Jan knew about the interviews, so Wallace and probably several other people had to work with a cover story. In essence, they were pretending to interview for a position that didn’t exist. They would also have had to come up with a pretend list of duties. Otherwise, Jan would have realized rather quickly “Hey, this is my job!”
Regardless of the reason, it isn’t realistic for essentially an entire company to engage in this kind of public charade. If they were going to do it clandestinely, Wallace would have quietly talked to one or two people and then canned Jan without warning. They wouldn’t have come up with this cover story of a position that essentially doesn’t exist.
This is not that uncommon. There are some face-saving and PR measures that people take. Plenty of interviews are conducted when the interviewer knows that either (1) the winning candidate has been chosen beforehand, or (2) not all the applicants have a serious chance.
If he had really known, he would have been in handcuffs in front of Ryan.
I thought Ryan was arrested for entering the sales twice, thus essentially defrauding the stockholders, rather than for forcing the sales staff to enter their sales as website sales, which just screwed over the sales staff (and is thus perfectly legal, as far as I understand it) and which is what Jim was complaining about.
If there’s one thing we know about Dunder-Mifflin, it’s that the management is pretty inept and rife with meaningless bureaucracy. I don’t think it had to be the “entire company” in the know, just Wallace and the HR guy; Jan was probably not paying attention anyway, and could’ve been told it was a lateral position to her own, and thus wasn’t involved at all. Maybe I’ve been in too many inept companies myself, but I find it believable that they concocted a scheme to avoid confronting Jan as long as possible, in that passive-aggressive way that D-M management has.
Yeah, I know it’s not uncommon, but it’s also not a nice or conscientious thing to do to the employee in question. That’s all I’m saying – Wallace is kind of a jerk despite being a likeable guy.
For the reasons others have given, I disagree. The illegal part of what Ryan was doing was double-entering the figures. Screwing employees out of their justly earned commission isn’t a criminal offense (more’s the pity!).
Sigmagirl, I don’t think Wallace was setting Ryan up. Why would he allow Ryan to break the law just as a setup, thereby putting his company at risk for scandal with its shareholders? I think it’s safer to assume that while he knew about the fakery with the website figures so as to justify the money they’ve been pouring into it, Wallace was unaware that Ryan was double-entering and breaking the law. It wasn’t ever implied that this was a sting (I don’t think?), and, unless the writers end up backfilling the story later on, I can only guess that their intent with the story is what we saw onscreen.
Additionally, not doing so often opens up companies to complaints of favoritism from their employee base. Even though the decision not to hire Michael was already made, they want Michael (and everyone else, really) to feel like they at least had their shot at the job. So they go in, have their say, and later find out they didn’t get the job.
It’s happened to me at least once. I know now they already had decided to hire someone else before they even posted the job, but due to company policy they had to post it and had to interview everyone who was eligible. It was a waste of my time, but oh well. That’s the business world.
I didn’t really think it was a sting either. I was just trying to think of something plausible. We haven’t really seen any signs that Wallace is dirty, and I was trying to think of something I’ve missed. I can’t think of anything.
My recollection* of the scene is a little different. I thought Michael went to head office and said something like “It’ll be great working at corporate with my girlfriend” and David Wallace replies “Michael, you’re interviewing for Jan’s job. We’re letting her go. I thought we had made that clear”.
It’s a still-running popular series, so it’s not surprising that new fans are popping up, trying to catch up when they have the time. I see no problem with excercising a little caution when writing the thread title. Because of that, I’ve edited the title to exclude the spoiler.
There’s no obvious line draw for when a spoiler is okay, but I think a thread about an ongoing series–even if discussing past seasons–deserves warning of spoilers. It’s a small, courteous thing to do, and it helps the people who haven’t seen all of the episodes yet.
