05/ 25/ 2006
by Harvey King
The small office has been a staple setting of television situation comedies for as long as there has been TV. My all-time personal favorite small-office sitcom has to be "The Dick Van Dyke Show." When I was a kid, my dream job was to one day hang around an office joking with Buddy Sorrell and Sally Rogers.
Life in a small office is still fertile fodder for TV sitcoms and dark-comedy dramas. Family-run funeral homes and detective agencies (not to mention the "family business" featured on "The Sopranos") have served as the backdrop for recent TV hits. Even the real-life comedy (and tragedy) of reality programming has jumped on the office and business bandwagon with shows like "The Apprentice" and "American Inventor."
One of the quirkiest shows ever set in a small office is the current NBC comedy, "The Office." Based on a BBC series by the same name, the show uses a mockumentary approach to follow the daily lives of the staff of the Scranton, Pa., regional sales office and warehouse of the fictitious paper company, Dunder-Mifflin.
My wife thinks "The Office" is perhaps the dumbest TV program ever to make it onto the airwaves. She has tried very hard, but she can't believe the man she married (me) finds the program so hilarious and addictive. She can't understand why the person she has shared a home with for almost three decades starts laughing uncontrollably whenever the program is on. It's a guy thing, I suggest to her. But I know it's not a guy thing: It's a worked-there-know-that-guy thing.
First, let me make one thing clear: Today, I run a small business that is filled with amazingly sane individuals, and we work with clients who, without exception, never act in a way or say things that would ever be fictionalized on a TV comedy. However, a long, long time ago, in a faraway city, I worked in a small office that could easily be the summer replacement show for "The Office."
My boss back then was a dead ringer (in looks, personality, intelligence and style) for Michael Scott, the clueless Dunder-Mifflin regional manager on the show. I know what it's like to work for the boss who never lets not knowing the answer to a question get in the way of passionately providing one. In that office, secrets had a shelf life of seconds and ever-changing office romances resulted in monthly train wrecks of relationships. The inside of my lip would bleed as I bit it to keep from laughing while my boss peppered his sales pitch with the latest business buzzwords—or, worse, hip, with-it street slang.
Watching "The Office" is like having a reunion with those folks, except now I get to laugh out loud. I never thought I'd look back on that job with such nostalgia. Of course, back then I didn't realize I was appearing in a TV sitcom. Except for Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie not being there, it was my dream job.
