I was in seventh grade when The Office premiered, making me far too young to appreciate the chilling truths behind all the jokes. I had no idea how realistic the show was in portraying the daily indignities of the modern office world until I spent 13 precious months of my own life working in one. These are the lessons I wish I'd heeded from NBC's The Office before I entered the workforce.Everyone on The Office spends most of their time at work not doing any work. Ryan is constantly holding a phone without actually speaking into it and arguing his inability to complete everything from spring cleaning (Season 2: Episode 13) to simple data entry (6:11). Jim spends entire work days pranking Dwight, chatting with Pam, or hosting events like the Office Olympics (2:3). Creed is usually staring into space.
I wish I had understood that not giving a fuck was the norm before I had to learn it the hard way.
My first three months on the job were spent caring too much—I worked overtime to create, edit, and update 1200-plus social-media profiles. But over time I began to realize my manager couldn't tell the difference between something that took me eight hours and something that took me eight minutes. It was easy to stop trying after that. By the end of my employment, I had lowered the bar to a level I can only describe as "Creed": I was coming in late, getting high on lunch breaks, and using my company computer to flip between message boards about sociopathy and borderline personality disorder in an effort to diagnose myself.
EMPLOYEES DON'T WORK
Advertisement
BOSSES DON'T WORK, EITHER
BEING A MINORITY IS AWKWARD
Advertisement
ALCOHOL IS EVERYWHERE
TRUST NO ONE
Advertisement
Real meetings weren't much better and often devolved into people covering their asses over balls that had been dropped (blaming whoever wasn't at the meeting was a go-to move) or outright lying about their own productivity.