An Old Pair of Underwear

Photo Credit: elvisripley (Flickr.com)

“But they’re comfortable!” Louis protested.

“I don’t care. They’re full of holes,” said Joan. She held the boxer briefs up with both hands and made a face as she looked at them. “How can this even be comfortable for you?”

Louis took them from her and poked his fingers through the holes. They were at the seam of the crotch, where the fabric that went over the leg met the bottom of the brief. “I get hot down there,” he explained. “Friction, you know? My thighs rubbing together, things swinging around…”

Joan stood up. “If you’re not going to take this seriously, you can fold the laundry yourself,” she said, and huffed out of the room. Louis followed her into the dining room, where she had already sat down and pretended to be interested in the newspaper.

“Why does it matter to you what my underwear looks like?” he asked. “I mean, nobody sees them, and besides, it’s not like anyone has to deal with them but me.”

“You care about what mine looks like,” she replied with a caustic tone.

“Yeah, but that’s different,” he said. “Yours are, you know, sexy. You don’t care about mine as much.”

“I care that they don’t have holes in them,” she said.

“Why?”

“I just do!” she shouted. “Is it too much to ask that you buy some new underwear when they’re falling apart?”

“So I can spend more money on things I don’t need?” he asked. “Think about how much I’m saving on underwear by not replacing them every time they get a little hole in the seam.”

She slammed her book down. “It’s like six bucks for a three-pack!” she shouted. “I think we can afford it!”

“Yeah, but if I spend that every month, that adds up,” Louis said. “I’m saving us like a hundred dollars a year in unneeded underwear.”

She glared at him now as she stood up. “You know what? Fine,” she said. “If you want to dress like a bum, you do that. Do whatever makes you happy, because that’s always what you do anyway.”

She stormed out of the room and slammed the bedroom door. Louis laughed, and walked over to the doorway.

“What are we even fighting about?” he asked her through the door.

There was no answer. Louis shrugged. “Whatever,” he said, and, clutching his underwear, returned to the living room to finish folding the laundry.

Real Life at the Office (After a Recession)

Photo credit: sun dazed (Flickr.com)

Somewhere in the office, a phone is ringing. But no one is answering it.

I stare at my computer screen and sigh. Last year, there were twenty five of us. We voluntarily put a freeze on raises and bonuses so that we wouldn’t be forced to let three of those people go. At the time, spirits were high. We were going to get through this thing together.

But in March, Joe in Customer Support and Fawn in Marketing both vanished. No one knew why. Neither of them had been doing that great of work lately; we’d all suspected they were having an affair together. The rumor was that they had been fired for having sex in the office and getting caught by the building custodians. Nobody knew, of course, if it was true.

One Friday in June, Bill and Jack and Chloe from sales got called into a meeting. They never came back. Our office manager, JoAnne, packed up their belongings in copy paper boxes and took them out. The sales team was getting nervous. Chloe and Bill were the most recent additions to the team, and it made sense to let them go, but Jack had been with the company for seventeen years. If he could get fired, no one was safe.

In August, department managers met with senior management from the home office and were asked to consider who else we could lose. It was a bad year for our company, and we had to slash overhead to keep our shareholders from turning on us. They asked us to prioritize our departments and to rank our employees from most essential to least essential. It was a given that department managers were the most essential, so our own names stayed off the lists. We handed them in, and they excused us. One by one, seven employees were called in. Four did not return. JoAnne, once again, gathered up their belongings.

When the news broke that raises and bonuses would be on freeze again, Fred in Accounts Receivable left not long after. Word was that he’d found a better job for a small business as their in-house accountant. We wished him well.

And so I sit here now in this bleak and cold January, looking out at the sea of empty desks, listening as another phone that no one will answer begins to ring. Our skeleton crew has clung to this sinking ship, hoping that we will weather the storm and escape with our lives. They have told us that a sale of the company is pending, and that if we’re acquired, our money troubles will be over, and raises and bonuses will come back. We have toiled for months under these promises, but we have learned that when we begin to hear the phrase, “business as usual,” it means that something even more drastic is about to happen.

We all used to watch that sitcom about the people at the paper company, and we found it funny at first because it reflected our lives so closely. But the people on the show still have jobs, even though they’re incompetent and barely do any actual work. The show has turned into a cruel parody of what we’re enduring. The slacker salesman gets promoted and gets to marry the redhead and start a family. In our office, our best salesman is losing accounts as companies go under. His wife has already left him, and he’s come to work drunk twice in the last month. Everyone’s talking about him behind his back, because we’ve all painted a target there for the upper management to see — when they’re ready to trim again, we want them to take him, and not us, even though we all know that losing his job will completely destroy him.

I hate myself for what I’ve become. But I rationalize it by reminding myself that at least I have a job. Camaraderie is a luxury for good times. Survival is the name of the game during a recession.

Looking at the Snakes at the Zoo

Photo credit: nasmac (flickr.com)

“He could kill you, you know.”

Molly rolled her eyes as she stared at the green tree python. He (she? it? The snake seemed to be a male, or at least, Molly preferred him to be) was sitting very still, his slender, long, emerald green body wrapped around a branch of the small tree in his habitat. But his eyes were staring right at her — yellow eyes, with black vertical slits for pupils.

“I think he can see me,” she said to Frank, who had moved on to look at a much less impressive display of Vietnamese mossy frogs.

“It’s mirrored glass,” said Frank. “Like I said. If these animals knew you were here, they’d be trying to kill you.”

He walked back over towards her. “And besides,” he said, pointing his finger at the snake. “Look, his tongue isn’t even out. That’s how snakes sense what’s going on around them. If he knew you were there, he’d either be watching you with all of his senses or striking at the glass.”

Frank tapped on the glass roughly. The snake didn’t seem to notice. “See?” Frank said. “Completely unaware of his environment.”

Frank glided over to the komodo dragon exhibit as Molly continued to stare at the python. Frank was right, of course — the python couldn’t see her. But she still felt a strange connection with this creature. There was a certain beauty to his form, and to his color; a monstrous nature concealed by an exotic exterior. Molly pulled out her camera, and tried to snap a few pictures, but she knew that none of them would remind her of the wonder of seeing it before her, safely tucked away in its own little world, keeping them both blissfully ignorant of the relationship they might have if she had stumbled upon him in the wild.

A Walk Through The Snow

Photo credit: Sean J. Jordan

Wet white crystals crunched underneath my feet as I trudged along behind my dogs.

My Scottish Terrier’s paw prints showed me the path I was supposed to be taking. The impression he made on the pavement was big. I realized his feet, which had served him so well as shovels in the summertime as he dug up my backyard, were also wonderful snowshoes. My other dog left prints about half the size, revealing his smaller, daintier feet. It was odd to think that he was the taller and heavier of the two dogs, since his crisscrossing path put some of his prints neatly inside those left by the Scottie.

We stopped at a hydrant so my Scottie could pee. The contrast was wonderful, and I pulled out my phone to take a picture. A white, snowy ground with a black dog and  yellow hydrant – you really couldn’t ask for a more vivid contrast of color. Unfortunately, my cell phone camera wasn’t up to the task, and I cursed myself for leaving the good camera inside. Not that it would have mattered; my Scottie was far too curious to stand still and pose anyhow.

We turned the corner and walked past the familiar pee-and-poop spot at the vacant lot, today covered by still-unspoiled snow. That wasn’t to last for long, and my dogs bounded across the lot, sniffing around eagerly before eventually stopping to drop their steaming brown calling cards. I sighed and knelt down, pulling a plastic bag out of my pocket. My dogs were already up and pulling on their leashes, eager to continue their adventure, kicking powdery tufts of purity into the air as they waited for me to once again follow.

Change is Coming…

Once again, I find myself looking at my Web site and asking myself, “Why do I have this again?” My dream of keeping daily articles on this site continues to fall through the moment I lose interest in whatever new scheme I’ve set up for updating, and I honestly am too busy with my upcoming marketing blog (for my new job) to keep this updated with fresh content that interests me.

I have, however, decided that I need to start “scrap writing” every day as an exercise. Scrap writing is a lot like flash fiction — you just sit down for a few minutes, write a story of less than 1,000 words, and go with it. You don’t spend a lot of time editing or developing it – you just write what you are feeling at the moment. I don’t know if anyone else does this, but it doesn’t really bug me if they don’t; I came up with this idea, as I come up with so many other good ideas, when I was taking a shower.

So, starting January 1st, I’m going to alter the design of this site a bit, take down most of the links to old articles, and begin posting writing scraps every day. I will occasionally intersperse these with journal articles or items of interest, but fiction (or occasionally, non-fiction!)  is going to be what I put up from here on out.

So, to those who have enjoyed my articles, thanks, and to those who are simply friends with me and who wonder what I’m up to, send me an e-mail or find me on Facebook.

Happy New Year!

-SJJ

[Open Letters] To: Marketers Re: Twitter

To: Marketers
Re: Twitter

Here's a simple analogy. Say you want to study the ocean. Do you go to a popular beach and draw all your conclusions from the scene there, or do you take the time to get a boat and some SCUBA gear and go searching for the big fish?

Look, I know you’re excited. Really, truly, I do.

But for the love of God, please stop trying to convince me that Twitter is the be-all, end-all of marketing.

I’ve been watching Twitter for awhile, and honestly, I think it’s pretty limited in what it can do. You marketers keep telling me it’s great because you can study trends on it. You love that you can see real-time reactions to entertainment media or to big news. You love how easy it is to click on the “trending” tools and see what the biggest topics of the day are.

But what you don’t seem to understand is that Twitter is a social network largely used by vapid, know-nothing attention whores who want to make every aspect of their lives known. Think about this for a moment. If you use Twitter, everything you post is available to anyone who wants to see it. Since you’re restricted to 140 characters, you can only really give the cursory details of your life. Twitter encourages stalking people by “following” them, and it discourages real communication by making it difficult to offer more than a surface reaction to the topic of the day.

I understand that many of you in the marketing world fall into this mold, so you don’t see anything wrong with it. But trust me. Twitter is the most superficial social network there is. It has its uses, but trying to draw any meaningful conclusions from it is ridiculous. It’s like going into a crowded room and trying to overhear how a bunch of people respond to the events of the hour. Sure, there are going to be common threads, but it’s all just a lot of noise.

Do you want to know how Twitter should be used for marketing? 21st century marketing is about having a relationship with your customers. If you want to use Twitter for your ad campaign or your customer retention strategy, you need to use it to encourage a dialogue. Twitter can be very useful as a portal to much deeper, more meaningful content and interactions. You can use it as a means to begin a conversation with people who just want a quick response to whatever their question or issue is.

But all this nonsense about building ad campaigns based on the views of the Twitterati, or testing product designs on Twitter, or any of the other nonsense I hear about every month in the various marketing publications I read? You guys are setting yourselves up for failure, and while you might seem trendy and cutting-edge now, you’re going to look like idiots when this whole Twitter thing gives way to some other trend.

I understand that you’re young and you’re bored and you want to do something exciting, but focus that energy on building a better marketing strategy that’s based on solid marketing research. It might not be glamorous, but it’s going to benefit you down the road when you want to manage a division instead of a bunch of mindless morons twittering banalities at you.

-SJJ

[Open Letters] To: That Guy Who Cut Me Off To Get One Car Ahead Today

To: That Guy Who Cut Me Off To Get One Car Ahead Today
Re: Musings

There we were, driving down a single lane road on the way to the Eads Bridge in St. Louis. I was keeping up with traffic, and there was barely a car’s worth of space between me and the car ahead. We were just an intersection away from a 2-lane road. There were no traffic jams or problems to contend with.

And yet for some reason, you decided to gun around me and move up a single spot.

I realize you’re probably in a hurry. It was the noon hour, and maybe you were running late getting back from your break. That’s fine. But did you have to be so ridiculously inconsiderate? Did you have to nearly cause an accident? Had you known that I was running a fever today, and doped up on cold and sinus medicine, would you have taken such a stupid risk?

Let me tell you something about cutting people off — don’t do it to people who are driving crummy cars. My car is a compact. It has rust spots around the back wheel-wells. It’s dirty. You were driving a nice, new-looking SUV. If I hit it, I wouldn’t do much damage. But the accident would total my car, because it’s built to crunch. Yes, I’m insured, but not for very much. I don’t have a lot to lose here. You, on the other hand, could find yourself with a messed-up bumper that might take you months to get fixed while you wait on your claim to get paid out. Guys in crummy cars don’t typically have very prompt insurance.

It must have escaped you that this took place in East St. Louis, where people are even less likely to have insurance than usual. You could take them to court, but they don’t have any assets to seize. It’s not smart to have a close call in East St. Louis. You’ll almost always walk away a loser.

It must have also escaped you that we were right next to the police station. Any accident we had would have generated immediate response. I assume from your driving that you’re hotheaded and stupid. Do you think the police would find me at fault for being unable to stop when you gunned around me like an idiot? They deal with enough idiots down there. They wouldn’t suffer your bad attitude for too long before writing you a ticket.

So, in closing, you’re an idiot, karma’s eventually going to pay you back for being a jerk, and next time, please be a little more careful to actually hit my car. I wouldn’t mind totaling it out and getting something nicer. You’d be doing me a favor.

-SJJ

[Open Letters] To: Sony Re: PSP Go

To: Sony

Not as cool as a newer, better PSP would be...

Re: PSPGo

Ah, Sony.

When the PSP came out in 2005, I was one of the people who jumped right on it. I couldn’t help myself. The system was beautiful, and it had some really cool games that made my GameBoy Advance and Nintendo DS games look like toys. To this day, I’ve been a PSP booster.

But the PSP Go baffles me. It’s a little smaller than the PSP-3000, and it looks kind of cool. But why would I ever need this device if I’ve already got a perfectly good PSP? It doesn’t do anything different. It has fewer features than the PSP I’ve already got, and it can’t play any of the games I already own. Its control scheme looks like it would cause my hands to cramp up. And, most important of all, it’s about $80 more than I’d spend if I replaced my original PSP-1000 system with one of those shiny new PSP-3000 models. $250, for a system with fewer features than the one I’ve already got? You have got to be kidding me, Sony.

Clearly, your marketing team was asleep during their marketing strategy classes, because the whole concept of the PSP Go is flawed. You want to repackage a 4-year-old handheld and sell it as geek chic. But in doing so, you’ve made it incredibly impractical to own. It’s a device that relies on digital downloads to play games… and yet it can only download on the wifi 802.11b standard, which ensures slow download speeds. Hrm. You’ve only made about 100 games available for download, and yet you’ve missed many obvious titles, such as Dissidia: Final Fantasy, Lumines and Metal Gear: Portable Ops. Hrm again. The games are being sold at full retail with no associated bonuses, which means that they’re going to be more expensive than their used counterparts. Hrm once more. Did you marketing team sleep their way through economics as well, somehow concluding that during a recession, people spend more money on items than they might otherwise?

What really galls me is that you put out a press release this week announcing that hardware sales for the PSP are up 300%. What that really means is that you’ve shipped out new hardware to retailers for the Christmas rush. It has nothing to do with what consumers are buying. You want people to think that the PSP Go is the must-have item right now. Maybe a few will fall for it. But I have yet to see a line for PSP Go hardware forming at any stores I’ve been in. The guys and girls at my local store are telling me that no one’s very interested. Why should they be? It’s like taking a McDonalds happy meal, putting it on a fancy plate, charging a dollar extra for the presentation and then slapping on an extra fee for the toy, soda and fries. The happy meal was fine the way it was. There’s no reason to try to make it into something better.

Speaking of which, where’s the PSP upgrade that consumers really want — the one with two analog sticks, four shoulder buttons, and switchable faceplates? The one that can use 802.11g and that has a kicking web browser. The one that has a battery that lasts more than a few hours, and that can play downloadable PS2 games? I’d pay $250 for that system, even if you stripped out the UMD drive and vulnerabilities to homebrew. And if I could use it to access PSN Home and to stream the videos on my PS3 over the Internet and I could hook it into my TV like I can with the PSP-3000, then yeah, I might even pay more.

All I can conclude is that you aren’t listening and don’t care what I have to say. That’s fine, Sony — you’ve always been too cool to let your customers push you around. But you’re going to pay the price for that as the years go by. In the 21st century, the most dangerous move you can make as a company is to treat your customers like they’re not important.

You’re lucky I love my PS3 so much. At least you’ve finally got yourselves straight where that console is concerned. Too bad you had to lose so much ground to Microsoft while you skimmed the market with a ridiculous price point and lackluster software. You might recover during this generation, but you’ve made yourself vulnerable, Sony… and it’s going to be hard for you to keep things up when the next generation of consoles is due and you’re still trying to pay off all the money you sunk into blowing the PS3 launch.

Good luck. You’re going to need it.

-Sean J. Jordan

[Open Letters] To: Aspiring Novelists

Note: I have placed an updated version of this letter here: http://www.seanjjordan.com/to-aspiring-writers/

To: Aspiring Novelists
Re: Getting Published

So you want to get a novel published. And you’ve decided it’s time to start shopping your pitch around.

Do yourself a favor. Don’t. Because chances are good you’re wasting your time. Which means, by extension, you’re going to waste a lot of peoples’ time in the process.

You might think that you’re a great writer. There’s a possibility that you are even a great novelist, but it’s remote. I can say that safely because I know that you don’t have any experience writing actual novels. If you did, you wouldn’t be looking for a publisher. You’re a wannabe, and while you might believe that you’re sitting on something incredible, I’d be willing to bet that the book you think you’ve written and the book you’ve actually written are vastly different in quality.

Go to a bookstore and check out the fic/lit section. Notice how many books are on the shelves. Notice how many you’ve never even heard of. Now, understand that this section represents just a tiny fraction of all the fictional books that have been published over the last 10 years. Most of the books that have been published in fiction genres are long-forgotten. Only a handful are held over for multiple printings.

I’ll bet you believe you are different. You think that you have something the tens of thousands of writers who have come before you don’t have. You think that you see the world differently from everyone else, that you’re more skilled at telling stories, and that you have something special to offer. That’s fine. You’re entitled to think whatever you want.

But when you start shoving your manuscript in the faces of editors and literary agents and professional writers demanding that your work be considered for publication because you believe that you’re somehow entitled to do so… well, you’re nuts.

You may have written a novel, but it doesn’t make you special. Every year, thousands of people write novels 50,000 words long during the month of November for National Novel Writing Month. Most of them don’t feel entitled to be published. A lot of them know they’ve written complete garbage. The accomplishment is in crossing the finish line. Many shelve their drafts and move on to something else. They have no illusions of grandeur.

But you, oh aspiring writer, who may not have even finished one entire novel. You love to go on the Internet and into writer’s groups to talk about how wonderful your work is. You love to have long, late-night conversations about the craft of writing. You love to critique other published writers and explain why you are better. You read Writer’s Digest and attend writer’s workshops and keep an earmarked copy of Writer’s Market close at hand.

Here’s my advice to you: sit down, shut up, and just write. Not about writing, or about how wonderful you are, or what you intend to do with all the money you ‘ll make when someone finally realizes your genius. No. Write a novel. Then another. And another. And keep on doing that until you write something that is actually good; something that someone might actually want to read. Something an editor might actually want to publish.

And then, before you waste anyone’s time with it, spend ten times the amount of time that you spent writing the book actually revising it. If it took you one month to write the novel, you need to spend 10 months revising it. If it took you six months to write the novel, you need to spend five years revising it. I’m not talking about the calendar days it took you, of course, but the actual number of hours you spent writing. My rationale here is simple: you’re going to have to put some distance between yourself and your work. You’re going to need to snap out of the mindset of “I just wrote this” and into the mindset of “I need to fix this.” And you’re going to have to do that over and over and over until you have refined your piece of writing to be something that’s actually good. If you force yourself to repeat that process ten times, you’re going to quit if you create something that’s garbage… and you’re going to shape your ungainly rough draft into something a little more refined.

You can solicit the opinions of others, but don’t waste your time soliciting the opinions of other writers, particularly other amateurs. You’re just giving them an excuse not to be writing. Instead, solicit the opinions of readers – the more jaded they are, the better. Ask them where they got bored, or where they found their minds wandering. Ask them where they thought the novel could have been better. Don’t let them get off with saying, “it was good.” Tell them not to spare your feelings. Tell them to pretend they’ve just spent $10 on your book and you want to know if it was worth what they spent. Ask them how much they really thought it was worth. Ask multiple readers who read multiple genres. Don’t let one person’s assessment of your work be the be-all and end-all of your beliefs about its quality. Evaluate every critique you receive, and separate legitimate concerns from the personal tastes of individuals.

Stay away from writing about writing or reading about writing. Many writers make a successful occupation out of selling this stuff to others. Don’t fall prey to them. If you want to be a better writer, write. Vary your work, and write about anything that interests you. Stay away from being locked into a genre or a topic. Don’t worry about your pen name or what the cover of your book should look like. That’s something for professionals to worry about. You just keep your head down and get back to work.

If you have written a manuscript, and you think it’s ready for publication, you should not need to make any more revisions to it. If it comes back with requests for revisions, either it is not ready to be published, or the publishing world is not ready for it. At this point, you must decide — is it even worth revising? If the revisions involve changing the very nature of what you have written to suit another market, you should shelve that story and work on something else. Sell it later when you have found an audience.

If you ignore all of my advice here and insist on pushing on in your stubborn, obstinate way, then let me give you one final piece of advice: don’t send your work to me, because I don’t want to read it, even if you manage to get some other publisher to pick it up. I’ve got plenty of time-tested titles to read. And I’ve got plenty of my own projects to finish.

Thanks,

-Sean J. Jordan

[Open Letters] To: The Writers of NBC’s ‘The Office’

An unbelievable wedding... and I mean that in the negative, I assure you.

To: The Writers of NBC’s The Office
Re: Congratulations are in order!

Wow. I’m simply stunned. It’s a rare opportunity to see what you managed to achieve on television last night, and you managed to not only pull it off, but to do so with gusto. There I sat, watching in slack-jawed amazement, as the wedding episode of The Office danced across my television. And I mean that literally, by the way, because a good chunk of the show was devoted to the cast flailing around in a sad imitation of the Hollywood club scene. And yet even that was not the most excessive thing that happened in last night’s acme of awful episodes.

Did you mean to write a swansong for your series? That’s exactly what you accomplished. All of the excess, all of the indulgence, and all of the smarminess might have been acceptable for a final episode, where sentiments are meant to run high and comedy takes a back seat to tying up the plot. But no. This is only the fourth episode of the sixth season, and we’ll be back in The Office next week asking, “where do we go from here?” Chances are good that the answer is going to be awfully disappointing.

The episode began in the office, with a throwaway gag about Pam using her pregnancy to try to influence the behavior of others. The punchline was a chain-vomiting scene. I should have known then that this was not going to be one of the smart, edgy and human episodes I saw in the first and second seasons of your show, or even occasionally during the third. No. When you rely on bodily humor to get a cheap laugh, my own humors are aroused. Specifically, the bile in the back of my throat.

The episode then moved to the wedding, taking place for no particularly good reason in Niagra Falls. Yes, it’s been explained that the wedding was meant to be held there to prevent people in the office from coming. But you decided to write down a way for them all to be there anyway. Why go to all the trouble?  Were the cast and crew begging for a vacation to one of the tackiest tourist traps on Earth? That can’t be the case, because the only scenes involving the setting whatsoever involved Jim and Pam. The entire setting was wasted except for one painfully smarmy moment aboard a tour boat.

Do you understand what drama is? Do you understand that a few shaky camera shots of two characters getting secretly married on a boat just moments before their actual wedding is ridiculous? If you had spent episodes preparing us for a nightmare wedding where Pam had no control, and everyone else had edged her out to make it about them, then perhaps, just maybe, the scene would have made sense. But what sort of bride wants to spoil her wedding day by going under Niagra Falls, getting her dress and hair completely messed up, and then repeating a sham ceremony in a church? (Of course, Pam didn’t appear to have a wet dress or messed-up hair when she returned; it’s one of those details that showed this whole sequence hadn’t been thought out very well.)

And then Jim’s brothers and Pam’s bridesmaids decided to act out a Youtube video by having the entire cast dance down the aisle. The video is referenced several times, but never actually shown onscreen. There has never been a reference to it in the show before this, and the entire joke hinges on the audience being familiar with the reference. I have not seen the video for myself, and as far as I could tell, this entire scene was meant to replicate it, not parody it. That is not comedy. It’s not even entertainment. You’re getting paid to write a show that many people believe to be fresh and original. You’re very bold to steal someone else’s idea just because you think it’s funny for the cast to be awkwardly dancing onscreen. To do this without developing or serving the plot in any meaningful way is an even greater travesty.

You’ve also managed to work in a pregnancy arc this season, which is even more baffling. Countless comedies have been ruined by pregnancy arcs. The only comedy I can ever think of that successfully survived one was Malcolm In the Middle, and that was because that show did not view having children as a blessing, but as a trial to endure. It made sense for a baby to bring yet another layer of hardship into the lives of Hal and Lois.

What does Pam being pregnant have to do with anything? What is your end-game scenario here? Are you going to get all gooey and sentimental on us, as you did with the wedding episode? Are we going to have to put up with Pam being whiny and obnoxious and Jim having to balance work life and family life while Michael tries to insert himself into their relationship? The entire idea is just played out. I’m weary even writing it.

I don’t think you writers understand why people started watching this show in the first place. Back in the first and second seasons, when the show was good, The Office was about the mundane, day-to-day life of a meaningless job. The show was very much in the pattern of the British original, and it managed to walk the fine line between making the characters funny and making them tragic. I would argue that one of the finest episodes was the Halloween episode, where Michael struggled with firing an employee because he really, truly did not want to be the bad guy. There was a humanity about him, then; a Peter Principle victim who just wanted to be one of the sales people, and who enjoyed the title, but not the responsibility, of his position. You could actually relate to him, then.

Look at Michael now. He’s a child and a buffoon — a character who most people dread seeing onscreen and who always predictably acts against his own best interests. He started to get a little of his humanity back briefly in the fifth season when he went off to start his own paper company, but you writers had to get carried away with that story arc and find an implausible way to bring him back so things could be more or less the same as before. You seem to think Michael Scott is the heart and soul of the show. He’s not. He gets too much screen time and isn’t entertaining. In short bursts, yes. But as the sympathetic character? That’s supposed to be Jim.

Ah, and Jim, how far you have fallen. Jim was likable in the first couple of seasons, much like Tim in the UK original. Jim was an underachiever who was stuck on a girl he couldn’t have. We can relate to that. When Jim moved on, he was successful. When he came back, things just couldn’t be. We sensed that they might always have to settle for being friends as they made other compromises in life.

And then, you writers had to mess it up by putting Jim and Pam together. The unrequited love between them was fulfilled, and the show suddenly got a lot less interesting. You teased us with maybe pulling them apart again — and you could have! — but then Pam made the safe choice and quit school and returned to Scranton, and to Jim, pretty much ruining any chance she really had of evolving into a more interesting character. You tried to compensate by focusing on Michael’s relationships, but who really wanted to see those played out? Who really wanted to see the smart, stable, independent woman in Jan turned in to a crazy control freak who eventually vanished off the show entirely?

For a show that is supposed to be a mockumentary, you have been very bad about keeping a strong level of continuity with side plots. Last night’s episode was a great example: Pam’s mother has appeared in the show before, and she was a friendly, likable character who was Pam’s best friend. Not only did the actress change for this episode, but so did the character. Pam’s new mother seems like a repressed WASP who was dumb enough to sleep with Michael despite being likely to know all of the terrible things Pam had told her about him. Pam’s father, too, seems to be different from how he’s been described before. There was no point in including either character; both simply brought attention to the lack of attention to the established “reality” of the show.

My final complaint has to do with Andy Bernard. The Office has always had a great ensemble cast, and Ed Helms as Andy seemed like a natural fit. But wow, has he been wasted. Here is a character who came in as a scheming “yes-man,” who could serve as an interesting foil to Dwight and who could stir up dissension in the office. Instead, he’s been used for a series of gags that I think are meant to be zany, but which come across as gratuitous. Andy used to be smart and interesting in his frat boy persona. Now, he’s just a hard-luck background character who endures pain and punishment for no good reason. Last night’s ill-advised scene with him somehow hemorrhaging his scrotum by doing the splits on top of his car keys was bizarre, unrealistic, and failed to serve the plot at all. Why would Pam have to drive him to the hospital? Why wouldn’t they call an ambulance? How could Andy have possibly been able to attend a wedding the next day? Are you really that weak of writers that you can’t think through these questions before you have a gag filmed, edited and included in the final cut of the episode?

I would like to close by encouraging you all to re-watch the British original and see how far you have deviated from the proven template you started with. Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant and brilliant writers, and they crafted a show that refused to indulge itself. When The Office ended its second series with Tim striking out with Dawn and David Brent getting fired, Gervais and Merchant took a huge risk, and they left the audience wanting more so badly that they had to put together an encore Christmas Special to tie up all the loose ends and bring some closure to the characters. Even then, Tim had a wonderful monologue about how his life would go on, and how we were just seeing a snapshot of his life. It was a stunning conclusion; a fictional character reminding us that the story would go on even if we weren’t able to watch it for ourselves.

Where is that sort of edge in the American version? It’s long since gone dull. I suggest you sharpen the plot by retooling the characters, avoiding the easy humor, and bringing Michael back down to Earth. The show can still be saved; Scrubs managed to make itself good again in its eighth season. But you’ve got to work at it. Otherwise, I expect we’ll see The Office on the chopping block in the next year or two when the ratings start to drop as more and more viewers tune out.

Speaking of which, I’ll be watching Community, which is one of the best comedies I’ve seen in years. I’m hoping 30 Rock can keep its edge this year, too. But I think I’ll be skipping The Office from now on. Parks and Recreation is getting better, but I’ll let you know now — it’s already pretty stale. I doubt you can save it in time.

Sincerely,

Sean J. Jordan