I’ve often wondered if The Office inadvertently trained people to be bad managers.

People tend to follow examples they’ve seen before, even if they know it was a bad one. When faced with a new situation, they might just parrot the bad behavior because it’s the only example they know.

> I’ve often wondered if The Office inadvertently trained people to be bad managers.

Maybe it exacerbated it, but The Office was mostly a documentary of preexisting behavior.

This is a classic breakdown:

https://ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-t...

The nice thing about Michael Scott is that while he is a self-absorbed and very flawed manager and human, he also genuinely cares a great deal about his employees.

Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) worked in an office for many years, and so he had credibility in making funny observations about it.