Why Michael Scott from The Office is actually an exemplary manager

If you’re not into cringe comedy it definitely won’t be your thing. If you are your best bet is to watch the UK version and then first two seasons of the American version before they started making Michael more lovable.

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I’m definitely not; I’ve had to take repeated breaks from Crazy Ex GF because some of the comedy is so damn cringe-worthy.

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There you go again, giving me too much credit.

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The closest I have come is the Leverage episode “The Office Job”.

As long as we’re going for sitcom bosses, I’ll take Captain Holt over Michael Scott any day, given what I have picked up, just reading about it.

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From this boing boing post: https://www.google.com/amp/s/boingboing.net/2018/06/25/likable-monsters.html/amp

“That’s right, witnesses tended to describe Hitler like he was Michael Scott from The Office (who adorably put Splenda in his Scotch). And look at the arc of viewers’ collective attitude toward that character. It doesn’t matter that he’s an objectively terrible boss and clearly makes everyone’s lives worse; at some point in the series, you start to like the guy, and then root for him. Which is why the writers of the show had his character wind up happy and married despite being cluelessly destructive at every step. By the time he flew off into the sunset, very few of us paused to say, ‘Isn’t this the guy who made Pam sob in the first episode?’”

See also

Is this video not some weird allusion to Trump?

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Yeah, offices also seem sort of boring backgrounds for a show. But I was never into other sorts of sitcoms.

Except for Red Dwarf.

I’m not even 100% certain I know what that means, but I definitely am not a fan of cringing.

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Anything by Zack Galifianakis, but especially this.

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I’m sure Dunder Mifflin’s EPLI carrier would fail to agree.

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Unless it’s a slasher/horror show; that makes perfect sense.

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It’s the kind of comedy that features a character who is behaving in earnest when many around him (and the audience) see him for what he is: an arsehole with delusions of grandeur who’s always acting inappropriately and disrespectfully. You cringe on behalf of the people stuck dealing with the character and sometimes in sympathy with the character himself. You cringe especially hard if the main character reminds you of someone you know or perhaps yourself.

Not everyone’s cup of tea for sure.

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My favorite example of cringe comedy is Curb Your Enthusiasm.

My wife loves The Office. She will not watch Curb Your Enthusiasm. He stresses her out too much.

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Or a murder mystery. Or 18th century pirate treasure!

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A woman I dated was the same way. She said Larry reminded her a lot of her ex-husband. Brrrrr.

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weirdly, they’re turning season 2 of Ghosted into an Office clone. Season 1’s monster of the week style was pretty fun, and it seems weird tp backpedal the cool scifi setting into an office setting.

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This video is a mystery to me. It spends a lot of time claiming that the branch office works because of such-and-such of Scott’s characteristics, but seems to have forgotten that it’s a fictional workplace. It only works for Scott because the writers make it work for him.

He could be Pol Pot literally executing the intelligentsia and leaving them to rot in the car park every day, and the writers would still make the fictional universe work for him as long as the viewers (or the advertisers) liked it.

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I’m not so sure about that…

For one, I think it’s possible to be quite funny without crossing any lines, and part of being a good boss is maintaining morale. My partner is pretty stoked about her boss, and keeps telling me about how funny she is.

But also, I think many people would be blown away to see actual competence in management, since IME it’s pretty damn rare. They’d be like, OMG - see that! Bam, that’s how it’s supposed to be done! Ima share this vid with vid with all my friends.

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Yeah, I started to watch it to see how they could justify this notion, but by the time the sponsor’s message came up a minute or so in, I was ready to barf over its vapid commercialism, and realised it was just hollow bullshit covering for a clickbait title.

Disappointed in BB.

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Good point! Leslie Knope comes to mind, and her (albeit, less funny) boss Chris…

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Hey, yeah. I haven’t seen much of Parks and Recreation, but I could certainly watch more.

BTW, anyone else see the resemblance?

I have. Calling Michael scott a good boss is like calling trump a good president.

It might be entertaining as long as it’s fiction. But in the real world Michael would be unemployable and hr would chuck him out for forcing his employees into degrading and dangerous situations they actively protest from doing on a regular basis.

Not accidents either. Intentionals. Along with huge amounts of unethical behavior and favoritism that may or may not be dealbreakers but massive liabilities.

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