Nothing puts a damper on your...
Nothing puts a damper on your workplace Halloween festivities quite like an imminent firing — although I do have a fun story about a woefully interrupted Chrismukkah luncheon I should probably save for another forum. It's a credit to this show that in the midst of all my chuckling over Dwight's costume and the unfortunately vacuumed-up party decorations, deep down I was pretty darn nervous about possibly losing one of these characters. Which is why that cliff-hanger of a commercial break that made it look like Jim was on the chopping block led to this living-room scene: me staring slack-jawed at the television and demanding aloud, "So help me, Michael Scott, if you fire Jim I will storm out of this office so fast it'll make your head swim." And then I remembered that I don't actually
work at Dunder-Mifflin, got embarrassed, and went to the fridge for a composure-regaining soda. (While we're at it, let's just get all my humiliating
Office-watching quirks out on the table. Every time Jim gives one of those perfect little can-you-believe-this? glances to the camera, I make an involuntary squealing giggle noise. Let's call it a squeegle. There, now you know.)
I guess I should have realized that, à la Red Shirt Ensign No. 2 on Star Trek, they were gonna bring in a patsy employee to take the fall. Poor Devon. But that, sir, was the kind of daring exit I think we all daydream about in our cubicles — tearing up your consolation Chili's gift certificate, inviting everyone but the evil-doers out for one last drink, smashing pumpkins (for real, not the band) on the hood of your boss' Sebring convertible. Bravo, guy we'd never seen before. We'll miss you.
