As summer rolls on and TV reruns continue, I did like Michael Scott would do during an average workday: I turned my attention to surfing the Internet. I came across an article on the Wall Street Journal’s site entitled “Did You Hear the One About the Recession?” by Kayleen Schaefer. The article discusses how workplace humor can relieve stress and actually make employees more productive.

So does this mean Michael Scott, with his unabashed love for humor, is a better manager than we all give him credit for? Not so fast, says the article. The goal of office humor should be to unite people, not alienate and offend certain members of the workplace community.

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Tonight featured two more repeats of The Office. Summer is great, well, except for the TV (come on, is NYC Prep really giving you your fix?). Since I figured we pretty much covered everything blogworthy in those episodes when they first aired, I turned to the show’s official website for inspiration this week.

NBC’s fun site features “The Office Addictionary,” which gives us this word of the day: “Entreprenerd (noun) A person obsessed with inventing useless or bizarre products.” Many of us know these types of people — I think of the guy in the movie Office Space who invented a “Jump to Conclusions Mat” where you could literally jump onto various evenly spaced conclusions.

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This week was a rerun of the episode “Golden Ticket,” where we learned that Dwight keeps a diary, mostly about what Michael does.  While I’m not recommending that you document every little thing the people in your office (and particularly your boss!) do, the episode is a good reminder about the importance of documentation.

It is to an employer’s benefit to immediately document workplace performance issues.  For one thing, a supervisor’s documentation will be the best evidence of what actually happened at the time, rather than asking the supervisor to recall incidents that may have happened weeks or months ago during an employee’s review period.  And when it’s time to terminate an employee for work performance issues, employers need to be able to prove that the issues existed in the first place.  Documenting the issues in writing bolsters an employer’s credibility and also demonstrates that the employee was not subjected to harsh discipline without warning (or, in Dwight’s situation, asked to fall on his sword).  On a more practical level, it’s important to remember that the employee’s supervisor may not be working for the company when it’s time to discipline or terminate the employee, but the written reprimands and other key documentation will still be there.

On last night’s rerun episode, Lecture Circuit, Michael, whose office had the highest sales, traveled to other Dunder Mifflin offices to share his “secret recipe for success.”  Along the way, Michael manages to offend every single woman he meets.

Poor Pam is the is the main target of Michael’s harassment.  He asks her to take her shirt off or tie her sweater around her waist, calls her his hot roadie, tells her to picture Karen naked, and talks to her about Holly’s breasts.  Leaving no woman behind, Michael makes several inappropriate comments about Karen’s pregnancy (which we discussed last time the episode aired) and uses “sugarboobs” as a mnemonic device to remember the name of a woman in his audience.

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Last night’s Moroccan Christmas episode is one of my favorites, and as usual, it offered plenty of what-not-to-dos.  At the center of the episode was Michael’s forced intervention with Meredith about her alcohol (porn?) addiction.  But there was also something else at play in the episode.  There was some serious bullying going on.

Phyllis finally has the upper-hand with Angela, who she caught having sex with Dwight.  Phyllis bosses Angela around, threatening to tell everyone about their affair, including Angela’s fiancé, Andy.  (Phyllis doesn’t think her actions constitute blackmail unless she sends a formal letter – we’ll save this for another rerun!)  Phyllis orders Angela to put away most of her off-theme nativity scene, get everyone a plate of hummus with fanned pita triangles and fanned napkins, and wear a hair net.  When Angela fights back, Phyllis tells everyone in the office, except Andy (next episode is going to be awkward!), about Angela’s affair with Dwight.

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