Brooke blogs "The Office": No one likes a slacker - SmartBrief

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Brooke blogs “The Office”: No one likes a slacker

2 min read

Leadership

Last night Kathy Bates returned to “The Office” as the frightening Floridian Jo Bennett, CEO of Dunder Mifflin‘s new parent company Sabre. Instead of trying to impress his new boss with his stellar work ethic (because he doesn’t have one), Michael busied himself coming up with lame ways to kiss up.

“ENOUGH!” Jo finally shouts after Michael invites himself to stay at her house in Tallahassee.

A hurt and baffled Michael later heads back to his office, but tells Jo she can get him with just a few knocks — then proceeds to tell her what each number of knocks means.

“How many knocks does it take to get you to do some work?” is her snarky reply.

Great question, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him do any work. Probably the best plan would be to knock him out entirely and replace him with someone competent. But this is a comedy and he is good at that.

Meanwhile, Darryl, whom Michael does not respect in the least, is singing “Movin’ on up to the east side, to a d-luxe apartment in the sky…” as he moves into Jim’s old office because he presented Jo with a good idea for shipping and she decided he deserved to come up from the warehouse into the main office.

Michael totally doesn’t get it.

“You seem to have caught Jo’s eye,” he says to Darryl. “How did you do that?”

“I impressed her with a good idea,” Darryl says.

Michael still doesn’t get it and goes back to thinking of ways to kiss up to Jo.

Jo is still not impressed and says “You don’t become the most powerful woman in Tallahassee by slacking off. You do it by working hard — or marrying rich. I did both.”

How many people have you seen in the course of your lifetime who don’t really want to work — or at least don’t want to do as much work as they should — and then try to compensate by kissing up to the teacher, boss or other authority figure? I know I’ve seen plenty and am sad to report that sometimes it really does seem to work.

Fortunately, though, like Jo, most leaders  recognize these ridiculous ruses and don’t buy in to them. That’s a good thing because no legitimate hard worker wants to see some slacker   get ahead of them.

Image credit, NBC