Michael Scott is a loveable, awkward, goofy, mess of a character, which is exactly why audiences loved him. As a boss, though, he has a lot to be desired. Some people have to work with a real-life version of the Dunder Mifflin Regional Manager, and it's not as amusing as it is on the TV show.
(Content has been edited for clarity)
They Had A New Rule For The Microwave After That
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“He spilled coffee on his shoes, and it soaked into his socks. So what did he decide to do? He washed his sock by hand in the kitchen sink, then attempted to dry it off in the microwave set on high for a minute. The wet sock just sat there and spun around trying to burn, but it was too wet. The horrible smell of a burning sweaty sock filled the entire office for a week. To better top things off, he then sent out a PSA through email telling everyone in the office to only use the microwave for food.
I sat there watching all of this go down while providing honest Jim Halpert like advice.”
The Mystery Of The Parking Lot Crockpot
“My boss brought in a crockpot full of hot chocolate for our staff Christmas party. Two days later, I pulled into the parking lot before work and there was a crockpot in an empty parking space. I went in and casually brought it up to my boss, like, ‘Hey, did you see the mysterious crockpot parked out there?’ She looked off into the distance for a few seconds, then started booking it out to the parking lot. She thought it was her crockpot from the Christmas party, except it wasn’t. We all had to go outside and study the parking lot crockpot to make sure it wasn’t hers, and after having the whole staff look, it was confirmed that it was NOT hers. So then we had another mystery on our hands because she couldn’t remember what happened to the one that actually belonged to her. Later, she had our assistant manager go to Sears on his break and pick up a new crockpot for her. The parking lot crock pot stayed in its parking space for a month, and then one night after work when it was snowing, she accidentally ran over it.”
They Were Surprised To See An Uninvited Guest At Their Table
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“When I worked briefly as an Aircraft Mechanic, my boss was about as Michael Scott as one could realistically be. To top it all off, his last name was Scott.
Here are a few of his fun, and mildly annoying, antics:
-We had a company cookout with cornhole boards set up. He and I were paired together on a team. After we won the first game, he smacked me on the butt and said ‘Good game,’ then immediately realized how awkward it was, and went on a tangent about how everyone he worked with was his friend, and he would never intentionally harass them.
-My coworker Jim and I used to go to a Chinese restaurant on Fridays after work sometimes. One day, out of the blue, we walked in and our boss was there waiting on us, unannounced and, frankly, uninvited.
-For another company cookout, he asked everyone what our favorite brewsky was. He wrote down everyone’s answers and brought a cooler full of brews. HIS favorite brews. When one of the managers told him drinking during the cookout wasn’t a good idea, he argued about how he was trying to make things fun for everybody. When the GM showed up and said, ‘No drinking,’ Mr. Scott packed up his cooler and went home.
-When I put in my two-weeks notice, he waxed poetic about how he hated losing a member of ‘the family’ but wished me the best. He threw me an impromptu going away party with pineapple upside down cake. I’m allergic to pineapple, so I couldn’t eat it. His response was to go to a vending machine and buy me a bunch of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
He was a total cheeseball, but one of the more entertaining bosses I’ve ever had.”
They Were More Worried About Online Reviews Than Their Finances
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“I am a chef. About a year ago, I opened a restaurant and bar for two wealthy, retiring lawyers. Boy, did I miss some red flags, chief among them being that these two septuagenarians had no experience at all in the hospitality industry, period. So, it’s been challenging working for them for a lot of reasons, but my favorite has been a recent quote from the one owner after whom the restaurant is named.
I had been doing a lot of paperwork to keep the accountant updated on our purchases of food and equipment, and teaching the bartenders (since we have no bar manager) how to log their orders. Also, I had trained staff working in my kitchen well enough that I was confident enough to leave alone up there for hours at a stretch. Problem was, the owners keep obsessive track of the online reviews. One day a woman came in and asked for a dish that wasn’t even on our menu, then left a bad review because she was unsatisfied with my kitchen’s best efforts to accommodate her. The owners then decided I needed to be spending more time in the kitchen and not worrying about keeping track of their finance.
The eponymous owner justified this by telling me, ‘Finances are mostly fiction, anyway.'”
Not A Happy Pizza Party
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“I had a job where I worked as the receptionist in a small financial planning firm. The boss was a guy called Peter. He would sometimes call us into the conference room for meetings to ask how we slept the night before and if anyone didn’t sleep that well, we were welcome to take a nap on the lounge in the reception area.
One day, he asked me to order pizzas for the team. We all decided to order one large party pizza, so I ordered ‘with the lot,’ which in Australia meant they came with tiny prawns on them. Peter flipped out because he was allergic to tiny prawns, but all other seafood was fine. So while we all sat around eating the pizza, he just sat there with his arms folded, glaring at the rest of us.”
It Was Like He’d Never Had Pineapple Before
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“This guy was my boss’s boss. I didn’t work directly with him but saw him regularly in passing. A few highlights:
-Once when the whole office was happily distracted by discussing the incoming bad weather, he was in his office trying to pull up a weather website. Everyone else had wandered off somewhere, so I was the only one sitting right outside his office who heard him yell, ‘I got it up!’
-I brought in a fruit arrangement around the holidays. He tasted a piece of pineapple and legitimately FREAKED OUT, saying it was the best he’d ever had.
-For no apparent reason, he once suddenly cornered me to tell me the history of the expression ‘for the birds.’
-Someone mentioned a school next door to the company and he said, ‘That’s nearby, right?’
-A coworker mentioned that another company’s website was coming up as ‘blocked’ on her browser. His immediate reaction, loud enough for everyone to hear, was ‘There’s probably an adult site with the same name!'”
They Just Wanted Time To Grade Finals
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“I am a teacher, and my school principal can be INCREDIBLY Michael Scott-like.
The day before Christmas vacation, the students had just taken their semester finals and had a half day of school. The teachers were SWAMPED with grading the finals and grades were, of course, due the following afternoon. After the students left for their half-day, we teachers were told we would have a quick meeting followed by scheduled time to grade our assessments. Much to our relief, the meeting appeared short and most of the afternoon was scheduled for grading.
When we got to the meeting, however, our principal excitedly announced that the whole afternoon schedule had been a LIE and that we must all cover our eyes and walk to the science lab. After reluctantly following these bizarre instructions, we found ourselves in what my principal called ‘Winter Wonderland’ where we would spend the next three hours participating in a gingerbread building contest. She locked us in, told us she would be back to judge at the end of the day, and LEFT.”
Even The Customer Sensed What Was Up
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“There is a customer we all dislike. My boss and I saw him walking up to our storefront. My boss proceeded to jump under her desk. The customer asked if she was around. I told him, ‘No,’ but he had this puzzled look on his face while looking behind me. I turned around to see my boss’s hand coming up from under her desk, roaming for her milkshake. The customer was not pleased.”
The Christmas Party Wasn’t All That Jolly With Him And His New Girlfriend Around
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“My boss is the whole ridiculous, self-centered, clueless package that is Michael Scott.
Here are some similarities:
-It was my first one-on-one meeting with him. He had been with the company about one week at this point. He kicked off our meeting by enthusiastically demonstrating his Popeye impression to me. He quickly followed it up with his ‘Three Stooges’ impression.
-Any time lunch is to be ordered in, he will insist upon pizza. It’s pizza every time. When someone suggested that other people might like to try something else, his response was, ‘I like pizza.’
-He told me that even though he likes to clown around, he takes his job seriously. ‘I mean, it’s not like I show up to work with a wig and red nose, although I do own both.’ He is about 50 years old.
-He doesn’t realize that ‘frustrating’ and ‘flustered’ are two different words. He constantly uses the hybrid of ‘flusterating.’
-He discusses his personal problems with every member of the office…in succession. He spends 20 minutes in one office forcing way too much detail upon the person about his marital issues. Then he moves to the next office and has the same conversation. He repeats this about eight times. Needless to say, he doesn’t do much work.
-He invited his new girlfriend to the Christmas party (he is recently divorced). Our table showed up to the party about 30 minutes after the doors opened. It was happy hour when we meet his girlfriend. She was hammered. Over the course of the night, he was sprinting to and from the bar getting her Rye and Cokes. She drank about 10 that night. She ended up kissing me and several other men at our table on the cheek, hugging us, and hanging off the CEO. All the while, my boss was panicked that she would embarrass him, though it never occurred to him to stop buying her drinks. Then when she started calling the wives at our table bimbos, he sheepishly smiled and said, ‘That’s my little firecracker.’
-I happened to see him from a distance at a local park. He was a 50-year-old man, swinging alone on a swing set, with his headphones on, staring off at nothing.
-He makes fart noises during meetings.
-He promised his girlfriend a job on their second date. Thankfully, he has not made good on that one.”
His Eating Habits Leave Something To Be Desired
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“My boss was a devotee of ‘Guerilla Dining,’ meaning that everyone’s lunch was at risk of invasion from his poking fork when we were in a restaurant, even with clients. He watched a child’s potty training video one day and then spent a good amount of the rest of his time marching up and down the hallway, singing, ‘I’M A SUPER-DUPER POOPER! I CAN POTTY WITH THE BEST!’ Another time, he ate so many bags of baby carrots in an effort to lose weight and detox, his skin turned a strange shade of orange.”
Her Ring Pop Caused A Distraction
“We were hiring two new employees, one Indian and one Chinese. My boss came by and asked us loudly, in front of several people, ‘Where my Asians at? When do they start?’
During our ‘all hands’ town hall-esque meeting on my birthday, he played Beyonce’s ‘Single Ladies,’ and gave me a ring pop. During the meeting, I was eating the ring pop, and he said, ‘Wow, look at you sucking on that thing! It’s kind of distracting, every time I look over there you’re just sucking away!’ He’s a male in his 50’s, I’m a 23-year-old female.
We hired an Indian person whose name is quite long and intricate. She goes by a shortened version of this name. The manager attempted to read her full name in an exaggeratedly clunky fashion then proclaimed, ‘Ah, whatever.'”
“That’s What’s Up”
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“I had this Indian boss at a sandwich shop who overheard me say, ‘That’s what’s up.’ He asked me what it means, and I just told him it meant ‘good’ or ‘great.’
He kept using it over and over the next two years I was there. ‘I want that walk in clean like that what’s up,’ or, ‘That sandwich was not that what’s up, buddy.'”
If She Wouldn’t Be Celebrated, Then No One Could
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“My boss banned all potlucks and birthday parties. Potlucks, because a few employees were talking about food once and decided to bring in some food to share with each other since they liked to cook. She found out before they could invite her, so she assumed she was excluded and banned all potlucks.
She also banned anything birthday related because she assumed no one would get her anything for her birthday (it hadn’t even come up yet). If she wasn’t going to get anything, then no one else can either. We never even had a chance. Also, she was out on her birthday.
On the rare occasions she has brought in food, it was because she bought it for her daughters, who didn’t eat it, so it went stale. So she has dropped off stale, week-old cupcakes and cookies before then going around telling everyone about the desserts so that everyone would thank her.”
He Wanted Them To Go Harass The Competition
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“I work at an Applebee’s, and across the street, a new restaurant opened up. On the first day they opened, we were almost empty, and my boss told me to go over and wait for a host to approach me, then tell him to suck a schlong.”
She Tried Her Best To Be Inclusive, We Guess
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“During our morning store meeting, my manager brought us donuts and milk. She told everyone to help themselves, then looked at me and said, ‘I got you 2% milk,’ I looked confused as to why and she explained, ‘Because you’re lactose intolerant.'”
He Thought Her Smoothie Skills Would Translate Into Something Else
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“My boss is 100% Michael Scott. He’s socially inept and has all these whacky ideas. He’s not very bright, but he is still likable. Each day is like a new episode of ‘The Office’ for me. Recently, he tried to hire the girl at Whole Foods who makes his smoothie every day. It was for an accounting position, but she had no real world experience besides making smoothies at Whole Foods. She came in, interviewed, and he made her an offer right then and there. She said she needed to think about it. The next day, my boss went to her place of employment for a smoothie and asked her if she put in her two weeks. I think she was a little creeped out, so she declined the offer. It was a total blow to his ego. She was like 19 and he’s like 50, so it was cringy.”
All He Did Was Embarrass Himself In Front Of His Workers
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“I was working as a waiter during the London Olympics, and a few friends and I were taking one of our allocated breaks. One of our many superiors asked us, from across the room, to get back to work. We didn’t move immediately, and about two minutes later, he walked up to us and did the whole counting thing you do to scare kids. But he counted up. We just sat there, confused. He got all the way up to 12 when we broke from the sheer awkwardness and got back to work.”
He Only Makes The Best Coffee
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“He gathered everyone in the office kitchen to demonstrate how he liked his coffee made but pitched it as if he was letting everyone in on the secret to making the perfect coffee and we’d all be thankful to him later.
He proceeded to make a normal, instant coffee in pretty much the only way to make it.”
It Was Like Jan And Michael’s Dinner Party But In Real Life
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“I was a young entry-level employee and my boss invited me and another guy on my team to a birthday party at his apartment. I was 22, and he must’ve been about 35. My friend and I went out of obligation with our partners, and when we got there, it was only us, my boss, and his boyfriend. Six people. In his small Manhattan apartment. We barely knew each other.
He put dinner in the oven to cook about 45 minutes after we got there, so the whole affair lasted hours. It was excruciating.
The whole thing was similar to an actual ‘Office’ episode, but it happened a few years earlier.”
He Had A Heck Of An Opening Line For His Big Speech
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“I worked for the American arm of a large Japanese company, and our president was from Japan. He understood English pretty well, but he couldn’t speak it at all. He’d try, but it was nearly possible to understand, so he never said much beyond, ‘Good morning,’ to anyone. His right-hand man and his secretary were always on hand to translate if he wanted to say something important.
So we had this huge, fancy Christmas party and we were in this elegant ballroom on the Queen Mary. One of the nitwits in HR decided that it would be great if the president could say a few words. Five-hundred employees, plus spouses, were all watching him with trepidation as he walks up to the podium.
He looked around the room, took a long uncomfortable pause, and said (imagine the most stereotypical Hollywood Mr. Miagi accent ever), ‘I feel like an octopus in a house of ill repute. I don’t know where to start!'”
His EpiPen Demonstration Didn’t Go As Planned
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“He gathered all the employees into the conference room to demonstrate how to administer an EpiPen. He took the cap off the EpiPen, marked a spot on an orange with a Sharpie and, just like the scene in Pulp Fiction, raised the EpiPen above his head and came down hard on the orange. Then he erupted with a loud, ‘Ouch!’ Somehow he had flipped the EpiPen so the needle was pointed up and stabbed himself in the thumb when he hit the orange.”
