Parallel Universe 2

I guess what makes The Office work is that it’s so real. I keep saying this. Not because it’s made ‘documentary’ style, but because it is founded on some very basic, palpable truths.

Every office around the world is different. But somehow, the show managed to touch on what was the same. The writers based some of their stories on their experiences working for General Electric, and right there you can be sure that they didn’t just dream up the scenarios.

We’ve always known that commonplace is often funnier than complicated plotlines. Sometimes even Friends writers forgot this, and they ended up with an exhausting 30 minutes about Ross and his stupid monkey. The Office’s premises can be outrageous and amplified sometimes, but they get away with it because they treat it so matter-of-factly.

Funny is everyday life, seen from a certain vantage point (a single camera with great zoom, perhaps?). Funny is catching people’s reactions after an officemate’s emotional outburst. Not all reactions consist of an exaggerated frozen gape while the studio audience laughs. No one does that in real life anyway especially when a furrowed brow would be sufficient.

Everyday life is sad, poignant, heartwarming, bittersweet, awkward, sincere, and so many other things. The show captures this range of emotions so beautifully in such a simple way: just by watching the characters. In the foreground, background, to the side, wherever they are. They don’t even need to speak – because in reality sometimes our words belie how we really feel. The show understands that the devil is in the detail, and that the whole weight of an emotion can be seen literally in the blink of an eye, or a quiet sigh or a pause between sentences. The show delivers these subtleties and nuances perfectly. Props also to the actors who truly understand the material they’re working with. The characters of The Office are so well developed that during shooting the actors do their own stuff in the background for hours, with the single camera catching them only once in while, and they never miss a beat.

What can I say? I love the show. If you haven’t seen it then go grab a DVD. That’s what she said.

Parallel Universe

Last weekend, my Kris KringleMommy/Daddy (Secret Santa) gave me Seasons 1-3 of The Office (US). I haven’t slept since then. Solb na ako ngayong Pasko.

There are very few TV sitcoms that catch my attention. I grew up watching Friends and Cheers, so my standards have always been high hahaha. Comedy I think is the hardest to do; the writers have to be consistently brilliant. More than that, they have to know the difference between brilliant and crazy stupid. There’s a very thin line. If you don’t see that, you start to become self-absorbed, and the show basically implodes. I stopped watching Ally McBeal when its writers crossed that line.

That said, The Office is a brilliant show. I had my doubts when it first came out, seeing that the original UK version was so widely successful. But this tiny show about a mid-sized paper company in Scranton, Pennsylvania shines all the way through, from Michael Scott’s antics, Pam and Jim’s romance, Dwight’s sucking up, and even Angela’s turtlenecks. I tried to catch as much as I could on cable, but until last weekend I hadn’t been able to watch the episodes in the right succession.

(This is going to be a long entry with at least two parts, so be prepared.)

One of the very few reasons why I go to work day in and day out is that I find highly entertaining the obvious parallelisms about my office and The Office. It amuses me no end. Sometime I catch myself smirking at the thought, only there’s no camera to look at when I do it, like Jim often does. I’m surveying my desk now and seeing Dwight’s bobble heads in the form of my miniature Cinderella statue, an elephant keychain, an Irishman magnet, a Matchbox Beetle and a stuffed Funshine Bear. My phone is a Cisco (imagine how thrilled I was when our MIS first brought the phones in. I have to say, though, it’s not the easiest thing to navigate. Pam’s a whiz at transferring calls).

I work for a branch of a multi-office company. With more than 70 offices worldwide, we’re a little bigger than Dunder Mifflin’s Northeast US-based company. But the structure is the same: regional office composed of a few local staff and headed by a local guy, once-in-a-blue-moon visits from corporate executives with whom we have conflicting views on how business is run, and very little budget. Our former receptionist had a secret office romance with one of our business development guys – I say former because they got married and left the country (wonder if that will happen to PB&J*). I have an officemate who pulls pranks on co-workers a lot, except he’s not tall and cute like Jim (hah! Sorry friend!). My cube mates and I play rock-paper-scissors, and whoever loses makes orange juice for the winner. I have become an expert OJ maker. We bet a lot over inane things like Tagalog-English translations and Harry Potter trivia. The loser usually serves the winner snacks for an entire week or buys coffee at Starbucks, except we don’t call it ‘Bucks like Michael Scott** does.

The layout of our office makes us open for attack by our boss. By attack I mean the way Michael swaggers in and makes pointless announcements to the entire staff in his booming voice. Most of the time he gets blank looks and the occasional “Uhh, okay.”

My desk faces a corner, so whenever our boss comes over, I always jump out of my skin because he surprises me from behind. I’m too lazy to swivel my chair to face him, so when we talk it’s like I’m talking to my PC monitor. Lack of respect? Possibly. He doesn’t seem to mind talking to the back of my head.

Sexism, racism, ageism and all kinds of bigotry? Check. Asshole boss who likes to crack humorless jokes, tells stripper and mistress stories at a table full of women and talks crass all the effin time? Check. The uptight accountant/admin officer who acts like a Nazi? Oh, and the boss who gets told off by bigger bosses from the head office, and takes it out on his staff like an immature, selfish, ignorant child. Or the staff who look at each other knowingly when the boss speaks nonsense, and afterward in a subtle, inside-joke way puts him in his place via a small remark and eye-rolling. Or the motivational meetings and workshops that take up the whole afternoon, and the expensive office dinners even when the entire company is in the process of downsizing.

The boss showing up at an after-office party to which he was intentionally not invited (you notice I make a lot of reference to the boss). The missent emails and careless comments about a gay officemate, emergency staff meetings about the broken printer and dirty toilet (conference room, everyone!), quitting your job and then returning, and your job being…just that. (Because right now, this is a job. If I advance any higher, this would be my career. And if this were my career, I'd have to throw myself in front of a train. - Jim Halpert)

I could go on and on and on, but it all comes down to one thing. The Office is very real. As real as the list of phone line extensions taped to your PC, and your pink and green Post-it notes. As real as carpal tunnel syndrome, extended coffee breaks and solitaire on a slow day. As real as the annoying sound of tapping computer keys when you have a headache, or your very strong urge to hurl a shoe at a certain office door. Now I see the sheer genius behind the show’s mockumentary style – no canned laughter, no background music save for a constantly ringing phone and the occasional office karaoke. No predictable puns or storylines (Did I wake up this morning thinking I’d be throwing together a bird funeral? You never can tell what your day here is gonna turn into. – Pam Beesly).

No frills. Just a regular day at The Office.

To be continued.

*PB&J aka Pam Beesly and Jim (Halpert), receptionist and sales associate, respectively. Also known as JAM (Jim+Pam). Jim hangs out at the reception desk all the time. I remember my officemate sitting by the reception desk all the time. I thought he was just bored. Well, that, too.

** Michael Scott, regional manager

pm break

16.27. I go to the office pantry to take a break from doing nothing. Iced coffee sounds nice. I check, no clean glasses. Ok, normal coffee then. Black No cream, lots of sugar. I sit on a stool by the window, enjoying the warm respite from my ultra-cold spot directly under the overhead AC. I look to my right, at the condiments all lined up neatly, courtesy of our utility guy who shares my surname. I think, given time, I could really finish that entire bottle of iodized salt.

Clouds move in and cover the light streaming into the window. An officemate walks in. “May tao (anyone inside)?” he asks, pointing to the bathroom beside the sink. I shake my head and smile. He goes in, probably wondering what I’m doing in the pantry. Because no one hangs out there alone unless he or she is waiting in line for the bathroom, right?

I say to myself, no one in this office really knows me. They “know” me – my name and what I do and the general perception of me, but not much else. They don’t know that I like to drink coffee black no cream with lots of sugar, or that I can spend an hour sitting and drinking coffee alone, staring at the sky. And surely they don’t know why.

There are probably two or three people here who do know me. They’re the only ones I’d actually consider inviting to my wedding. I think weddings not because I’m having one myself, but because as one grows older you realize it’s one of those events where you really think about who you want to surround yourself with, people who share your truest, deepest joy and understand the meaning of that special glitter in your eyes. Not just anyone. Not just because you’re obligated to tack that generic wedding invitation on the office bulletin board, and then guess who will actually be attending.

Two or three people are enough, maybe. But it goes to show how, despite the fun times, the laughter and the friendly bickering, talking about work and movies and politics, that the office is still such an impersonal, almost manufactured environment.

Except that I hear my officemate pissing in the bathroom, which is such a…personal matter.

Before he opens the door and is embarrassed at the sight of me, I stand up, place my cup in the sink and make my way through our red maze known as cubicles.

Back to my cold spot.

Back to looking like everyone else and thinking how f*cking delicious it would be to break free.

Who knows, maybe that’s what they’re thinking, too.

The Office: Bioman

(warning: not very nice. may even be politically incorrect.)

Last week I was at the office quite early (coz I wanted to leave early haha). It was a nice morning, and I was feeling good. Because I was feeling good I turned on my PC and played my usual morning music.

"Excuse me."

I almost jumped out of my skin when I heard the voice. I looked behind me and saw one of our consultants, a thin-framed Brit with balding white hair and a light liver spots.

"Could you turn the music down?" he said, followed by "it sounds whiny" or some other indistinct mumbling.

Well hey there. Hey hey HEY. David Archuleta hadn't even gotten through his first verse yet. Okay granted, he's Archie and he does sound a bit whiny, but how could have thin-framed Brit possibly known that when he was sitting all the way on the other side of the office?? And the volume on my PC was at the lowest level. The lowest, because I hate loud music. Especially on such a nice morning.

I wanted to huff and puff, but instead I smiled through gritted teeth and took out my earphones. He should be lucky all he heard was Archie, because up next was Cookie belting out Billie Jean, and I'm sure ol' Brit would be tumbling his way to my cubicle to shush me if he heard that. Hmp. Stupid consultants.

A couple of days later I learned that he was shushing people from all corners of the office, people who not only were on the other end of the floor, but were also separated from him by actual, thick walls, and whose music was just as low as mine! Now, I'm all for some peace and quiet and respecting other people's peculiar working conditions, but man, he would come knocking and pointing out noise that no else hears. It's completely baffling. How does he do that?! Bionic ears, I tell you. I think he can hear a pin drop, literally. Must be excruciating. I imagine his entire body vibrating violently whenever he talks.

Hmm, maybe that's why he kept looking at us, everytime we gathered and discussed things at our common area. I thought he merely wanted "to belong". Now I think he wanted to kill us, but restrained himself and simply stared.

Or maybe his superhuman ears were internally bleeding. Must. Not. Smirk.

The Office

Seeing that I, despite my declarations of freedom, won’t be leaving my day job anytime soon, I thought I’d take out the misery by writing about the daily happenings in my immediate 9am-6 pm environs, to be filed under ‘the office’ of course. Because sometimes life really is like a sitcom/mockumentary, and when you have your very own Michael Scott, you just can’t resist. I’m still looking for my Dwight Schrute.

Because right now, this is a job. If I advance any higher, this would be my career. And if this were my career, I'd have to throw myself in front of a train. - Jim Halpert