THE OFFICE (Fan Fic) - The Diary of a Cameraman (Part 2)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: (SPOILERS FOR THE CHAIR MODEL!!) This is a diary entry written from the point-of-view of one of the cameramen. Despite the fact that he is always in the offices of Dunder Mifflin Scranton, we never get to hear from him...until now. There are two entries, both pertaining to scenes from The Chair Model episode.
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DIARY ENTRY (date unknown):
10:30 a.m. -- Once again, I find myself with plenty of free time on my hands. For the last thirty minutes, Michael has been staring at a page in a catalog. Pam gave the catalog to him so he could pick out a new office chair and he appears to be enthralled with one specific item. It looks like he has a thing for the woman sitting in the chair, but I’m hoping that’s not the case. What kind of idiot would get a crush on a woman in a product catalog? Even though my hand is starting to cramp up, I keep the camera trained on Michael should anything interesting happen. I’m not foreseeing much.
10:45 a.m. -- Joe meanwhile appears to be having better luck outside in the main office area. Someone has placed the office water cooler on Dwight’s desk and he’s unable to move it without causing the water jug to spill everywhere. I can sort of hear through Michael’s closed door and it sounds like Jim is denying responsibility for the prank. However, he has moved his desk back, closer to Michael’s office and out of the spill radius. I see Stanley stand up and walk over to Dwight’s desk. It looks like he is going to help Dwight…but no; he’s just filling up his cup with water. I briefly turn my attention back to Michael. Now he has placed a picture of Jan next to the picture in the catalog and seems to be comparing the two women. This is going to be a long day. Behind me, I hear a crash and Dwight yell “Dammit, Jim!”
DIARY ENTRY (date unknown):
9:00 a.m. -- Pam is standing in Michael’s office, trying to get him to pick a chair. It’s been three weeks since she first handed it to him, and he’s still not made a decision. In an interview earlier that morning, Pam told me that once Michael gets a new chair, she’ll get his old one, which is why she keeps pestering him to pick one. However, his attentions have wandered from the task at hand to the girl in the ad. That’s right, he actually [i]has[/i] developed seemingly legitimate feelings for a woman in a catalog. All he does now is stare at the chair model. I’ve seen Michael waste time before, but this latest obsession has taken his inability to get any work done to a whole new level. The only time he has left his office in the last few weeks was on Pretzel Day and even then, he took the catalog with him while he waited in line.
11:30 a.m. -- It’s a few hours later and I am now in the break room, watching the staff reluctantly writing on little note cards. Stanley says he doesn’t hate anyone enough to write their name down, Phyllis mentions something about a fat friend and I see Pam trying to grab Jim’s card from him. You see, earlier in the day Michael had actually told his staff they were to write down a name of an eligible woman that he could date. He gave a sad little speech about how he needed to get laid so he could have kids…or something like that, I wasn’t really paying attention. After he threatened to fire anyone who didn’t write down a name, he walked into his office. Joe followed him. We had been taking turns filming Michael and it was Joe’s turn to watch him stare at a stupid catalog. Dwight passed out little index cards for everyone to fill out. He even gave me one. Like Stanley, I wouldn’t give Michael the name of anyone I knew. To satisfy Dwight, I wrote down Jan’s name. She was single, after all.
While Dwight was handing out the notecards, I saw Kevin and Andy go into Michael’s office. Joe told me later that apparently there is a parking issue going on. One of the other businesses in the building is doing renovations and the construction crews’ vans are taking up all the parking spots. Now the DM staff has to park about a half mile away and walk to work. I don’t actually understand what they are getting all upset about. Michael has made me and Joe park in the satellite parking lot for years. We both drive cars made before the year 2000 and Michael says they give off a “cheap” vibe he doesn’t want associated with Dunder Mifflin.
8:00 p.m. -- It’s the end of the day and I’m currently standing in a cemetery. It’s very possible that sometime in my life I did something really horrible that I’ve blocked out of my mind and this is my punishment. There is really no other explanation for why I’m in a cemetery listening to Michael and Dwight sing ‘American Pie.’ Maybe I should back up and explain. After the staff turned in their note cards to Michael, he called the girl on Kevin’s card. As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one not taking Michael’s assignment seriously. Kevin had given him the number to a Wendy’s Restaurant. Michael remained upbeat and sent Dwight out to get him a baked potato and Frosty. I tagged along, which was once again a huge mistake. The cashier at Wendy’s gave Dwight back the incorrect change. The poor kid had shorted Dwight a nickel, but being Dwight, he felt it a great injustice. The manager was called and twenty minutes later, we made it back to the office with a baked potato, a slightly melted Frosty and a coupon for free fries. We did not, however, make it back with sour cream. It was about five minutes after Dwight had left for Wendy’s again that Michael remembered there was a tub of sour cream in the fridge.
Once Dwight came back from Wendy’s (with like twenty packets of sour cream), he started looking for Michael’s dream girl, the one from the catalog. I didn’t think he’d actually be able to do it, but an hour later he sat down in the conference room to tell me what he’d uncovered. By calling the furniture company, Dwight had managed to track down the modeling agency where the girl had worked. The agency told Dwight that the model’s name was Deborah Shoshlefski and she had died in a car accident in 2001. Despite the unhappy findings, Dwight seemed pleased that he had managed to close the case of the mysterious chair model. Unfortunately, Dwight has never been very good at breaking bad news. He blurted out to Michael that the girl was dead and Michael did not take it well. I thought he was going to start crying (which believe me, makes great TV!) when Pam ruined it by telling him she had the name of a girl he might like to date. Pam assured him she was sweet and pretty and they’d probably hit it off, so Michael went off to call her. I found out later that Pam had given him the name of her landlady, Margaret. Michael spoke to her on the phone briefly and they agreed to meet at a local coffee place nearby. Joe and I played ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ on who would follow him and Joe lost. If only I had won, I might not be standing in a cemetery right now.
While Michael was off meeting the landlady, I followed Kevin and Andy to a meeting of the “five families.” Kevin explained that the five families were the heads of the five businesses that operated out of Scranton Business Park. Besides Michael, there was Bob Vance of Vance Refrigeration, Paul Faust of Disaster Kits Limited, W.B. Jones of W.B. Jones Heating and Air and Bill Cress of Cress Tool and Dye. The person they had a problem with was W.B Jones, but instead of going straight to him, they decided to call everyone in to discuss the situation. It was a short and rather pointless meeting. Jones agreed to have the construction crews move their trucks and that was that. It did seem to cheer Kevin up, who admitted that he and his fiancée had broken up recently. Despite my urging, he would not explain the reason for the break up.
Not long after the Godfather-like meeting of the Scranton Business Park families, Michael came back and yelled at Pam for setting him up with her landlady. Joe didn’t tell me specifics of what happened, but clearly the meeting had not gone the way Michael had expected. While he went to stew in his office, Jim walked up to reception. I carefully backed away and zoomed my camera in on them. Whenever Pam and Jim are talking, I try to keep my distance so they don’t feel like they are being watched. I got really good at doing that when Dwight and Angela were dating. As I tried to be invisible, Jim and Pam joked about her getting kicked out of her apartment. Pam said that if that happened, she could just move in with her boyfriend and Jim responded that they should do it. Pam looked a little surprised and said that she wasn’t going to move in with anyone unless she was engaged. Jim continued in his joking tone as he told Pam that a proposal was coming soon. Pam continued to play along, but when Jim walked back to his desk, she looked a little shell-shocked. I couldn’t decide if she was just surprised that they had actually had the “proposal” conversation or if she was worried Jim was serious. I was curious myself and later in an interview in the conference room, I asked if he was just joking around with Pam. Jim smiled, said he wasn’t joking and then pulled out an engagement ring. He said he bought it a week after they started dating. I tried to remain aloof and objective, but I was actually thrilled for them both.
It’s getting really dark in this cemetery and Michael and Dwight are still singing. This is all because I let Joe go with Michael to the meeting with Pam’s landlady. After Jim had confessed he planned to propose to Pam, I noticed Michael and Dwight getting ready to leave. Michael said that he was going to get some much-needed closure from a relationship that had affected his life greatly. I thought, as I think most people would have, that he meant Jan. It was my turn to follow Michael and I figured that Michael talking to Jan for the first time since their break up couldn’t be that painful to watch. Awkward and uncomfortable maybe, but not painful. So it came as quite a surprise when Dwight drove to a cemetery. That’s right; the relationship Michael was talking about was the one between him and a woman he had seen in a furniture products catalog. Michael and Dwight stood in front of the headstone of Deborah Shoshlefski, where Dwight was kind enough to supply the information behind her death, saying she had been stoned and had plowed her car into the side of an airplane hangar. Michael began singing ‘American Pie’ in honor of Deborah, except he changed some of the words so it would sound more appropriate. Something about having lots of kids that drank whiskey and rye.
That was an hour ago. Dwight and Michael are still singing and now they’ve started jumping up and down like crazy people. I really wish I was in Joe’s place right now. He gets to follow Jim and Pam around. It would be my luck that Jim proposed to her and I completely missed it. However, I’m a professional, so I keep the camera trained on Michael and Dwight. They continue to sing loudly and just as it seems it can’t get worse, a police car drives by. I follow the cruiser with my camera and see two policemen climb out with flashlights. I turn my camera back to the gravestone and realize that Dwight and Michael have scattered. As I watch Dwight’s car drive off, I’m thankful the horrible singing has stopped. I just wish Dwight hadn’t been my ride.
***(You can read the previous entry for Dinner Party here.)
Summary: (SPOILERS FOR THE CHAIR MODEL!!) This is a diary entry written from the point-of-view of one of the cameramen. Despite the fact that he is always in the offices of Dunder Mifflin Scranton, we never get to hear from him...until now. There are two entries, both pertaining to scenes from The Chair Model episode.
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DIARY ENTRY (date unknown):
10:30 a.m. -- Once again, I find myself with plenty of free time on my hands. For the last thirty minutes, Michael has been staring at a page in a catalog. Pam gave the catalog to him so he could pick out a new office chair and he appears to be enthralled with one specific item. It looks like he has a thing for the woman sitting in the chair, but I’m hoping that’s not the case. What kind of idiot would get a crush on a woman in a product catalog? Even though my hand is starting to cramp up, I keep the camera trained on Michael should anything interesting happen. I’m not foreseeing much.
10:45 a.m. -- Joe meanwhile appears to be having better luck outside in the main office area. Someone has placed the office water cooler on Dwight’s desk and he’s unable to move it without causing the water jug to spill everywhere. I can sort of hear through Michael’s closed door and it sounds like Jim is denying responsibility for the prank. However, he has moved his desk back, closer to Michael’s office and out of the spill radius. I see Stanley stand up and walk over to Dwight’s desk. It looks like he is going to help Dwight…but no; he’s just filling up his cup with water. I briefly turn my attention back to Michael. Now he has placed a picture of Jan next to the picture in the catalog and seems to be comparing the two women. This is going to be a long day. Behind me, I hear a crash and Dwight yell “Dammit, Jim!”
DIARY ENTRY (date unknown):
9:00 a.m. -- Pam is standing in Michael’s office, trying to get him to pick a chair. It’s been three weeks since she first handed it to him, and he’s still not made a decision. In an interview earlier that morning, Pam told me that once Michael gets a new chair, she’ll get his old one, which is why she keeps pestering him to pick one. However, his attentions have wandered from the task at hand to the girl in the ad. That’s right, he actually [i]has[/i] developed seemingly legitimate feelings for a woman in a catalog. All he does now is stare at the chair model. I’ve seen Michael waste time before, but this latest obsession has taken his inability to get any work done to a whole new level. The only time he has left his office in the last few weeks was on Pretzel Day and even then, he took the catalog with him while he waited in line.
11:30 a.m. -- It’s a few hours later and I am now in the break room, watching the staff reluctantly writing on little note cards. Stanley says he doesn’t hate anyone enough to write their name down, Phyllis mentions something about a fat friend and I see Pam trying to grab Jim’s card from him. You see, earlier in the day Michael had actually told his staff they were to write down a name of an eligible woman that he could date. He gave a sad little speech about how he needed to get laid so he could have kids…or something like that, I wasn’t really paying attention. After he threatened to fire anyone who didn’t write down a name, he walked into his office. Joe followed him. We had been taking turns filming Michael and it was Joe’s turn to watch him stare at a stupid catalog. Dwight passed out little index cards for everyone to fill out. He even gave me one. Like Stanley, I wouldn’t give Michael the name of anyone I knew. To satisfy Dwight, I wrote down Jan’s name. She was single, after all.
While Dwight was handing out the notecards, I saw Kevin and Andy go into Michael’s office. Joe told me later that apparently there is a parking issue going on. One of the other businesses in the building is doing renovations and the construction crews’ vans are taking up all the parking spots. Now the DM staff has to park about a half mile away and walk to work. I don’t actually understand what they are getting all upset about. Michael has made me and Joe park in the satellite parking lot for years. We both drive cars made before the year 2000 and Michael says they give off a “cheap” vibe he doesn’t want associated with Dunder Mifflin.
8:00 p.m. -- It’s the end of the day and I’m currently standing in a cemetery. It’s very possible that sometime in my life I did something really horrible that I’ve blocked out of my mind and this is my punishment. There is really no other explanation for why I’m in a cemetery listening to Michael and Dwight sing ‘American Pie.’ Maybe I should back up and explain. After the staff turned in their note cards to Michael, he called the girl on Kevin’s card. As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one not taking Michael’s assignment seriously. Kevin had given him the number to a Wendy’s Restaurant. Michael remained upbeat and sent Dwight out to get him a baked potato and Frosty. I tagged along, which was once again a huge mistake. The cashier at Wendy’s gave Dwight back the incorrect change. The poor kid had shorted Dwight a nickel, but being Dwight, he felt it a great injustice. The manager was called and twenty minutes later, we made it back to the office with a baked potato, a slightly melted Frosty and a coupon for free fries. We did not, however, make it back with sour cream. It was about five minutes after Dwight had left for Wendy’s again that Michael remembered there was a tub of sour cream in the fridge.
Once Dwight came back from Wendy’s (with like twenty packets of sour cream), he started looking for Michael’s dream girl, the one from the catalog. I didn’t think he’d actually be able to do it, but an hour later he sat down in the conference room to tell me what he’d uncovered. By calling the furniture company, Dwight had managed to track down the modeling agency where the girl had worked. The agency told Dwight that the model’s name was Deborah Shoshlefski and she had died in a car accident in 2001. Despite the unhappy findings, Dwight seemed pleased that he had managed to close the case of the mysterious chair model. Unfortunately, Dwight has never been very good at breaking bad news. He blurted out to Michael that the girl was dead and Michael did not take it well. I thought he was going to start crying (which believe me, makes great TV!) when Pam ruined it by telling him she had the name of a girl he might like to date. Pam assured him she was sweet and pretty and they’d probably hit it off, so Michael went off to call her. I found out later that Pam had given him the name of her landlady, Margaret. Michael spoke to her on the phone briefly and they agreed to meet at a local coffee place nearby. Joe and I played ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ on who would follow him and Joe lost. If only I had won, I might not be standing in a cemetery right now.
While Michael was off meeting the landlady, I followed Kevin and Andy to a meeting of the “five families.” Kevin explained that the five families were the heads of the five businesses that operated out of Scranton Business Park. Besides Michael, there was Bob Vance of Vance Refrigeration, Paul Faust of Disaster Kits Limited, W.B. Jones of W.B. Jones Heating and Air and Bill Cress of Cress Tool and Dye. The person they had a problem with was W.B Jones, but instead of going straight to him, they decided to call everyone in to discuss the situation. It was a short and rather pointless meeting. Jones agreed to have the construction crews move their trucks and that was that. It did seem to cheer Kevin up, who admitted that he and his fiancée had broken up recently. Despite my urging, he would not explain the reason for the break up.
Not long after the Godfather-like meeting of the Scranton Business Park families, Michael came back and yelled at Pam for setting him up with her landlady. Joe didn’t tell me specifics of what happened, but clearly the meeting had not gone the way Michael had expected. While he went to stew in his office, Jim walked up to reception. I carefully backed away and zoomed my camera in on them. Whenever Pam and Jim are talking, I try to keep my distance so they don’t feel like they are being watched. I got really good at doing that when Dwight and Angela were dating. As I tried to be invisible, Jim and Pam joked about her getting kicked out of her apartment. Pam said that if that happened, she could just move in with her boyfriend and Jim responded that they should do it. Pam looked a little surprised and said that she wasn’t going to move in with anyone unless she was engaged. Jim continued in his joking tone as he told Pam that a proposal was coming soon. Pam continued to play along, but when Jim walked back to his desk, she looked a little shell-shocked. I couldn’t decide if she was just surprised that they had actually had the “proposal” conversation or if she was worried Jim was serious. I was curious myself and later in an interview in the conference room, I asked if he was just joking around with Pam. Jim smiled, said he wasn’t joking and then pulled out an engagement ring. He said he bought it a week after they started dating. I tried to remain aloof and objective, but I was actually thrilled for them both.
It’s getting really dark in this cemetery and Michael and Dwight are still singing. This is all because I let Joe go with Michael to the meeting with Pam’s landlady. After Jim had confessed he planned to propose to Pam, I noticed Michael and Dwight getting ready to leave. Michael said that he was going to get some much-needed closure from a relationship that had affected his life greatly. I thought, as I think most people would have, that he meant Jan. It was my turn to follow Michael and I figured that Michael talking to Jan for the first time since their break up couldn’t be that painful to watch. Awkward and uncomfortable maybe, but not painful. So it came as quite a surprise when Dwight drove to a cemetery. That’s right; the relationship Michael was talking about was the one between him and a woman he had seen in a furniture products catalog. Michael and Dwight stood in front of the headstone of Deborah Shoshlefski, where Dwight was kind enough to supply the information behind her death, saying she had been stoned and had plowed her car into the side of an airplane hangar. Michael began singing ‘American Pie’ in honor of Deborah, except he changed some of the words so it would sound more appropriate. Something about having lots of kids that drank whiskey and rye.
That was an hour ago. Dwight and Michael are still singing and now they’ve started jumping up and down like crazy people. I really wish I was in Joe’s place right now. He gets to follow Jim and Pam around. It would be my luck that Jim proposed to her and I completely missed it. However, I’m a professional, so I keep the camera trained on Michael and Dwight. They continue to sing loudly and just as it seems it can’t get worse, a police car drives by. I follow the cruiser with my camera and see two policemen climb out with flashlights. I turn my camera back to the gravestone and realize that Dwight and Michael have scattered. As I watch Dwight’s car drive off, I’m thankful the horrible singing has stopped. I just wish Dwight hadn’t been my ride.
***(You can read the previous entry for Dinner Party here.)