Office Persuasion, Part 1
Disclaimer: The Office is the property of NBC and Universal. I mean no infringement and make no profit. The novels of Jane Austen are public domain.
Think I'm weird if you want. Some time ago, I noticed a distinct parallel between this season of The Office and Jane Austen's Persuasion. Look: Boy and Girl are in love. Although she knows Boy is in love with her, Girl rejects him, thinking it will be the best thing for both of them. Broken-hearted, boy goes far away for a long period of time. Boy comes back. Girl still loves Boy. Boy still loves Girl. Boy still feels angry and rejected and thinks Girl never loved him, so he starts a relationship with Another Girl. Girl thinks that Boy doesn't love her anymore. Neither can voice their true feelings because of all of this misunderstanding and the constraints of their situations.
The only thing is, it seems unlikely that Karen will fall off something and break her head (spoiler alert!). Still, I couldn't help feeling that the ending of Persuasion presents an ideal solution to Jim and Pam's problems. I decided to see how closely I could adapt some of Persuasion to fit The Office, keeping the narration in the same language and the dialogue to the same gist, and it worked really well.
For example, look at this description of Anne Elliot: "Anne, with an elegance of mind and sweetness of character, which must have placed her high with any people of real understanding, was nobody with either father or sister; her word had no weight; her convenience was always to give way -- she was only Anne." Now replace "Anne" with "Pam." Replace "father or sister" with "Michael or Dwight." Does not that sum up our Miss Beesly nicely?
Most of what I worked on was the second-to-last chapter, but here are a couple of segments from the introductory chapters. These would take place in the fall, sometime before "The Merger."
The real text can be found here.
Michael Scott, regional manager of Dunder-Mifflin Paper Products in Scranton, Pennsylvania, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but Small Businessman Magazine. There he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were aroused into admiration and respect by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest issues; there any unwelcome sensations arising from corporate affairs changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost pitiful submissions of the last five years and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest that never failed-this was the page at which the favorite volume always opened:
“TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
As top salesman at Dunder Mifflin Paper Products two years in a row, I feel it is my duty to keep the public informed of new trends in the world of business. The best place to do business is at Chili’s Restaurants. The Radisson gives off a snooty vibe. Chili’s is the new golf course. It’s where business happens. - Michael Scott, Regional Manager of Dunder Mifflin Paper Products, Scranton, Pennsylvania.”
Precisely such had the paragraph originally stood from the printer’s hands; but Michael had improved it by adding, for the information of himself and his employees, these words after his name and position-
“At Dunder Mifflin since 1993, promoted to Regional Manager in 2001,” and by inserting more accurately the two consecutive years in which he had been named top salesman.
Then followed the history and rise of the respectable mid-range paper company, in the usual terms: how it had been first settled in New York; how expanded into the Scranton branch serving the corporate office, representing the Pennsylvania area, with excellent customer service and emphasis in serving small businesses, with all of the most impressive clients they had served; filling altogether one handsome inserted sheet of personalized stationery, and concluding with the logo and motto-“Supplying the Business Community Since 1947,”and different hand-writing in this finale -
"Assistant Regional Manager, Dwight K. Schrute, grandson of the first Dwight Schrute."
Vanity was the beginning and the end of Michael Scott’s character: vanity of personality and of situation. He had been remarkably entertaining in his youth; and, at forty-two, still fancied himself a very amusing man. Few comedians could think more of their popular routines than he did; nor could the assistant of any new-made CEO be more delighted with the place he held in the office. He considered the blessing of comedy as inferior only to the blessing of being manager; and the Michael Scott, who united these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and devotion.
His sense of humor and his rank had one fair claim on his attachment; since to them he must have owed a night of making out with a woman of very superior character to any thing deserved by his own. Jan Levinson was an excellent woman, sensible and amiable; whose judgment and conduct, if they might be pardoned the youthful infatuation which made her for a time Jan Levinson-Gould, had never required indulgence afterwards. She had humored, or softened, or concealed Michael’s failings, and promoted his real respectability for five years; and though not the very happiest being in the world herself, had found enough in her career, her friends, and her associates, to attach her to them, and make it no matter of indifference to her when she was called on to lay some of them off. Two branches threatened with downsizing, one in Scranton and one in Stamford, was an awful ultimatum for a corporate manager to convey, an awful charge rather, to confide to the authority and guidance of a conceited, silly manager. She had, however, at least one reliable manager-- a sensible, deserving man-- who had been brought, with strong recommendations from the company, to work under her, in the branch in Stamford; and on his competence and talent Jan mainly relied for the best help and maintenance of the good principles and instruction which she had been anxiously trying to give Michael.
Jan and Michael did not date, whatever might have been implied on that head by one of them and inferred by their acquaintance. Almost two years had passed away since Jan’s divorce, and they were still near colleagues and something resembling friends; and one remained single, the other a divorcee.
That Jan Levinson, of steady age and character, and extremely well provided for, should have no thought of a second marriage, needs no apology to the public; but Michael’s continuing in singleness requires explanation. Be it known then, that Michael, like a good boss, (having met with one or two private disappointments in very unreasonable applications) prided himself on remaining single for his dear employees’ sake. For one worker, the former temp, he really would have given up anything, which he had not been very much tempted to do. Ryan had succeeded upon his graduation from business school to all that was possible of a sales associate’s rights and consequence; and being very handsome, and very like Michael wished himself to be, his influence had always been great, and they had gone on together most happily. His eleven other employees were of very inferior value. Dwight had acquired a little artificial importance, by becoming assistant regional manager; but Pam Beesly, the receptionist, with an elegance of mind and sweetness of character which must have placed her high with any people of real understanding, was nobody with either Michael or Dwight: her word had no weight; her convenience was always to give way-- she was only Pam.
To the other employees, indeed, she was a most dear and highly regarded coworker, favorite, and friend. She got along with almost all of them, and it was only in Dwight and Angela that she could fancy any antipathy towards her.
A few years before, Pam Beesly had been a very ambitious girl, but her drive had vanished early; and as even in its height, her teacher had found little to admire in her artwork (so totally different were her delicate lines and mild dark shading from his own), there could be nothing in it, now that she was so out of practice, to excite any esteem. She had never indulged much hope, she had now almost none, of ever finding employment in any field of art or design. All possibility of an income must rest with her receptionist skills, which Michael had severely tested each day with an odd comic routine of irresponsibility and bad taste, so that she had given all the help she could and received none: Pam would, one day or other, quit dramatically.
...
Such were Pam Beesly’s sentiments and sensations; such the cares to alloy, the agitations to vary, the sameness and the ridiculousness, the mediocrity and the nothingness of her scene of life; such the feelings to give interest to a long, uneventful residence in one receptionist job, to fill the hours which there were few tasks of utility at work, few hobbies or social contacts for home, to occupy.
But now, another occupation and solicitude of mind was beginning to be added to these. The company was growing distressed for money. She knew, that when Michael now took up Small Businessman Magazine, it was to drive the threatening memos from corporate, and the unwelcome hints of Jan Levinson, his boss, from his thoughts. The Scranton branch was good, but not equal to the corporate office’s apprehension of the amount required in its sales. Under Ed Truck, its previous manager, there had been method, moderation, and economy, which had just kept them within their income; but with him had departed all such rightmindedness, and from that period Michael had been constantly exceeding it. It had not been possible for him to spend less: he had done nothing but what Michael Scott was imperiously called on to do; but blameless as he was, he was not only growing dreadfully in debt, but was hearing of it so often, that it became vain to attempt concealing it longer, even partially, from his employees. He had given them some hints of it in the last two years; he had gone so far even as to ask Dwight, "Can we cut back? Do you think that there is any one thing we can do to cut back?" and Dwight, to do him justice, had, in the first ardor of alarm, set seriously to think what could be done, and had finally proposed these two branches of economy, to cut out the employees’ health insurance, and to refrain from new furnishing the reception area; to which expedients he afterwards added the happy thought of their giving no Christmas bonus to Pam, as had been the usual yearly custom. But these measures, however good in themselves, were insufficient for the real extent of the evil, the whole of which Michael found himself obliged to confess to him soon afterwards. Dwight had nothing to propose of deeper efficacy. He felt himself ill-used and unfortunate, as did his boss; and they were neither of them able to devise any means of lessening their expenses without compromising their dignity, or relinquishing their comforts in a way not to be borne.
Jan was completely empowered to act; and no sooner had such an end been reached than Pam, who had been a most attentive listener to the whole, left the room, to seek the comfort of cool air for her flushed cheeks; and as she walked around the parking lot, said, with a gentle sigh, “a few weeks more, and he, perhaps, may be walking here.”
4
He was not Josh Porter, the manager of the Stamford branch, however suspicious appearances may be, but a Mr. Jim Halpert, one of his salesmen, who graduating from college, and not immediately employed, had come into Scranton in the summer of 1999; and having no other job prospects, found employment for 5 years at Dunder-Mifflin. He was, at that time, a remarkably fine young man, with a great deal of intelligence, spirit, and brilliancy; and Pam was an extremely pretty girl, with gentleness, modesty, taste, and feeling. Half the sum of attraction, on either side, might have been enough, for he had nothing to do, and she had hardly anybody to love; but the encounter of such lavish recommendations could not fail. They were gradually acquainted and, when acquainted, rapidly and deeply in love.
This is meant as a sort of prologue to my next entry, which will be my modified version of Chapter 23. It was a bit too much to put all in one entry. The connections get stronger, believe me. Also, I was really, really bored when I did this. Really bored. Don't judge me.