“The Office” Strikes a Chord

This morning I made my first NPR national appearance, with about 6 seconds of commentary (but I swear, the recorded interview was about an hour long and full of witty insights about the various sketches) on how the hit series “The Office” rings true for a lot of American workers who spend most of their waking hours in cubicles and are expected to befriend their bosses sans questioning the power their bosses maintain over them. The audio is online here. A while ago I blogged about the episode that portrays diversity training programs in corporate America and the absurdities of presenting one hour “training” sessions as solutions for deep tensions and biases. Another episode I really like is when Michael, upset that he cannot attend the women's corporate networking session, takes the men on his team downstairs to see where the “real work” is done, the packing and delivery of the sold paper. He gathers the downstairs workers and states: “I am collar-blind. White-collar; Blue-collar, we are all the same.” It backfires – those “all the same” workers ask if they all have the same pay and when the word “union” comes up, it takes the tough Jan Levinson, Michael’s corporate boss, to bust the gathering.