Week 9 Story: Regional Manager

The Office: Source

*This story has been published on my porfolion. Here is the link*

In the small city of Scranton, Pennsylvania there was a small paper company by the name of Dunder Mifflin. Not many things change in this paper company; however, a change indeed was needed as the latest regional manager, Andy Bernard, was moving in search of his dreams to the Caribbean.

Early in the morning, Andy realized the day had come where he had to select someone to replace him. Andy knew that he must select a new regional manager, but he was not sure how, so he consulted his boss. His boss told him to have a competition to see who could record the most sales in one day. Despite his boss’ suggestion, Andy decided to try and pick for himself due to his love for the company.

Early in the afternoon, Andy suggested to his coworkers that Jim would make a great regional manager. His coworkers all scoffed because they thought Jim would be impartial to his girlfriend who was also the receptionist named Pam. Andy also suggested Ryan, but the people all agreed that Ryan would be an unfair leader.

Andy decided it was too hard to pick, thus resulting to his boss’ idea: whoever made the most sales. Andy announced that whoever made the most sales on the day would be the new regional manager. Jim mentioned that the day was halfway over, but Andy said that it didn’t matter.

Everyone began typing on their computers and making calls for the next 3 hours. Phones were ringing on and off, as if the office were a brokerage on Wall Street. As time slowly ran out and 5 o’ clock hit, Andy told everyone to report their sales.

Jim reported his sales at 8 and Andy congratulated. Ryan reported his sales at 11 and Andy was amazed. As Kevin stood up with a smile on his face, Dwight interrupted him exclaiming that he had completed 23 sales on the day. Everyone was shocked, as it seemed impossible to even get close to that number in half of a day. Kevin very sadly reported his sales at 2…

Andy asked around the room and it appeared no one had beaten Dwight’s sales. Therefore, Andy told the employees that Dwight was the new regional manager. Suddenly after that, Pam stood up stating that Dwight was listening in on Andy’s phone call that morning and had been attempting to make sales ever since that. Dwight told his coworkers that he simply was doing his job and it didn’t matter because he won. Andy told his peers that those were the rules, so Dwight won regardless.

The people stormed out of the office in fury all exclaiming that they were done and were going to quit. Dwight sat down in his chair and thanked Andy for the opportunity for him to get his dream job. Then, Andy left and so did Dwight.

The next morning, Dwight came into work, but no one was there. He had been a bit late due to traffic, but it appeared everybody really had quit. Dwight sat in his new office and chair and thought to himself, “a regional manager with no subjects is no regional manager at all.”

Authors Note: The original story was King Chameleon and His Animals. The story takes place a long time ago when animals were free. The animals decided they needed a leader and couldn't choose among themselves. Therefore, they decided to conduct a race to see who would be the new king. The race started and naturally the hare was beating all the other animals; however, a sneaky chameleon has grabbed onto its tail and changed to the color of the hare's fur. The finish line wasn't actually a finish line, it was a chair. As the hare sat down the chameleon hopped down first. The other animals all ran away that night, leaving us with the final thoughts of the chameleon "A king with no subjects is no king at all." I wanted to first created a modernized version of this story. Additionally I wanted it to have some sort of personable thing to a large portion of people, thus I chose The Office for the plot. I changed up the characters into those in The Office, but was assuming the events in season 9 had not happened yet. 

West African Folktales: King Chameleon and The Animals by William H. Barker and Cecilia Sinclair, with drawings by Cecilia Sinclair (1917).