a question about some paperwork I had filled out. He thought I had made a mistake. I tried explaining to him several times why I did what I did, but it wasn’t clicking. The third time rewording my explanation and Jim says “Ohhhh I get it. I completely misunderstood. I’ll just change it a little to make that more clear.”

Just then, Michael, who had been perched just inside his office during this interaction, came out and starts suggesting ways to change the document to make more sense, even though it was clear we had resolved the problem.

Jim cuts him off. “We got it,” he says in a tone more harsh than he probably intended.

Michael turns and retreats to his office, mumbling the whole way “I was just trying to help.”

“Great,” Jims says to me later. “He can’t leave well enough alone, has to eavesdrop, has to butt in after the problem is already solved, and now I’m the bad guy.”

We agreed Michael would get over it.

But he didn’t.

Taken by storm

Michael preparing for the biggest storm ever -- to hit only his house

We had wild storms over the weekend. Tornado sirens. Thunder. Lightning. High winds. Our whole county was under alerts most of the afternoon Sunday. No damage occurred, so it was more of a scare than anything.
Michael came in and started talking about the storm as if his house was the only one that experienced it.
“Jan and I had to go down to the basement. The thunder was making cracking noises it was so loud.”
Yeah, we know Michael. We all live within an 8-mile radius of the office. Don’t you think if you could hear thunder that loud, we all could?
I let him talk, though. And then when I started talking about the safety precautions we had to take at our house, he walked away in the middle of my story.
He made a beeline for Andy’s desk and said “Well the new Batman candy is out.”
Thanks, Michael.