8 ms·

The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)

122 points by etherio 6y ago

derwiki 6y ago
I know it’s not meant to be taken 100% literally, but it was as big an eye opener for me as watching Office Space the first time.
cyb_ 6y ago
Page was slow to load for me. Here's a cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.ribbonfarm.com%2F2009%2F10%2F07%2Fthe-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office%2F&oq=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.ribbonfarm.com%2F2009%2F10%2F07%2Fthe-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps...
mynameishere 6y ago
Argle-bargle. People get promoted for many reasons, and this is even played out in the show. Michael Scott, for being a bullshitter (great in sales), Jan for "looking corporate", David Wallace seemingly for competence, Ryan for credentials, Creed for seniority, Kelly (temporarily) through some diversity push, Andy for lack of a better option, Kathy Bates through marriage, Robert California for being a real pyscho, and Dwight through sheer doggedness.
- wgerard 6y ago
  Hmm, I think the idea is a bit reductionist but given that his definitions stem from those characters I don't think you've chosen great examples. Ryan, Jan, and later Kelly are definitely "sociopaths" by the article's definition (if not by, well, psychological standards). Jo (Kathy Bates) straight up says her primary reason for getting married was to attain wealth and power. David Wallace is seemingly very nice, but the articles explain how he repeatedly sets up "heads i win (and you get a kudos), tails you lose" scenarios. Robert California does this as well, and often in a much more obvious manner. Michael Scott is his epitome of "clueless", who will never advance past middle management (and we see this play out several times). You can call it the Peter Principle too, if you want. You can throw Andy and Dwight in there too. None of them has the stomach to truly put themselves above everyone else (not even Dwight).
j4yav 6y ago
I really enjoyed this when I was younger, around the time it came out. Over time though I came to realize it's way too cynical and reductive to really guide you to any sort of successful outcome. Do your best to be confident, kind, and engaged and you will run circles around the characters enumerated here, even the "winners".
- powersnail 6y ago
  > guide you to any sort of successful outcome I'd say, 99% of TV shows, cynical or otherwise, don't have that goal in mind, and is incapable of guiding you through life.
  - skrebbel 6y ago
    Most Venkatesh Rao articles do have that goal in mind.
    - powersnail 6y ago
      And I do think that the article is reading too much into the show. While the show has a sense a realism (all shows do), it is a fiction, and many things happen for the sake of comedy or plot.
  - j4yav 6y ago
    That's true, but I'm not referring to the show but the article/theory of work interactions.
- skrebbel 6y ago
  I fully agree. In fact I've never worked in an environment like described in this article. I'm not questioning their existence, I know plenty friends who work(ed) in toxic environments, and sure I've been a bit lucky. But the whole idea that unavoidably you're either a loser, clueless, or a sociopath just doesn't seem rooted in reality to me. Plenty companies are not set up as toxic exploitation machines.
  - 6y ago
SakeOfBrevity 6y ago
I really liked the show for its light-heartedness and it's non-PC oriented comedy (which faded away as seasons went by), but there are also other interesting themes there, such as subtle hints from writers that Michael Scott putting up an act to actually make the most out of employees of Dunder Mifflin.
- hapidjus 6y ago
  Please elaborate on Michael putting up an act. Either I don't remember or it went over my head at the time.
  - mainstreemm 6y ago
    Especially later on you really get the idea that Michael isn't as ridiculous as it seems at first and does a lot of "silly" stuff for leadership reasons. There's an episode where Jim tries to combine birthday celebrations as one of his first acts as manager and it blows up in his face. After, Michael imparts real wisdom about why that happened. It becomes clear that while he is a ridiculous and imperfect man, he is a decent leader after all. And some of the jokes and such? They're for morale, even if they don't always hit the mark. Somehow Scranton stays afloat.. What a great show
  - wgerard 6y ago
    I'm not sure if there are other episodes, but there's a big hint in an episode in season 4 that Michael is much more astute than he lets on: During the episode where Michael goes out to do a "survival show" in the woods (ala Bear Grylls). Jim is the temporary manager while Michael is gone, and he tries to combine several staff birthdays which are close together into one big celebration. It backfires terribly. When Michael returns and Jim expresses his relief, Michael explains that he made the same mistake Jim did once and explains that the decision to celebrate the close birthdays separately is a very deliberate one. He also implies that Jim is very much on the same trajectory as him. He then makes a "That's what she said" joke randomly, and Jim basically replies "Uh, what?" and Michael explains that he makes dumb jokes often to just break the tension. It's a pretty lucid moment for an otherwise often opaque character, but does imply that Michael's quirks are a result of his staff and not in spite of them.
Arubis 6y ago
This is an extensive read, but worthwhile. If you find yourself enjoying the cynical insight, I’d highly recommend picking up the ebook.
alangou 6y ago
I think the most beneficial concept from this part of the series is the dichotomy between loser talk and sociopath talk, in which loser talk is entirely about jostling for status in a group, whereas sociopath talk is about figuring out how to get what you want out of an interaction and out of life. Of course, the language can be recast in a more positive light into playing status games vs. wealth slash some other kind of goal-achieving games. Or recast it again into a personal CBT method to quiet status-related anxieties: is worrying about what Betty thinks of me or my jokes or social gaffes going to make me any happier, richer, or healthier? What would a "sociopath" think? Would they even react to this? Perhaps the answer is "yes", but much more often than not, the answer is "no, it doesn't matter one bit." It's your mind creating demons out of dust.
jancsika 6y ago
> Dastardly as all this sounds, it is actually pretty efficient, given the inevitability of the MacLeod hierarchy and life cycle. I suppose there are different prospective models depending on which seasons of the show you focus on. This take seems directly disputed in whatever season showed the sociopaths unable to figure out how Michael's branch could possibly be profitable. That plot arc offers a more scathing critique than the author's model lets on. In fact, it reminds me a lot like Linus' critique of svn-- the idea of a design that is so perfectly antithetical to any of its stated goals that someone could blindly design a better alternative by merely asking at every turn, "What would svn not do?" The Office seems to take the company (and any triangle it seems to fit) as similarly perfectly flawed. Consequently, Michael's chronic/comic incompetency reverses a critical mass of the company's strategies for the branch to succeed.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
  Seeing as it's called the "Gervais Principle," I'm 100% positive this was written primarily for David Breen and not Michael Scott. Which I'd highly recommend watching the british office to get an understanding of what is so different. The american office is like the the big bang theory and the british office is like silicon valley.
  - jancsika 6y ago
    You might want to ratchet down that percentage for your future speculation: > I’ll be basing this entire article on the American version of the show, which is more fully developed than the original British version, though the original is perhaps more satisfyingly bleak.
    - MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
      But! Had I been right, it's clear which is the better version ;)
- yellowstuff 6y ago
  cvs, not svn.
johnsimer 6y ago
> The Peter Principle is wrong for the simple reason that executives aren’t that stupid, and because there isn’t that much room in an upward-narrowing pyramid. They know what it takes for a promotion candidate to perform at the to level. So if they are promoting people beyond their competence anyway, under conditions of opportunity scarcity, there must be a good reason. ^ His argument assumes there is opportunity scarcity. IMO there is opportunity abundance. A well functioning company does not have an "upward-narrowing pyramid" practically speaking, because the pyramid is growing, ostensibly because each team is helping each other grow the company, increasing opportunity for all. Arguably opportunity scarcity could exist in a Gervaisian sense if you are part of a company being disrupted (e.g. being a paper company in the digital age).
Balgair 6y ago
I love this article and try to share it with whomever I can. It is unrelentingly cynical and skewers all parts of the corporate world, no one escapes being flayed. The insights are very good and the backdrop of an innocuous and very popular TV show makes the distinctions all the more jarring. The Gervais Principle is a lens one chooses to view things in finer detail. But like all microscopes, the choice of lenses matter very much. You must know what error is introduced before you choose the lenses. That said, the Gervais Principle is a really good lens (a hyper-cynical lens); one that many people have not considered before.
john4532452 6y ago
FWIW. The author is a supporter of caste system. From https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/11/10/king-ruinous-and-the-city-of-darkness/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/11/10/king-ruinous-and-the-c... on caste "I am enough of a free-speecher to acknowledge that it has a right to"

122 points by etherio 6y ago

I know it’s not meant to be taken 100% literally, but it was as big an eye opener for me as watching Office Space the first time.

cyb_ 6y ago

Page was slow to load for me. Here's a cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.ribbonfarm.com%2F2009%2F10%2F07%2Fthe-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office%2F&oq=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.ribbonfarm.com%2F2009%2F10%2F07%2Fthe-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps...

mynameishere 6y ago

Argle-bargle. People get promoted for many reasons, and this is even played out in the show. Michael Scott, for being a bullshitter (great in sales), Jan for "looking corporate", David Wallace seemingly for competence, Ryan for credentials, Creed for seniority, Kelly (temporarily) through some diversity push, Andy for lack of a better option, Kathy Bates through marriage, Robert California for being a real pyscho, and Dwight through sheer doggedness.

wgerard 6y ago
Hmm, I think the idea is a bit reductionist but given that his definitions stem from those characters I don't think you've chosen great examples. Ryan, Jan, and later Kelly are definitely "sociopaths" by the article's definition (if not by, well, psychological standards). Jo (Kathy Bates) straight up says her primary reason for getting married was to attain wealth and power. David Wallace is seemingly very nice, but the articles explain how he repeatedly sets up "heads i win (and you get a kudos), tails you lose" scenarios. Robert California does this as well, and often in a much more obvious manner. Michael Scott is his epitome of "clueless", who will never advance past middle management (and we see this play out several times). You can call it the Peter Principle too, if you want. You can throw Andy and Dwight in there too. None of them has the stomach to truly put themselves above everyone else (not even Dwight).

j4yav 6y ago

I really enjoyed this when I was younger, around the time it came out. Over time though I came to realize it's way too cynical and reductive to really guide you to any sort of successful outcome. Do your best to be confident, kind, and engaged and you will run circles around the characters enumerated here, even the "winners".

powersnail 6y ago
> guide you to any sort of successful outcome I'd say, 99% of TV shows, cynical or otherwise, don't have that goal in mind, and is incapable of guiding you through life.
- skrebbel 6y ago
  Most Venkatesh Rao articles do have that goal in mind.
  - powersnail 6y ago
    And I do think that the article is reading too much into the show. While the show has a sense a realism (all shows do), it is a fiction, and many things happen for the sake of comedy or plot.
- j4yav 6y ago
  That's true, but I'm not referring to the show but the article/theory of work interactions.
skrebbel 6y ago
I fully agree. In fact I've never worked in an environment like described in this article. I'm not questioning their existence, I know plenty friends who work(ed) in toxic environments, and sure I've been a bit lucky. But the whole idea that unavoidably you're either a loser, clueless, or a sociopath just doesn't seem rooted in reality to me. Plenty companies are not set up as toxic exploitation machines.
- 6y ago

SakeOfBrevity 6y ago

I really liked the show for its light-heartedness and it's non-PC oriented comedy (which faded away as seasons went by), but there are also other interesting themes there, such as subtle hints from writers that Michael Scott putting up an act to actually make the most out of employees of Dunder Mifflin.

hapidjus 6y ago
Please elaborate on Michael putting up an act. Either I don't remember or it went over my head at the time.
- mainstreemm 6y ago
  Especially later on you really get the idea that Michael isn't as ridiculous as it seems at first and does a lot of "silly" stuff for leadership reasons. There's an episode where Jim tries to combine birthday celebrations as one of his first acts as manager and it blows up in his face. After, Michael imparts real wisdom about why that happened. It becomes clear that while he is a ridiculous and imperfect man, he is a decent leader after all. And some of the jokes and such? They're for morale, even if they don't always hit the mark. Somehow Scranton stays afloat.. What a great show
- wgerard 6y ago
  I'm not sure if there are other episodes, but there's a big hint in an episode in season 4 that Michael is much more astute than he lets on: During the episode where Michael goes out to do a "survival show" in the woods (ala Bear Grylls). Jim is the temporary manager while Michael is gone, and he tries to combine several staff birthdays which are close together into one big celebration. It backfires terribly. When Michael returns and Jim expresses his relief, Michael explains that he made the same mistake Jim did once and explains that the decision to celebrate the close birthdays separately is a very deliberate one. He also implies that Jim is very much on the same trajectory as him. He then makes a "That's what she said" joke randomly, and Jim basically replies "Uh, what?" and Michael explains that he makes dumb jokes often to just break the tension. It's a pretty lucid moment for an otherwise often opaque character, but does imply that Michael's quirks are a result of his staff and not in spite of them.

Arubis 6y ago

This is an extensive read, but worthwhile. If you find yourself enjoying the cynical insight, I’d highly recommend picking up the ebook.

alangou 6y ago

I think the most beneficial concept from this part of the series is the dichotomy between loser talk and sociopath talk, in which loser talk is entirely about jostling for status in a group, whereas sociopath talk is about figuring out how to get what you want out of an interaction and out of life. Of course, the language can be recast in a more positive light into playing status games vs. wealth slash some other kind of goal-achieving games. Or recast it again into a personal CBT method to quiet status-related anxieties: is worrying about what Betty thinks of me or my jokes or social gaffes going to make me any happier, richer, or healthier? What would a "sociopath" think? Would they even react to this? Perhaps the answer is "yes", but much more often than not, the answer is "no, it doesn't matter one bit." It's your mind creating demons out of dust.

jancsika 6y ago

> Dastardly as all this sounds, it is actually pretty efficient, given the inevitability of the MacLeod hierarchy and life cycle. I suppose there are different prospective models depending on which seasons of the show you focus on. This take seems directly disputed in whatever season showed the sociopaths unable to figure out how Michael's branch could possibly be profitable. That plot arc offers a more scathing critique than the author's model lets on. In fact, it reminds me a lot like Linus' critique of svn-- the idea of a design that is so perfectly antithetical to any of its stated goals that someone could blindly design a better alternative by merely asking at every turn, "What would svn not do?" The Office seems to take the company (and any triangle it seems to fit) as similarly perfectly flawed. Consequently, Michael's chronic/comic incompetency reverses a critical mass of the company's strategies for the branch to succeed.

MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
Seeing as it's called the "Gervais Principle," I'm 100% positive this was written primarily for David Breen and not Michael Scott. Which I'd highly recommend watching the british office to get an understanding of what is so different. The american office is like the the big bang theory and the british office is like silicon valley.
- jancsika 6y ago
  You might want to ratchet down that percentage for your future speculation: > I’ll be basing this entire article on the American version of the show, which is more fully developed than the original British version, though the original is perhaps more satisfyingly bleak.
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
    But! Had I been right, it's clear which is the better version ;)
yellowstuff 6y ago
cvs, not svn.

johnsimer 6y ago

> The Peter Principle is wrong for the simple reason that executives aren’t that stupid, and because there isn’t that much room in an upward-narrowing pyramid. They know what it takes for a promotion candidate to perform at the to level. So if they are promoting people beyond their competence anyway, under conditions of opportunity scarcity, there must be a good reason. ^ His argument assumes there is opportunity scarcity. IMO there is opportunity abundance. A well functioning company does not have an "upward-narrowing pyramid" practically speaking, because the pyramid is growing, ostensibly because each team is helping each other grow the company, increasing opportunity for all. Arguably opportunity scarcity could exist in a Gervaisian sense if you are part of a company being disrupted (e.g. being a paper company in the digital age).

Balgair 6y ago

I love this article and try to share it with whomever I can. It is unrelentingly cynical and skewers all parts of the corporate world, no one escapes being flayed. The insights are very good and the backdrop of an innocuous and very popular TV show makes the distinctions all the more jarring. The Gervais Principle is a lens one chooses to view things in finer detail. But like all microscopes, the choice of lenses matter very much. You must know what error is introduced before you choose the lenses. That said, the Gervais Principle is a really good lens (a hyper-cynical lens); one that many people have not considered before.

john4532452 6y ago

FWIW. The author is a supporter of caste system. From https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/11/10/king-ruinous-and-the-city-of-darkness/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/11/10/king-ruinous-and-the-c... on caste "I am enough of a free-speecher to acknowledge that it has a right to"