Michael Scott, World’s Best Boss (No, Really!)

Inflation, retention, and Tony Gardner’s refusal to get on the table…

Have you heard of the “Great Resignation?” The term, coined by university professor Anthony Klotz describes the ongoing phenomenon where workers are quitting their jobs en masse these days for reasons that aren’t exactly clear. Among the speculated causes are wage stagnation, rising cost of living, COVID, job dissatisfaction, and more. Maybe you can also blame the millennial generation because that’s sort of the thing we do, right?

Well, as you might have guessed, this got me thinking…

My first thought when I heard about The Great Resignation was that Michael Scott might really have been the world’s best boss after all.

Let me explain.

Maybe you’ve heard the old phrase that goes something like: “workers don’t leave the organization, they leave the manager.” The basic idea is that, for the most part, people quit when the leadership is awful as opposed to because the company itself is somehow bad. Employees with great bosses find a way to stay. Employees with terrible bosses don’t need much help leaving.

People leave people.

Well, look at Michael Scott, our favorite mid-sized, Northeast Pennsylvania paper supplier. Almost all of Michael’s employees worked at Dunder-Mifflin for his entire tenure.

Well, except for Devon who was fired but it was early in Season 2 so does it really count? And Tony Gardner, who wouldn’t get on the table for some reason. And that public-pumping Hannah Smoterich-Barr. And white-collar convict Martin Nash. And Dwight that time that he left and went to work at Staples. But he came back. So…no harm no foul. And Jim only left to pursue sports whatever-ing after Michael had moved to Colorado to be with Holly which technically means it didn’t happen because everyone with a beating heart knows that the show spiritually ended with the “Goodbye Michael” episode. So, you get it - almost no one left Michael.

Excluding the above departures, everyone stayed with Michael Scott because was a good boss. Right? Right.

Still, as today’s companies struggle to keep workers, we feel it. We have all have experienced longer lines at stores and restaurants in addition to oddly changing hours and outright closures. It’s a bizarre set of circumstances. As we deal with inflation and wild home prices, as everything is getting more expensive, people are still leaving their jobs. I’m not an economist, so I’ll leave the larger macroeconomic theories to people smarter than me. But it stands to reason that some part of our human arrangement with work in the modern world is broken.

What’s the point today?

(What if there isn’t a point? Like what if I just started thinking about Michael Scott? That’s not good enough? You come here for some absurdity AND some pithy life lesson? Ok, well let me think for a minute.)

Ah. Here it is.

Find yourself a boss like Michael Scott and you’ll never work a day in your life.

🙄

- KB