The Office Recap: The Promotion

I’m sure we all expected to see some toes getting stepped on now that Michael is sharing his managerial responsibilities with Jim (aka James, aka Jimothy), and tonight’s episode served as a perfect introduction to what I’m guessing will be a long road of disputes as well as charming bonding moments.

While I was eager to see how things would go for Jim as he stepped up to co-manage the office, I’m glad to see that the writers aren’t going to bank entirely on Jim and Michael being at odds with one another. We all know Michael thrives off his title and while Jim’s proven to be a pretty level-headed guy, he’s still naturally going to be a bit wet behind the ears when it comes to handling the staff.

The episode opened with Dwight approaching Michael to get an expense report signed. Michael promptly deferred Dwight to Jim, who is now in charge of day-to-day managing tasks at the office. Of course, Jim gave Dwight a hard time about the report, because even co-manager-Jim has to antagonize Dwight. As Dwight’s pissed off about the promotion he didn’t get (or think to ask for), he’s made it his mission to rally the troops against Jim and that played a part in how things went down tonight as we watched Jim and Michael attempt to appease the staff with the tiny amount of money they were given to dole out as raises.

When David Wallace told Michael and Jim that he was leaving it up to both of them to figure out how to divide the raise-money, the two were instantly in disagreement. This, added to the conversations they had about Michael calling too many meetings in the conference room was enough to get the ball rolling on the arguing. As far as the salary thing went, Jim wanted to step up and handle the task but Michael insisted on calling the shots. After much arguing and talk that went nowhere, Michael finally let Jim stand before the firing squad. While Michael might be somewhat of an idiot when it comes to managing the office, he’s an experienced idiot and he knew just how badly things were going to go for Jim. Still, the rookie had to figure that out for himself.

Jim announced to the office that since there wasn’t enough money in the budget for everyone to get raises, they were going to reward the sales staff with salary increases. His logic was that because the sales staff brings in money, they should get money. I can’t say that I was in disagreement with Kevin, Oscar, Angela, Meredith and every other non-sales employee that spoke up in protest to this decision. After all, don’t the sales people get commission for their sales? And is it really fair to penalize the accounting people and the other departments, considering their jobs don’t allow them to bring in money to the company?

After everyone yelled at Jim (with Dwight goading them on, despite being one of the raise-people), Michael made some bad jokes and the two retreated into the conference room to regroup.

The two managers agreed on a system wherein they spread photos of the staff out on the conference room table and went around putting Boston Baked Bean candies on them. With each bean representing half a percent raise, the system had them carefully trying to decide which employees performed better than others by the amount of beans they got. It seemed like a reasonable way to figure out where to put the money, even if it was a bit like a grade-school math project.

When Jim and Michael were called away to respond to an email from Wallace, Dwight snuck into the conference room and found the bean set-up. He quickly brought the staff into the office to expose the bosses for their tactic. Pam was as annoyed by the frizzy-haired photo that was being used to represent her as she was by the fact that there were no beans on her picture. Jim tried to say he was being unbiased but it sounds to me like she was getting the short end of the stick by a guy who was trying to be a bit too fair. Sure, she’s new to the sales team and probably hasn’t done a lot to prove herself thus far but still, no beans? Come on, Jim! Give your lady some beans!

Everyone wanted to know what the beans meant but Michael and Jim were both hiding in their offices after the confrontation. Michael eventually slithered through the angry office to get to Jim’s office and the two seemed to find some common ground; everyone hates them. Jim, welcome to Michael’s world. While Jim was starting to feel Michael’s pain, Michael was realizing that sharing his job responsibilities with Jim also meant having someone to lean on during the times when tough decisions needed to be made. He quickly ducked back into his office and returned to Jim with two “World’s Greatest Boss” mugs full of gin.

In the B-story, while Jim was trying to figure out how to distribute money, Pam was looking for a way to tactfully request it from the staff in lieu of wedding gifts. Now, where I come from, cash and checks are the traditional gift for a wedding. Gifts are also acceptable but generally, those are given out at the shower. Apparently, that’s not a standard thing for all weddings, so Jim and Pam did make a registry but they were also accepting other gifts… like toasters full of cash. Pam tried to have a polite conversation with Phyllis about her and Jim not necessarily wanting anything off the registry, and Phyllis happily told Pam about the birdhouse mailboxes her cousin makes. As Pam and Jim hadn’t registered for a birdhouse, it looks as though the Vance’s will be providing them with a home-made one.

After the birdhouse thing, Pam was more upfront about the cash issue. Kevin approached her about the gift situation and when she told him they would accept cash, he offered her a check (that she shouldn’t cash until Monday). Pam felt a little guilty about taking the money but quickly got over that when she saw that Kevin had made it out to Mrs. Pam Halpert. Kevin unknowingly ended up being the first person to write the words out for her.

At the end of the episode, Ryan presented Pam with an offer. He said he’d give her one hundred dollars then and there or five-thousand dollars a year from now. The catch for the latter gift was that she needed to give him fifty dollars. Apparently, he has some magic algorithm that can predict the outcome of college basketball games. It was only after she’d written the check and handed the money over to Ryan that she realized she might have made a huge mistake. Personally, I’d love to see Ryan drop a pile of cash on her desk around this time next season.

One could say that this was a small episode by comparison to what’s to come next week. As we’re all counting down the days until Jim and Pam tie the knot (next week!), this seemed almost like a perfectly ordinary Office episode. That said, I think they did a nice job of setting up Michael and Jim’s new working relationship. Sure, it was a bit predictable, what with them arguing with each other but the conclusion of the day’s events (which excluded any resolution to the raise issue) showed that we’re going to see some changes with these characters. Maybe not drastic changes. I still expect to see more arguing, more stepping on each other’s toes, more power-struggles and more resistance from Dwight and the rest of the staff. But Jim’s stepping up and Michael’s going to have to learn to step aside. Will it happen? I think we can all agree that it’s a long road ahead but I’m sure it’ll be a hilarious one.