TV Quote of the Day (‘The Office,’ on Unexpected and Unlikely Management Material)

Pam Beesly [played by Jenna Fischer, pictured]: “I have this little vacuum cleaner that's broken. If Dwight doesn't work out, maybe that can be manager.”— The Office, Season 3, Episode 3, “The Coup,” original air date Oct. 5, 2006, teleplay by Paul Lieberstein, directed by Greg Daniels

Quote of the Day (O. Henry, on One Advantage of a Low Salary)

“My salary as bookkeeper in the hardware concern kept at a distance those ills attendant upon superfluous wealth.” —American short-story writer William Sidney Porter, aka O. Henry (1862-1910), “Confessions of a Humourist,” in Waifs and Strays: Twelve Stories (1917)

TV Quote of the Day (‘The Office,’ on the Appropriate Attitude Towards Challenges)

Dwight [played by Rainn Wilson]: “I am ready to face any challenges that might be foolish enough to face me.” —The Office, Season 3, Episode 14, “The Return,” original air date Jan. 18, 2007, teleplay by Lee Eisenberg, Gene Stupnitsky, and Michael Schur, directed by Greg Daniels

Quote of the Day (Janan Ganesh, on Offices and ‘The Demystification of the Successful’)

“Except in sectors where the minimum standard is kept high through regulation — medicine, say, or piloting — the standard in a profession is always lower than outsiders would credit. This has to be drummed into young people from less privileged backgrounds, all too many of whom believe that every lawyer is Earl Warren, every trader a Fields Medalist. The office allows them to observe colleagues flail under pressure, utter banalities, or just shamble around. The ultimate benefit of going to the office is the demystification of the successful. You can’t see someone’s clay feet over Zoom.”—“Citizen of Nowhere” columnist Janan Ganesh, “Why the Young Should Go to the Office,” The Financial Times, Nov. 4-5, 2023

The image accompanying this post comes from the 1999 movie Office Space, with Gary Cole playing the kind of clay-footed boss that Ganesh has in mind. 

Quote of the Day (Johnny C. Taylor Jr., on the Work Ethic of Older Employees)

“With the economy slowing down, companies need fewer people and need the people who are there to be OK with working hard. Instead of trying to convince younger generations to be something different, some companies are saying, ‘Why don’t we just go hire people who are naturally predisposed to work harder?'”— Johnny C. Taylor Jr., chief executive of the Society for Human Resource Management, quoted by Callum Borchers, “Older Workers Are in Demand When Bosses Want Work Ethic,” The Wall Street Journal, Apr. 6, 2023

I am glad to see that a number of employers are coming around to seeing the value of over-50 workers. It did not seem that way for much of the past two decades, and especially in the recession following the pandemic. One can only hope this trend continues.

(The image accompanying this post shows Anne Hathaway and Robert DeNiro in the 2015 film The Intern.)

TV Quote of the Day (‘The Office,’ Speculating About Who Will Be Promoted)

Pam Beesly [played by Jenna Fischer]: “Who do you think will get the job?”

Kevin Malone [played by Brian Baumgartner]: “Karen—she looks corporate, those little pantsuits.”

Phyllis Vance [played by Phyllis Smith]: “I think it's gonna be Michael [Scott].”

Oscar Martinez [played by Oscar Nunez]: “Do you really think he's qualified for that job?”

Phyllis: “No, but he wasn't qualified for the job he has now and he got that one.”—The Office, Season 3, Episode 23, “The Job,” original air date May 17, 2007, teleplay by Paul Lieberstein and Michael Schur, directed by Ken Kwapis

Open Plan Offices: Weighing Their Effectiveness

“For decades, research has found that open plan offices are bad for companies, bad for workers, bad for health and bad for morale. And yet they just won’t die. Human beings, if they are to thrive, need a bit of privacy — walls and a door. And yet employers, decade after decade, neglect to give workers what they need, refuse to do what’s in their own self-interest.”— Columnist and TV commentator David Brooks, “The Immortal Awfulness of Open Plan Workplaces,” The New York Times, Sept. 9, 2022

New York City was utterly transformed by a number of the projects begun or completed under former three-term mayor Michael Bloomberg (pictured): the High Line, a rebuilt World Trade Center and its surrounding Lower Manhattan neighborhood, Hudson Yards, East River Park in Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridge Park in Brooklyn, Long Island City in Queens, 400 miles of bike lanes throughout the five boroughs. 

No mayor has left such an imprint on the look of America's largest city since Fiorello LaGuardia (with the help of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal) in the Great Depression.

Bloomberg supporters fervently wished he might have similarly altered the landscape of The Wall Street Journal if he had successfully achieved his rumored interest in purchasing Dow Jones. (The Washington Post had also reportedly caught his eye.) That hope was dashed (at least for now) when a Bloomberg spokesman quickly tweeted that he had no such interest.

If Bloomberg could only get his mitts on Rupert Murdoch’s most influential business print publication, the thinking in some quarters surely went, maybe he could return the Journal to something like the separation of news and opinion that largely held sway before the Australian media baron bought the company from the Bancroft family in 2007.

I won’t comment on the political change that might occur under such a scenario. What I’m concerned with here is a physical environment far different from what he left Gotham: the office space that would become part of his media empire. My apprehension arises because few other American corporate titans have trumpeted open-space offices as tirelessly as Bloomberg.

I don’t know if the Murdoch family follows this office model. Maybe they consider it an outgrowth of Bloomberg’s hated RINO outlook.

Judging by the impact Hiz(former)zoner has had on American office design in general, I’m afraid he’ll exert a baleful influence on the health and creativity of any Dow Jones workers that could come into his fold.

I don’t always agree with David Brooks’ views on politics, but his analysis of the controversial and crazy American corporate embrace of Bloomberg’s “open office” is spot on. I just wish the Times columnist would have mentioned Bloomberg by name in the article, so that the debate on this could get the thorough airing it deserves.

In his otherwise excellent piece, Brooks notes the dangers that open-space offices pose to employee health, but dwells on one aspect (stress) without mentioning the one that’s become ubiquitous since late-winter 2000: airborne illnesses like COVID-19. 

Even urging workers to stay home if they feel something coming on is not likely to be helpful if they have insufficient sick days. (And COVID—not to mention a COVID rebound—can exhaust that supply quickly.)

Brooks rails against cubicles, but I’m afraid those units have long since become staples of the modern workplace. At least they could, at their best, provide a modicum of physical separation from adjacent workers.

But I am aware of at least one employer, just before the COVID outbreak, which implemented a renovation that did away even with that. Instead, workers were herded together in triangles, with no partitions between.

Did I mention that this design model became obsolete within just a few months after the COVID outbreak?

How much do you think that America’s C-suites have invested in up-to-date ventilation systems? Your guess is as good as mine. As Liz Szabo’s article nine months ago from Kaiser Health News noted, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers published updated recommendations in 2020 not only for limiting indoor odors and dust but control viruses like COVID-19.

But, because those guidelines are voluntary, there’s no way of telling how closely the business world is adhering to them—anymore than we know right now they are following up on the White House’s initiative (again, voluntary) encouraging schools and workplaces to improve ventilation.

Companies’ best-laid plans for a return to the office—and, let’s be frank, a return to traditional top-down control—keep getting upended by a disease that evolves and adapts to new environments far faster than corporate heads ever have done.

The move towards a more open environment often rests on the contention that it fosters creativity and managerial transparency. That would send great—if corporate heads were willing to accept ideas other than their own, let alone dissent.

But, before Elon Musk started going seriously off the rails with managing his new toy, Twitter (like firing janitors, thus forcing workers at two locations to bring their own toilet paper to the office!), more than a few other CEOs were not only rooting for his return-to-the-office mandates but implementing their own.

Employers are anxious to herd their workers back to the office. If various Amenities of the Month can’t lure them back, then diktats from Human Resources will have to do.

Unfortunately, the types of layouts in Bloomberg L.P. that have been copied elsewhere don’t inspire workers to rush back to their cubicles—and, if those employees find any kind of alternative arrangement out there in the market, they will seize it.

I suppose that if there’s any good outcome from the turbulence that has roiled American politics over the last several years, it’s that Mike Bloomberg never won a Presidential election so he could implement his 2019 plan to make the East Room of the White House into another showcase for theopen office model he followed in his own company.

(The image accompanying this post of Bloomberg, speaking with supporters at a campaign rally at Warehouse 215 at Bentley Projects in Phoenix, Ariz., was taken by Gage Skidmore on Feb. 1, 2020.)

Quote of the Day (Joe Queenan, on a Backpack Worn With Office Attire)

“A backpack worn with office attire makes you look like a little kid. It makes it look like you're carrying Intermediate Spanish or ‘The Scarlet Letter’ inside your book bag. It makes you look dumpy. It makes you look like a big goof. It makes you look like your mommy dressed you and said, ‘Look both ways before crossing the busy street, sweetie.’” —Joe Queenan, “Moving Targets: Please Don’t Leave Me Holding This Bag,” The Wall Street Journal, September 27, 2014

Tweet of the Day (Comic John Lyon, on Important Work E-Mails)

“Is there a way I can filter out all work emails except the ones telling me there are donuts or cake in the office?”—Comic John Lyon, tweet of Feb. 2, 2016

TV Quote of the Day (‘WKRP in Cincinnati,’ As Office Duties Are Figured Out)

Jennifer Marlowe [played by Loni Anderson]: “You want me, Mr. Carlson?”

Arthur “Big Guy” Carlson [played by Gordon Jump]: “Oh, yeah. Come in, Jennifer. Have a seat.”

Jennifer: “No, thank you.”

Arthur: “Well, all right. At this particular point in time, I would like to dictate a press release.”

Jennifer: “I don't take dictation.”

Arthur: “What? Alright, I guess I can do this thing myself. It's probably going to be a long meeting though; so why don't you get coffee for all the guys here?”

Jennifer: “I don't get coffee, Mr. Carlson. We agreed.”

Arthur: “Oh, yeah.”

Jennifer: “You have to draw the line somewhere.”

Arthur: “You got that right.”

Jennifer: “Will there be anything else I can do?”

Arthur: “No. I think that about does it.”

Jennifer:  “Thank you.”

Arthur: “Oh, no. Thank you.”

Les Nessman [played by Richard Sanders]: “How does she get away with that?”

Herb Tarlek [played by Frank Bonner]: “Are you kidding?”— WKRP in Cincinnati, Season 1, Episode 7, “Turkeys Away,” original air date October 30, 1978, teleplay by Bill Dial, directed by Michael Zinberg

Quote of the Day (Robert Louis Stevenson, on “Perpetual Devotion” to Business)

“But it is not only the person himself who suffers from his busy habits, but his wife and children, his friends and relations, and down to the very people he sits with in a railway carriage or an omnibus. Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.”—Robert Louis Stevenson, “An Apology for Idlers”, Cornhill Magazine, July 1877

The image of Stevenson accompanying this post, by the way, is from a painting of Stevenson by John Singer Sargent.

Quote of the Day (Laura Swansson, on an Overheard Office Phone Call)

“I was furiously cranking out reports recently when my office mate got a phone call. I did my best to ignore what I heard him tell the person on the other end: “No, I’m not busy. I’m just at work.”—Laura Swansson, part of the “@Work” column, Reader’s Digest, June 2009