The Day We All Became Michael Scott
It started, as most workplace catastrophes do, in the break room. Linda from Accounting had just finished microwaving her salmon (already a fireable offense in civilized society) when she turned to the room and, with all the misplaced confidence of a mediocre white man, declared: "That's what she said!"
The silence that followed was deafening. Three people looked up from their phones. Janet from HR stopped mid-bite into her yogurt, the spoon hovering like a plastic surveillance device.
By lunch, the infection had spread. Todd from Sales started wearing a Bluetooth earpiece from 2006 and attempted to parkour over a cubicle wall while shouting "Hardcore parkour!" He succeeded only in concussing himself, taking down three monitors, and accidentally clotheslining Susan from Marketing, who would later sue for $2.4 million citing "emotional distress and persistent fear of office furniture." The incident report grew to sixteen pages after the OSHA investigation.
Margaret, our usually stern CFO, began hosting impromptu conference room meetings where she'd demonstrate bizarre characters she'd developed, including a spot-on impression of Eleanor Roosevelt giving a TED talk about cryptocurrency. The company's stock dropped six points during her performance of "Eleanor Explains Ethereum." Three shareholders filed a class action lawsuit citing "willful destruction of company value through historically inaccurate impressions."
The real chaos erupted when David from IT decided to recreate the fire drill scene. Four people were hospitalized with panic attacks, one intern jumped into the ceiling tiles attempting to escape (the resulting collapse took out our entire server room), and someone actually pepper-sprayed the office safety officer who was trying to maintain order. The building had to be evacuated, and the hazmat team that responded found three unauthorized cheese platters aging in the ventilation system.
The breaking point came when our CEO, Richard, decided to organize a branch-wide "Dundies" award ceremony in the parking lot. He'd barely finished announcing "The Award for Most Likely to Still Use MySpace" when three members of the board of directors pulled up in identical black SUVs, accompanied by two police cars and a representative from the SEC investigating "ceremonial misconduct with company assets."
By 4 PM, seventeen people had been escorted from the building in handcuffs, twelve more were being questioned by corporate security, and our insurance provider had officially declared us "uninsurable due to unprecedented sitcom-adjacent behavior." They confiscated six unauthorized documentary cameras, twelve makeshift medals fashioned from office supplies, and one inexplicable beet farm business proposal that was later investigated for agricultural pyramid scheme potential.
The next morning, a company-wide memo circulated: "Effective immediately, any employee exhibiting behavior inspired by workplace-based situational comedies will be terminated without notice and potentially prosecuted. This includes, but is not limited to: talking directly to invisible cameras, attempting to encase office supplies in gelatin, referring to the supply closet as 'the annex,' or attempting any form of parkour, improvised or otherwise. Our legal team has requested we specifically mention that 'that's what she said' jokes are now classified as a hostile work environment violation."
I still see Todd sometimes at the coffee shop down the street. He's working in insurance now, but his eye still twitches whenever someone mentions paper sales, and he has to attend weekly physical therapy for his "workplace acrobatics-induced trauma." The class action lawsuit is still ongoing, and the building's ventilation system still smells faintly of aged gouda.
As for me, I learned an important lesson: some things are funny precisely because they're not real, like unicorns, or reasonable health insurance deductibles, or the idea that you can body-slam your coworker through a conference room table without facing felony charges.
The salmon microwave incident, though? That was unforgivable, sitcom or not. Linda, if you're reading this from white-collar prison – we all know it was you who left that smell. That's what she said. (I've been advised by my lawyer to state that the preceding joke was for literary purposes only and does not constitute workplace harassment.)
