Why can’t Wallace be assertive and talk to Michael about the concerns he has?
Every time Wallace has tried to treat Michael as a competent adult, Michael has spazzed out. There have been many occasions in which Jan or Wallace have tried to explain to Michael why certain kinds of behavior can hurt the company, he is impervious to instruction. Michael refuses to be treated like a mature adult.
What would Charles do to alieviate that, and not make it worse? Michael can be approached about a problem if it’s done right. Jim and Pam have picked up on this.
How was Michael ever hurting the company? He was managing the only successful branch in the company. He needed no extra supervision. He certainly didn’t need some overbearing, incompetent corporate brown nose breathing down his neck, trying to do his job for him, making uninformed policy decisions, and alienating his sales staff. Charles accomplished absolutely nothing useful to the company, and succeeded only in losing the best salesperson in the company, then hemorrhaging clients to that same person in the aftermath. That in addition to passing out idiotic and pointless job assignments in an office that didn’t need to be fixed, demonstrating no managerial judgement or acumen whatever in assessing staff, and basically showing that his only professional skill is in pressing his lips to the ass of the CFO.
At the end of the day, Charles could not manage that office as well as Michael did.
I also think that Michael’s resentment towards Wallace had been building for a long time, and really had come to a boil when Wallace capriciously got rid of Holly. The party was really not the impetus for Michael quitting, it was Wallace’s total disregard for him as a colleague and a longtime, productive and loyal empoyee.
The way Wallace addressed the staff about the clients they were losing was the exact opposite of what Charles did. Charles seems like he may have a hard time adapting, and not just to the Scranton branch. I take it his last job required him to be something different.
The bottom line was that Michael, best sales numbers in the company or not, was being a pain in David Wallace’s ass. Michael pulled a stunt that nearly ended up costing the company a LOT of money, solely because of his incompetence (i.e., not putting “Limit One per Customer” on the coupons and them putting them all in the same pallette). When it turned out to benefit Dunder-Mifflin, Michael screwed THAT up, too.
At that point – at that exact point, without any of the hindsight of the fallout of the erstwhile Michael Scott Paper Company – what would you have done in David Wallace’s shoes? Because I think he made a smart decision, installing Charles as a babysitter/go-between. Sure, with hindsight, we can see that Charles was heavyhanded and so the decision wasn’t the best, but at the time it was absolutely, absolutely the right call.
And Rubystreak, you’ve said at least twice now that Michael only made “occasional” calls to the CFO. That’s just not true. It’s been established – and we can all agree on this – that David Wallace is a very sympathetic character, especially for a CFO, and he genuinely seems to have a soft spot for Michael and his antics. And yet he still had to duck Michael’s calls. Why would he do that, if he’s such a nice guy and the calls were so infrequent? The answer is that the calls were NOT occasional and NOT infrequent, no matter how often you repeat yourself.
Are we sure that it was the ONLY successful branch in the company? Best branch, sure, but I don’t remember it being the only successful branch. It’s a not insignificant difference.
Ummmmm… really? The man DEMANDED extra supervision, calling Corporate for the piddliest little shit.
I agree with the latter part – Charles really screwed up – but not the former. If I’m David Wallace, now that Michael is back, I give him a very short leash of being unsupervised, but if he starts calling my office over worthless crap, I put someone else in Charles’s former position. The man needs supervision. Not the Gestapo installed by Charles, but he definitely needs an adult over him. Just because he can sell does not change that fact.
I think you’re right that the fallout between DW and Michael was to a large extent over Holly, but getting rid of Holly was not at all capricious. Wallace had seen what happened during Michael’s previous office romance, Corporate wasn’t informed of the relationship between Holly and Michael, and so the CFO took steps. Seems fair to me.
So yeah, a lot of the tension was over Holly, but it’s not entirely David Wallace’s fault. Maybe not even mostly his fault.
How often is it a plot point that Michael calls Wallace? They don’t show it every episode, nor even every other episode. It’s depicted occasionally. I’m sure it annoys Wallace every time, but it’s still only occasional. They made a point of it right before the entry of Charles, but has it ever been a major plot point before?
We can ALL agree on it, eh? Overall, he’s not a villain, no, but I find Wallace to be rather spineless. Sure, he’s nice, but not very good at dealing with problems in a straightforward, gutsy manner. You may admire that, but I don’t. Rehiring Ryan was a perfect example, but so was his handling of the phone call issue. Phyllis said it herself: maybe if Wallace had just manned up and taken the call, none of this crazy bullshit would have happened.
Don’t want Michael to call? Tell him so. Or get on the phone with him and deal with it. Wallace ducked Michael’s calls in this arc because they were annoying and petty. However, if you duck a call from Michael, he doesn’t get the hint and wait for you to call back, he calls you back a billion times until he gets through, so maybe ducking the calls, while satisfying in the short term for the passive-aggressive, isn’t the best solution. Answer the phone and deal with whatever it is, because despite your claims to the contrary, the show has not indicated that Michael calls Wallace randomly, for no reason, on a daily basis. The reason may be petty and it may annoy you, but it’s much easier to deal with than the alternative.
The convoluted and oppressive way Wallace dealt with the phone call issue was ridiculous and bound to backfire, which it did.
You would repeat the same mistake? That’s poor business. The lesson Wallace learned was that he should just suck it up and take the calls. The look on his face after Phyllis said her comment, and his negotiations with Michael in the board room, indicate that he, at least, learned his lesson. Sometimes, when you’re the boss, you have to deal with annoying, piddly shit. So you deal with it, you don’t make a big deal out of it, and you get your great sales stats out of Scranton. Being a baby about handling some annoying phone calls doesn’t make you a great boss.
You do realize that the CFO actually has some responsibilities apart from taking annoying phone calls, don’t you? Maybe even a few that are more important than mollycoddling a branch manager?
I don’t remember specifics, but I’m pretty sure that Michael has called Corporate for stupid stuff before the episode where he quit. Maybe when they go into reruns you’ll see it.
Honestly, this hasn’t been a big deal in the show all along. Only this arc, in which Wallace was clearly shown to have handled it wrong. I remember some goofy calls in the past, but they tended to be quite brief, and not this constant harassment that prevented Wallace from discharging his duties as CFO as you depict. If you want to deny the point of the MSPC arc because it bothers you or struck a false note for you, that’s fine, but in the reality of the show, Wallace seems to realize that he should have just taken the calls instead of overreacting and putting Charles on the case.
Why is MS calling the CFO at all? Shouldn’t he be calling the COO or someone else on his office management issues? A goof by the writers?
Where are people getting this complete canard that Michael habitually pesters the CFO with frivolous phone calls? That’s never been suggested. And yeah, part of the CFO’s job IS taking the occasional call from a branch manager.
Plus, it’s a sitcom, man. How entertaining a show would it be to have a humorless asshole like Charles take over the office and order everybody to stop doing anything funny. Who’d want to work for a prick like that? I would much rather work for a Michael than a Charles.
Upon reflection, I think this whole phone call issue is a red herring. That’s not really why the whole Charles thing happened, was it? It was the Golden Ticket fiasco, which really brought home to Wallace what a loose cannon Michael is, and how poor his judgment can be. Under those circumstances, he wanted greater oversight, which made Michael angry, which led to all those annoying phone calls (more than there had been at any time before).
Wallace was not wrong in wanting to rein in Michael. However, he handled it totally the wrong way. Avoiding those calls was passive-aggressive and spurred Michael on to a tizzy. Putting anal retentive, cold, micromanaging Charles in there also exacerbated the problems. I think a more nuanced response could have worked, or simply a more nuanced boss than Charles. Consequently, Wallace had to fold utterly, which leaves them back at square one. Doesn’t speak too well of Wallace’s managerial sense.
Of course Michael is a ridiculous person. No one can deny that. However, he will always have his sales stats to keep him afloat, and it will always be Wallace’s job to handle him as deftly as possible. Ham handed approaches apparently will not work.
:smack: About the only thing I contribute to these threads is the litigation value, yet, how long has it been since I did that?*
Anyway, this week it is $0 - $300,000. A bit of a variance.
*Dwight Schrute may determine my punishment.
I know he called him about the surplus. I know he called him to complain about Toby. Both brief though. Wallace called Michael quite a few times this season, for the most part good.
…Michael called to ask to work on the DM local ad. Or did Wallace call him?
I don’t think Pam was being sarcastic in the numbers-crunching scene…I think she just desperately wanted the accountant to do something to placate Michael’s anxiety, even if it was a meaningless action ultimately.
And wasn’t the woman who got into the van the second time a different woman? My impression was that they were stopped for a light and she just climbed in, and by this point they had gotten so used to it they didn’t even protest…and I’m sure they drove her to the church!
I think David Wallace, after his protest about Ryan, figured that was a battle he could fight later, and that he would just go along on that point to get the negotiation done.
Yes, she just got on when they were stopped. They didn’t bother trying to stop her.
But, no, they didn’t take her to church. At the end they showed her still sitting in the van in the Scranton Office Park parking lot.
Man, you guys really know how to suck the fun out of a show.
I have to admit, some people are making some good points here. I can’t believe I’m saying this but I think I just want to enjoy the show in the context I think is intended by the writers. I know one could say they aren’t doing their jobs if you need to stretch beyond what’s been written or reveled. The writers have a history of in writing things in such a way that can leave things a little ambiguous and up for the audience to decide how they would want to fill in the blanks. I don’t think that was their intent here, but the fact that a sitcom inspires so much discussion on a regular basis on these message boards, (and even sparks a sizable spoiler tiff), says to me that they’re really, at least, trying very hard to satisfy the needs of as many people as possible despite how much of it is open to interpretation. Or if you have to find an excuse that complements the fictional world of the show, the Documentary crew can’t show every detail of ever event that’s occurred in the, (I think it’s a literal work week, right?), there may be more we’re not seeing. I know… I’m doing their work for them. The writers also have a tendency to acknowledge loose ends at times, and address them later in the shows. I don’t think because this show’s a mockumentary means that it’s supposed to represent real life. I think the show comes much closer than a lot of [almost all] sitcoms. The Pam and Jim arc, (to me), seemed extremely organic and actually relatable to a good amount of people on some level.
This little detour from the regular formula was really interesting and bold in many ways. I think a lot of it served to get Pam in sales, Ryan back, and possibly bringing in new blood with the new receptionist. Even **Dio **said in the OP, it seemed a little rushed. I agree that the resolve came quicker than I I would have liked too. I would have liked to have seen the MSPC last longer. I’m glad I took the trip though. It was very inspiring to see Michael know his shit. I hope it’s a trend that lasts now that his confidence is heightened.