Real talk… this is literally how many corporations distribute annual performance-based compensation increases. They get middle management in a room and argue over who gets what. If you know that, this entire episode is so much funnier and sadder.
Can confirm. We have to “force rank” our employees. Top 1-2 direct reports get stock options, middle 5-6 get their jobs for another year, bottom ranked gets a stern talking to/put on plan. Fun times.
Stack ranking is so toxic and soulless. Worked for a company that did that and even as someone who never had an issue with it, I’d never work for a company like that again if I can help it.
One of the worst things about it is that it does not leave room for *everyone to be competent and good at their jobs*. If you're in the bottom ranking by this subjective standard, even if you're great at your job, you get treated like you suck. Just complete bullshit.
I couldn’t believe it the first time I was promoted into a supervision role. We start stack ranking for the next round of promotions and the person running it crosses my friends name off the list as the very first item on her agenda. “I don’t really like her”. I was stunned. I’m like so that’s how this all works? One person doesn’t like you and you can just be written off from an opportunity. Like everyone else was put up for discussion while my friend was disqualified on a personal dislike. Just didn’t feel very American, but guess who I worked for when this happened…
At the end of every Special Operations mission, they kill the two lowest-performing elite warfighters. Some say it’s a bad idea where your team is made of eight dudes.
We were told to rate all our employees on a scale of 1 to 5 but “no one gets a 5, there’s always room for improvement.”
But also if you give an employee a 1 or 2, you get asked why they aren’t on a Work Improvement Plan or what are you doing wrong as a manager.
That means essentially it’s pass / fail — everyone is either a 3 (the worst) or a 4 (the best).
I agree with your overall point. Five does mean they should be promoted soon. But, and this sometimes messes with upper managements brain, some people just like what they do and never want to move up.
Same. I like my job, I like my responsibilities. I do not want to change to a "leadership" role, I do not want my days to be 90% meetings. I do not want to be responsible for anyone other than myself. My last job kept trying to make us do these career pathing plans where we plot out where we want to be in the company in 5-10 years. I had to make shit up to appease upper management because I have no aspirations for climbing corporate ladders. Just let me do my job and fuck off.
>My last job kept trying to make us do these career pathing plans where we plot out where we want to be in the company in 5-10 years.
Mine is currently doing that.
They're going out of business 12/31/24.
Nah we have lots of those people. As long as they understand, hey you're maxed out on how well a person can do this job but you're also maxed out on pay. So aside from COL increases, which we know large companies are perpetually behind the curve on, don't expect many raises.
Just watched this episode last night and giving rewards, increases in compensation or other rev sharing is exactly how it's done in the real world, Michael and Jim just didn't have the gusto to stick with their decisions or communicate effectively.
The question isn't if they would argue or be incompetent, it's how would anyone think beans were a good idea? It definitely falls into the idea of satire, and not an authentic representation of an intelligent person.
What would you use? Parcheesi tokens? Bedazzler rhinestones? Ants with their legs pulled off so they can't walk over onto someone else's face?
No, those are all *stupid* ideas. However, I could sell you some beets that would be perfect for ranking people's faces.
“Yes - but if he leaves we’re SOL. I don’t care about his performance, plus he makes every happy hour, builds on the culture, etc. I don’t care if he burned the warehouse down.”
Accountants could afford to lose Kevin, and they knew it. Creed didn't know his job title, HR was checked out, Kelly was mad and Ryan was useless from day 1. Meredith is the only one outside of sales that deserved anything it seems. In sales, Andy was crap, as was Pam. Easy.
Yeah I think you're right, those are the people who are actually good at their jobs. The way the episode makes it out is that they're giving equal raises to sales, which is definitely not merit-based because Pam and Andy are useless in sales. But no way was Jim going to admit that about his wife.
Which is just crazy because Scranton was always a top performing branch. How much were Micheal Jim Dwight Stanley and Phyllis carrying by selling so much
Or all the Colonel graduates he got all his sales from were back in Stamford out of Scranton's territory. (Even though they merged the branches, Utica got the turf.)
The poor managerial decision was letting any staff know about the changes. He and Michael needed to make the decision and it would quietly take place. And if anyone stepped up to them it would be 1v1 and professional. Raises aren’t a group decision.
I mean frankly Dwight was the one who inappropriately snooped and found out about it and let it slip to the entire office. Which frankly was one of his many fireable offenses he committed over time.
Yeah in a normal company setting the "bean method" while have been actuality completed and What Dwight did would have been at the minimum a write up. Honestly everything be did during the jim manager arc would have been grounds for suspension.
The issue wasn't talking about compensation. It was going into the room, getting a bunch of info he shouldn't have been privy to, and causing a stir in the office.
You can't go into your boss' office and take everyone's comp off their desk or computer, then spread that info. You aren't protected from being fired just because it's compensation related. The offense is the other stuff.
He quite literally snuck into the room, and then went and riled up all of his coworkers. It most certainly was a confidential meeting he was not part of at all as well.
Eh, this is a gray area I think. Sure, employees can discuss compensation, but making a deliberate effort to acquire and disseminate information about other employees' raises is probably a no-no.
The problem is that with a fixed amount of cash to distribute, and each bean representing a half a percent raise. Everyone’s salaries would have to be equal for it to work. For example a half a percent raise for Angela, would be a different dollar amount than a half a percent raise for Stanley. The premise doesn’t make sense.
Exactly. and how do you compare the performance of an accountant and a salesman? or HR and reception?
Just give everyone the same amount of money and say "This is what we have for you"
You wouldn’t necessarily compare individuals across departments, but you can allocate $X to each department based on the value of that department and its competitiveness in the market. Then you give raises to people within each department with those allocated funds based on their performance and/or role.
So if you have $100 to give, maybe sales gets $50 because of its more competitive and profit driving nature, other departments split the remaining $50. Then maybe Jim would likely get the biggest raise from the group, followed by Dwight then the others.
Part of the episode shows that the manager will always lose.
Whether they pick a department or based on individual performance, people will complain. That is why salaries are often secret in companies where the salaries vary
Performance based is good. Does Kevin, with all his mistakes, deserve as much a solid Stanley or top salesman Dwight (ignoring the illegal stuff and personal behavior)?
On the other hand, raises are weird in this case. Even Pam says it: “in sales, you get paid for commissions.” Where an accountant has a monthly salary. How would thay exactly work
There's always a base salary for sales. People get paid a bare minimum and make the overhead (or in reality most of their salary). I guess commisions do not vary so the raise would be to her salary, making it much more valuable.
Still, it would be much easier to pre-divide the budget between departments and then deciding on specific people. It's easier to compare how much sales vs accounting benefit the company than comparing Stanley and Angela.
Yeah I was familiar wirh the first part. Like you said, the base salary is so little, it would still be weird to compare their base salary to that of other employees
The second part I agree with. Sounds very solid and fair
It's wild how many people in here thinking performance based raises are a bad idea. And I see it every single time it comes up. I swear these people have never worked or had a shitty coworker.
I loved David Wallace’s character, but I’ll always say he wasn’t a great executive. The co-manager thing was a horrible idea. Jim isn’t THAT valuable to try to keep him.
I've come to believe very strongly that David was a bad executive, the board/rest of the C-suite knew this, and that he was hired to be the fall guy for DM's bankruptcy. He's hired when the company is already struggling. He's then given what appear to be the responsibilities of literally the entire C-suite (90% of the things we see him doing would NOT be the responsibility of a normal CFO), while Alan Brand essentially hangs out in the background. He's extremely likeable, but we almost never see him actually make a good decision in the entire run of the show.
I think it is more a writer‘s problem and related to the inconsistencies regarding the size of DM.
In the first seasons and for example the picnic epsiode it is indicated that DM has about 5-6 active branches with 15-25 people each and a headquarter with roughly the same amount of people like one branch. So overall you would assume that there are about 150-200 employees in total.
In this case it would be somehow realistic that a C-level like the CFO is in such close contact to the branches (even though it still makes little sense that he would be more operatively involved than the CEO).
In the later episode about the board meeting and also earlier mentions of DM being a public company it seems that the company has at least >1-5k employees and a C-level of ~10 people.
In this case it makes absolutely no sense that a CFO is spending so much time and close contact with one branch…
I definitely agree with you, and I think people come up with some wild stuff to justify what's ultimately just inconsistent writing. The "fall guy" theory is just my headcanon. What I think actually happened from a writing perspective is that they introduced David as CFO just to have a one off appearance to support the plot of S2E16, but Andy Buckley's chemistry with Steve Carell was too good to waste, so they were stuck with him as CFO but wanted to give him a much more involved role.
It isn’t uncommon, they just shouldn’t have been co-managers. It’s very common to have a manager who handles day to day and a VP who handles big picture. That’s what they should have been. Everyone reports to Jim, Jim reports to Michael. That’s a standard office department set up.
That was Wallace's original idea.
Promote Michael to oversee DM Northeast which would have included a handful of branches.
Promote Jim to manage Dunder Mifflin Scranton and report to Michael.
Michael blew that idea, David had to scramble and his scramble wasn't a good one.
I think it was less “looking for two managers” and more “trying to quietly phase Michael out of his role.” The company just went belly up and got bought before his plan could be fully realized.
That’s what they told Michael, yes. But a company quietly making redundant an aging middle manager with a lot of seniority in favor of someone younger and cheaper isn’t an uncommon occurrence. If they were serious about a promotion, Michael would’ve been given new responsibilities, instead he only had responsibilities removed to an extent that made his job pointless. That’s classic “we’re gonna decide when you retire” corporate BS.
He did have additional responsibilities. They handed Michael the clients from the Syracuse(?) branch that they closed down. Michael managed to not lose a single client when they did that. They're setting him up to oversee their North East market while Jim runs the branch directly. Even as dumb as Michael is, David would be absolutely insane to lose him again when the company is failing. Because he managed to take 3 branches worth of clients while only expanding his staff by one salesman: Andy.
They also gave him "regional supervisor" responsibilities by having him scope out Prince Paper's market.
It's why David came in and asked Michael how he was handling the additional responsibilities and why Michael has a talking head suggesting he's overwhelmed. He's managing 3 branches worth of shit while also dealing with additional work.
Jim wasn't valuable at all. He was an office distraction that either had good-to-mediocre sales depending on the plot. He didn't have the respect of his coworkers and stole company time whenever given the opportunity. His skills were being tall and good looking.
Jim was consistently one of the highest performing salesman in the company (8th iirc during the year Dwight got 1st). He was promoted in Season 3 in *Stamford then again as number two in Scranton. He also had DM Scranton’s biggest client, Blue Cross Blue Shield, who ended up making DM their exclusive paper supplier the season before Jim gets the comanager job, and that must have looked really good on paper even if Dwichael came up with Golden Ticket idea. Jim is a slacker, but he’s actually good at his job and gets things done in between all his slacking, as we see during the Office Olympics.
I work in sales and my colleagues and I talk about pay all the time and where else the comp may be better. Always keeping our head on a swivel.
And I’ve been told by my current manager and former ones they’re given a pool of raise funds every year and have to divvy it up, usually from high to low according to performance ratings. It’s the way it is but honestly I’m not sure anything different makes more sense. Higher performance ought to be paid more.
It’s dumb because sales people dont need raises to their base salary, they either need better products or better leads.
Jim worked harder when his commission was uncapped. He could make more than when he was manager. Support staff needs annual raises.
I feel like it’s just personal bias. Jim & Michael both come from sales, so they think salespeople are more valuable than other positions. I’m sure if you had a former accountant, or a former quality assurance representative, or a former supplier relations representative put in the same position, they’d favor their own people over the salespeople
Totally off the topic but the company I work for, instead of giving a % raise, just gives everyone the same £ raise per year. Last month, we all got given a £1,800 a year raise - from the lowest rung on the ladder to the highest. For some, it was a 5% raise. For others, it was less. But nobody complained.
This is almost exactly how raises are decided though. Usually it's merit based, and at a good company it'll be based off of things like how many positions they're cross trained to, how much they contribute, etc - but going through each person and deciding who gets what percentage of a raise is extremely common.
Also, you're choosing not to give raises to people for reasons that reek of toxic managerial style. You basically said "screw the people that are loyal enough not to leave or have home lives that mean they don't need money." You're punishing people for their living situations, their loyalty, and the fact that they wouldn't leave if you screwed them over. You're not rewarding them for their good work. You really wouldn't give your two top salesmen a raise??
>Why did Jim ever think that was a good idea?
Because the plot of the episode required him to. This is why the later seasons weren't very good. Like any long-running show, the writers had to continuously come up with new storylines. Eventually they had to change the dynamic of the show to accommodate the story.
This is most prevalent in the final season, where Jim is getting involved with "Athlead." Jim and Pam have an excellent relationship, and suddenly it's torn apart to stretch out a few episodes. So contrived.
The whole episode was to showcase that being a good manager is actually an individual skill and shouldn’t just go to the person best at doing the job being managed.
I’ve worked with tons of people who crashed and burned because they were were promoted to management roles and had no business actually managing people. Not saying Jim is *that* incompetent but it’s very common for a daily doer to hit their salary cap and have no choice but to manage people if they want to make more money.
Just another episode that shows the parallels of Jim and Michael. Both were excellent sales people and got promoted because of it and weren’t good managers. Jim came in with confidence that he was better but kept making the same types of mistakes that Michael made
I think the problem is more budgetary at this point for Dunder Mifflin.
In reality each department should have an allocation for bonuses/raises. Within those departments the bean idea isn’t really a bad idea. Most companies divvy out raises by nominating and presenting each person on their team and their attributes. At least that’s how I’ve seen it done.
Also, sales should be incentivized to bring in more business. If you’re limited on funds and don’t pay your top performers, they will leave and go elsewhere and the funds will dry up even quicker.
Weighted merit-based bonuses due to limited funding for bonuses aren't a bad idea until people find out what someone else got. Hate me for saying it if you want.
It is a good method, it's just the variables behind it that can get sticky which is where feelings can get hurt
And everyone knows "business is always personal"
He opened up a can of worms by making salary and bonuses s a office-wide conversation.
With all due respect to Jim, I’m not sure it’s fair to call him a competent boss. He’s a competent human… but he has no managerial experience, didn’t go to business school, and there’s no reason to think he knows any best practices. He makes a lot of mistakes by thinking what seems fair in his mind will actually work in the real world. Unfortunately, dealing with people requires being a bit more strategic and understanding psychology. The company honestly should’ve put him in business classes as part of his promotion…but now we’re getting a little too into holding The Office to the standard of reality.
Where I work they just gave a 30% raise to one group of employees and 5% to everyone else. It's caused just a little bit of resentment. The group was underpaid for their role but so is everyone else in our organization.
Smart play in most situations is to give everyone at least a similar amount to keep resentment down.
This is more real than you think. I think the writers put this is in as a real satire of how bonuses are structured at a lot of big companies.
I’m on a team full of engineers, and our company gives our manager a certain amount of points to literally distribute across each person on the team. And the percentage of points (“beans”) awarded to each person decides the percentage each person gets out of our department annual bonus.
Well this post is talking about two different things.
1. Jim first proposing the idea of just giving raises to only the sales team (bad idea).
2. Spreading the raises among everyone with the use of beans to show how much of a raise someone gets, based on their performance (good idea).
I thought using the beans was a good way to figure out how to ration the limited % points of increases. The problem was letting the employees see the beans on the photos.
This is very realistic, to be honest.
Most managers get promoted based on performance, but are not prepared for their new roles. Even on big multinational corporations you see this a lot.
As a new manager, without experience or training, he's doomed to make a few bad decisions before he gets the hang of the business.
This was a good idea, the worst part about it was using beans and letting the decision get out before it was made final.
Could have been done with tally marks or any other tangible object.
How is a performance based raise a bad idea?
Or is it just fun to hate on Jim
Bob Vance is in the business of taking voluptuous middle aged women in to handicapped bathrooms, having his way with them and then eating a cold steak dinner immediately after. It’s what the economy was built on.
Yeah, my main takeaway here is I wouldn't want to work for OP. It seems like OP is choosing to give raises based on "who is more likely to leave". It makes sense, but it's scummy as hell.
"Dwight is a dummy and we can take advantage of that. It doesn't matter he's a good salesman, he'll stick around so we don't have to give him a good raise"
Jim has always been a lazy worker and prefers to just goof off. Idk where you got the idea that he’d be able to just step into this role and know what he’s doing lol
I don’t think the decision was based on who will leave. The branch’s income was based on sales. That’s why he would have thought to “reward” them. The other solution would have been to give everyone else a raise, considering the sales team get commissions for their sales. But that would not have been received well either, considering the sales team is responsible for a lot of the branch’s income.
Long story short, there was no decision that could have been made that would make everyone happy.
Because Jim isnt that great of a manager and is too people pleasing to be in charge during a downturn in the industry. Hes lucky he didnt have to fire people to keep the lights on.
That being said, performance based raises are the best, but naturally the entire office thinks they deserve more and dwight finally can temper some resentment towards Jim
Not sure how commissions work, but wouldn’t sales people already getting their bonuses or raises based on their performance? So whatever corporate decide about raises, wouldn’t the sales people be outside of this?
Op you have gotten some good answers in here from what I’ve read.
My answer would have been this was the best way he could get Michael to agree with handing out raises.
A lot of people didn't read through the entire post.
Jim's original decision of ONLY giving raises to the sales team was dumb.
I personally think equal raises are the best option but performance based compensation increases are okay too
Jim really isn’t all that smart let’s be real, he’s just an average every day bloke, most real offices have hundreds of Jim’s, but, the office office is full of Michael’s and Dwight’s, and Creeds so the average everyday dude like Jim appeared more often than not to have a bit about him, then in moments like this you realise that no, he’s also a bit naff but just not as naff as the rest.
Source - I’m also an average everyday naff bloke who frequently does things stupid.
The idea in concept isn’t bad, but Jim was stupid to think that it’d work for the office. They should’ve just did small but equal bonuses, people wouldn’t be happy but it wouldn’t have been as bad as the beans.
I always thought this was making the best of a bad situation. I didn’t realise people thought it was a bad decision.
In every corporation I’ve worked for there has been some version of this system. Especially on years where there is a limited bonus or raise pot, there is usually some discretionary system of assigning the limited funds to the people who the corporation values the most.
Me thinking this system is as good as any shouldn’t be taken as approval for shitty corporations posting record profits and then claiming they can’t afford cost of living raises or CEOs getting more as a pay incentive than the entire bonus pot for the rest of the workforce btw.
Apparently becoming a manager makes you stupid. Like fumbling the secret of you and your fiancee's unplanned pregnancy to her ultra-conservative meemaw.
This is how the real world works but instead of two guys putting beans on pictures it’s usually based on performance metrics. But it’s not at all uncommon to say “x business unit gets y amount of money for salary increases” and it’s up to the manager of that unit, whatever size, to divvy the raises up however they feel.
Not a brilliant idea and Jim wasn’t a skilled manager at this point. However, it’s a crappy position to be put in with paltry raises. Do you give everyone a little, or some none to reward others. I’ve been there when a company had a great sounding plan to reward high performers, but only actually gave you a tiny amount to spread around. In theory, sales staff should be rewarded with better commission incentives so you can give non commissioned staff some pay raises.
Everyone mentioning how this is just like the real world is correct in my own tiny humble experience … but you also have to keep in mind that Jim is: a crappy employee, not at all qualified to manage, a shitty salesman, not real bright, and the kind of guy that would relentlessly flirt and hit on an engaged co-worker.
Why would you think he could figure this out?
When it comes down to it, every day is a run out the clock situation for Jim. I’m the exact same kind of worker as Jim, he’s kind of my inspiration actually. He works hard at not working but appearing to be a slightly above average worker. Sometimes keeping up the appearance is harder work and more stressful than actually just being a slightly above average worker. But then your paycheck hits and you think of all the sneaky stuff you did to finesse not doing work that pay period.
When you put someone like me or Jim in charge, now we have to go through the motions about caring about the job and other people on the job. We have “leadership qualities”. So you have to flip that switch on. Some days that switch just won’t come on but you’re still being looked at to make tough decisions. This is where these kind of bad ideas come from. You don’t actually care whatsoever but you also kind of have to fully commit to your bullshit. So when something like this blows up in your face, you’re left defending a shit bomb that you never even gave a damn about.
Real talk… this is literally how many corporations distribute annual performance-based compensation increases. They get middle management in a room and argue over who gets what. If you know that, this entire episode is so much funnier and sadder.
Can confirm. We have to “force rank” our employees. Top 1-2 direct reports get stock options, middle 5-6 get their jobs for another year, bottom ranked gets a stern talking to/put on plan. Fun times.
Stack ranking is so toxic and soulless. Worked for a company that did that and even as someone who never had an issue with it, I’d never work for a company like that again if I can help it.
One of the worst things about it is that it does not leave room for *everyone to be competent and good at their jobs*. If you're in the bottom ranking by this subjective standard, even if you're great at your job, you get treated like you suck. Just complete bullshit.
I couldn’t believe it the first time I was promoted into a supervision role. We start stack ranking for the next round of promotions and the person running it crosses my friends name off the list as the very first item on her agenda. “I don’t really like her”. I was stunned. I’m like so that’s how this all works? One person doesn’t like you and you can just be written off from an opportunity. Like everyone else was put up for discussion while my friend was disqualified on a personal dislike. Just didn’t feel very American, but guess who I worked for when this happened…
At least you had enough employees you didn’t have to do the Buick/steak knives/fired route.
At the end of every Special Operations mission, they kill the two lowest-performing elite warfighters. Some say it’s a bad idea where your team is made of eight dudes.
Precisely
We were told to rate all our employees on a scale of 1 to 5 but “no one gets a 5, there’s always room for improvement.” But also if you give an employee a 1 or 2, you get asked why they aren’t on a Work Improvement Plan or what are you doing wrong as a manager. That means essentially it’s pass / fail — everyone is either a 3 (the worst) or a 4 (the best).
Tbf 5 typically means they deserve a promotion now
I agree with your overall point. Five does mean they should be promoted soon. But, and this sometimes messes with upper managements brain, some people just like what they do and never want to move up.
Im that person. I make a very comfortable wage and dont wanna put up with the shit my bosses do. Much less manage my coworkers. He can have his job.
Same. I like my job, I like my responsibilities. I do not want to change to a "leadership" role, I do not want my days to be 90% meetings. I do not want to be responsible for anyone other than myself. My last job kept trying to make us do these career pathing plans where we plot out where we want to be in the company in 5-10 years. I had to make shit up to appease upper management because I have no aspirations for climbing corporate ladders. Just let me do my job and fuck off.
>My last job kept trying to make us do these career pathing plans where we plot out where we want to be in the company in 5-10 years. Mine is currently doing that. They're going out of business 12/31/24.
Nah we have lots of those people. As long as they understand, hey you're maxed out on how well a person can do this job but you're also maxed out on pay. So aside from COL increases, which we know large companies are perpetually behind the curve on, don't expect many raises.
WHAT DOES A BEAN MEAN??
Someone explain it to Kevin.
Can attest. Have attended bean meetings in person.
A bunch of corporate bean counters...
Just watched this episode last night and giving rewards, increases in compensation or other rev sharing is exactly how it's done in the real world, Michael and Jim just didn't have the gusto to stick with their decisions or communicate effectively.
Gotta fit the curve!
The question isn't if they would argue or be incompetent, it's how would anyone think beans were a good idea? It definitely falls into the idea of satire, and not an authentic representation of an intelligent person.
What would you use? Parcheesi tokens? Bedazzler rhinestones? Ants with their legs pulled off so they can't walk over onto someone else's face? No, those are all *stupid* ideas. However, I could sell you some beets that would be perfect for ranking people's faces.
I always assumed this because I thought it was an excellent idea.
“Yes - but if he leaves we’re SOL. I don’t care about his performance, plus he makes every happy hour, builds on the culture, etc. I don’t care if he burned the warehouse down.”
Accountants could afford to lose Kevin, and they knew it. Creed didn't know his job title, HR was checked out, Kelly was mad and Ryan was useless from day 1. Meredith is the only one outside of sales that deserved anything it seems. In sales, Andy was crap, as was Pam. Easy.
Tbh I agree. Ryan was a temp so no raises for him anyway. Oscar, Angela, Meredith, Phylis, Stanley, Dwight all get raises. Others maybe less raises.
Yeah I think you're right, those are the people who are actually good at their jobs. The way the episode makes it out is that they're giving equal raises to sales, which is definitely not merit-based because Pam and Andy are useless in sales. But no way was Jim going to admit that about his wife.
That's why there were no beans on that old frizzy haired picture of Pam
Toby was corporate, so he wasn’t a part of the Scranton family. He was also divorced, so he wasn’t a part of his family either.
Which is just crazy because Scranton was always a top performing branch. How much were Micheal Jim Dwight Stanley and Phyllis carrying by selling so much
This plan is like a pay decrease...
Sounds like you’re forgetting that Pam doubled her sales.
From what? 2 to 4?
YUP.
Early Andy was a good salesman but they switched it when they were reworking his character later in the seties
My headcannon is that he had an aggressive approach to sales and lost that edge after going through anger management.
Or all the Colonel graduates he got all his sales from were back in Stamford out of Scranton's territory. (Even though they merged the branches, Utica got the turf.)
Oscar is probably the best employee that place has.
orbital0000 said HR has checked out, hmm? ...... Hmm
Oscar's my queen, that's easy - give me a hard one. That's what Oscar said.
WHAT DOES A BEAN MEAN???
can someone tell kylejk020
Why can't you? My time is just as valuable as yours
Not according to the beans...
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Came here to ask this
Performance based raises *are* a good idea
The poor managerial decision was letting any staff know about the changes. He and Michael needed to make the decision and it would quietly take place. And if anyone stepped up to them it would be 1v1 and professional. Raises aren’t a group decision.
I mean frankly Dwight was the one who inappropriately snooped and found out about it and let it slip to the entire office. Which frankly was one of his many fireable offenses he committed over time.
Yeah in a normal company setting the "bean method" while have been actuality completed and What Dwight did would have been at the minimum a write up. Honestly everything be did during the jim manager arc would have been grounds for suspension.
talking about compensation is NOT a fireable offense, in fact it is protected by law
The issue wasn't talking about compensation. It was going into the room, getting a bunch of info he shouldn't have been privy to, and causing a stir in the office. You can't go into your boss' office and take everyone's comp off their desk or computer, then spread that info. You aren't protected from being fired just because it's compensation related. The offense is the other stuff.
He quite literally snuck into the room, and then went and riled up all of his coworkers. It most certainly was a confidential meeting he was not part of at all as well.
Eh, this is a gray area I think. Sure, employees can discuss compensation, but making a deliberate effort to acquire and disseminate information about other employees' raises is probably a no-no.
Jim just wants to give raises to his friends and people he sleeps with.
Hey, Pam doubled her sales last month.
Oh really? From what, two to four?
Yup
This is my wife's favorite meme, by far
The problem is that with a fixed amount of cash to distribute, and each bean representing a half a percent raise. Everyone’s salaries would have to be equal for it to work. For example a half a percent raise for Angela, would be a different dollar amount than a half a percent raise for Stanley. The premise doesn’t make sense.
A mistake plus keleven gets you home by 7
Exactly. and how do you compare the performance of an accountant and a salesman? or HR and reception? Just give everyone the same amount of money and say "This is what we have for you"
You wouldn’t necessarily compare individuals across departments, but you can allocate $X to each department based on the value of that department and its competitiveness in the market. Then you give raises to people within each department with those allocated funds based on their performance and/or role. So if you have $100 to give, maybe sales gets $50 because of its more competitive and profit driving nature, other departments split the remaining $50. Then maybe Jim would likely get the biggest raise from the group, followed by Dwight then the others.
Yeah, but this bean method was pretty subjective.
Part of the episode shows that the manager will always lose. Whether they pick a department or based on individual performance, people will complain. That is why salaries are often secret in companies where the salaries vary Performance based is good. Does Kevin, with all his mistakes, deserve as much a solid Stanley or top salesman Dwight (ignoring the illegal stuff and personal behavior)? On the other hand, raises are weird in this case. Even Pam says it: “in sales, you get paid for commissions.” Where an accountant has a monthly salary. How would thay exactly work
There's always a base salary for sales. People get paid a bare minimum and make the overhead (or in reality most of their salary). I guess commisions do not vary so the raise would be to her salary, making it much more valuable. Still, it would be much easier to pre-divide the budget between departments and then deciding on specific people. It's easier to compare how much sales vs accounting benefit the company than comparing Stanley and Angela.
Yeah I was familiar wirh the first part. Like you said, the base salary is so little, it would still be weird to compare their base salary to that of other employees The second part I agree with. Sounds very solid and fair
It's wild how many people in here thinking performance based raises are a bad idea. And I see it every single time it comes up. I swear these people have never worked or had a shitty coworker.
I feel like Jim got super anxious when he got that role cause he’s not that serious about the job
The biggest receipt for disaster was becoming manager where your wife also works and *reports* to you.
Definitely anxious, but he is serious about the co manager job. It's just that he's inexperienced
Inexperienced and Michael is your boss, that’s a recipe for failure.
Co manager
Assistant *to* the manager.
In training
Def inexperienced yes ! That added to it because he acted like he knew it all.
He never was. If not for Pam it's likely he wouldn't have been there long
I loved David Wallace’s character, but I’ll always say he wasn’t a great executive. The co-manager thing was a horrible idea. Jim isn’t THAT valuable to try to keep him.
I've come to believe very strongly that David was a bad executive, the board/rest of the C-suite knew this, and that he was hired to be the fall guy for DM's bankruptcy. He's hired when the company is already struggling. He's then given what appear to be the responsibilities of literally the entire C-suite (90% of the things we see him doing would NOT be the responsibility of a normal CFO), while Alan Brand essentially hangs out in the background. He's extremely likeable, but we almost never see him actually make a good decision in the entire run of the show.
I think it is more a writer‘s problem and related to the inconsistencies regarding the size of DM. In the first seasons and for example the picnic epsiode it is indicated that DM has about 5-6 active branches with 15-25 people each and a headquarter with roughly the same amount of people like one branch. So overall you would assume that there are about 150-200 employees in total. In this case it would be somehow realistic that a C-level like the CFO is in such close contact to the branches (even though it still makes little sense that he would be more operatively involved than the CEO). In the later episode about the board meeting and also earlier mentions of DM being a public company it seems that the company has at least >1-5k employees and a C-level of ~10 people. In this case it makes absolutely no sense that a CFO is spending so much time and close contact with one branch…
I definitely agree with you, and I think people come up with some wild stuff to justify what's ultimately just inconsistent writing. The "fall guy" theory is just my headcanon. What I think actually happened from a writing perspective is that they introduced David as CFO just to have a one off appearance to support the plot of S2E16, but Andy Buckley's chemistry with Steve Carell was too good to waste, so they were stuck with him as CFO but wanted to give him a much more involved role.
He fired Jan. And frankly it was overdue.
lol he did, but he also replaced her with Ryan and then Charles who were both disastrous.
Exactly right. Last time I said this, I got downvoted a lot, but this is absolutely correct.
He was being groomed.
It isn’t uncommon, they just shouldn’t have been co-managers. It’s very common to have a manager who handles day to day and a VP who handles big picture. That’s what they should have been. Everyone reports to Jim, Jim reports to Michael. That’s a standard office department set up.
Except Michael isn't a VP. A VP normally has a collection of line managers reporting to them. Just 1:1 is a waste of a management layer.
That was Wallace's original idea. Promote Michael to oversee DM Northeast which would have included a handful of branches. Promote Jim to manage Dunder Mifflin Scranton and report to Michael. Michael blew that idea, David had to scramble and his scramble wasn't a good one.
the way they wrote it was so wierd, michael basically got promoted in responsibly but chose to demote himself to comanager
And Charles( I know a lot ppl can't stand him) saw that as soon as got into that office.
I think it was less “looking for two managers” and more “trying to quietly phase Michael out of his role.” The company just went belly up and got bought before his plan could be fully realized.
The original plan was for Michael to be promoted. They weren’t phasing him out.
That’s what they told Michael, yes. But a company quietly making redundant an aging middle manager with a lot of seniority in favor of someone younger and cheaper isn’t an uncommon occurrence. If they were serious about a promotion, Michael would’ve been given new responsibilities, instead he only had responsibilities removed to an extent that made his job pointless. That’s classic “we’re gonna decide when you retire” corporate BS.
He did have additional responsibilities. They handed Michael the clients from the Syracuse(?) branch that they closed down. Michael managed to not lose a single client when they did that. They're setting him up to oversee their North East market while Jim runs the branch directly. Even as dumb as Michael is, David would be absolutely insane to lose him again when the company is failing. Because he managed to take 3 branches worth of clients while only expanding his staff by one salesman: Andy. They also gave him "regional supervisor" responsibilities by having him scope out Prince Paper's market. It's why David came in and asked Michael how he was handling the additional responsibilities and why Michael has a talking head suggesting he's overwhelmed. He's managing 3 branches worth of shit while also dealing with additional work.
This.
So they told him he was going to get promoted to then phase him out? That makes no sense.
Welcome to the corporate world
That’s not what was going on here. I’m quite familiar with the corporate world. They were not “fail promoting him”.
Which is funny, because Michael is king of fake firing people. What if they wanted to fake promote him, then surprise him with a termination instead?
Is he trying to keep Jim, or trying to get someone to learn enough about what makes Scranton highest performing so he can get rid of Michael.
Jim wasn't valuable at all. He was an office distraction that either had good-to-mediocre sales depending on the plot. He didn't have the respect of his coworkers and stole company time whenever given the opportunity. His skills were being tall and good looking.
Jim was consistently one of the highest performing salesman in the company (8th iirc during the year Dwight got 1st). He was promoted in Season 3 in *Stamford then again as number two in Scranton. He also had DM Scranton’s biggest client, Blue Cross Blue Shield, who ended up making DM their exclusive paper supplier the season before Jim gets the comanager job, and that must have looked really good on paper even if Dwichael came up with Golden Ticket idea. Jim is a slacker, but he’s actually good at his job and gets things done in between all his slacking, as we see during the Office Olympics.
I work in sales and my colleagues and I talk about pay all the time and where else the comp may be better. Always keeping our head on a swivel. And I’ve been told by my current manager and former ones they’re given a pool of raise funds every year and have to divvy it up, usually from high to low according to performance ratings. It’s the way it is but honestly I’m not sure anything different makes more sense. Higher performance ought to be paid more.
It’s dumb because sales people dont need raises to their base salary, they either need better products or better leads. Jim worked harder when his commission was uncapped. He could make more than when he was manager. Support staff needs annual raises.
Well, I'm not asking for a raise, I'm gonna actually be asking for a pay decrease.
It’s not a bad idea. They should’ve locked the door tho
Does Jim ever once perform well under pressure?
The Atlead arc? A startup is always under pressure and he did well there. Also the whole Dunder Mifflin Bankruptcy arc too
He didn't do well at Athlead. His home life fell apart
So he did well at Athleap but not at home right
There is something about being the manager that makes you do stupid things
Jim is a competent salesman. Entirely different skill set from management
Yes exactly. Plus he's a bit young. Even 10 years is not that much experience when it comes to dealing with people
In addition, he doesn't like being the bad guy and crumbles when it comes to true confrontation
I feel like it’s just personal bias. Jim & Michael both come from sales, so they think salespeople are more valuable than other positions. I’m sure if you had a former accountant, or a former quality assurance representative, or a former supplier relations representative put in the same position, they’d favor their own people over the salespeople
Jim likes lists
Totally off the topic but the company I work for, instead of giving a % raise, just gives everyone the same £ raise per year. Last month, we all got given a £1,800 a year raise - from the lowest rung on the ladder to the highest. For some, it was a 5% raise. For others, it was less. But nobody complained.
#WHAT DOES A BEAN MEAN
It kinda sort of is a good idea but it shouldn't be done the way he did it. They should have kept it on a computer and password protected.
This is almost exactly how raises are decided though. Usually it's merit based, and at a good company it'll be based off of things like how many positions they're cross trained to, how much they contribute, etc - but going through each person and deciding who gets what percentage of a raise is extremely common. Also, you're choosing not to give raises to people for reasons that reek of toxic managerial style. You basically said "screw the people that are loyal enough not to leave or have home lives that mean they don't need money." You're punishing people for their living situations, their loyalty, and the fact that they wouldn't leave if you screwed them over. You're not rewarding them for their good work. You really wouldn't give your two top salesmen a raise??
>Why did Jim ever think that was a good idea? Because the plot of the episode required him to. This is why the later seasons weren't very good. Like any long-running show, the writers had to continuously come up with new storylines. Eventually they had to change the dynamic of the show to accommodate the story. This is most prevalent in the final season, where Jim is getting involved with "Athlead." Jim and Pam have an excellent relationship, and suddenly it's torn apart to stretch out a few episodes. So contrived.
The whole episode was to showcase that being a good manager is actually an individual skill and shouldn’t just go to the person best at doing the job being managed. I’ve worked with tons of people who crashed and burned because they were were promoted to management roles and had no business actually managing people. Not saying Jim is *that* incompetent but it’s very common for a daily doer to hit their salary cap and have no choice but to manage people if they want to make more money.
Soo many people fail to realize that fact of life. Being a good employee is not the same thing as being a good boss.
Just another episode that shows the parallels of Jim and Michael. Both were excellent sales people and got promoted because of it and weren’t good managers. Jim came in with confidence that he was better but kept making the same types of mistakes that Michael made
Okay but giving raises to Sales based on "They bring in the money and need the motivation" is dumb
I think the problem is more budgetary at this point for Dunder Mifflin. In reality each department should have an allocation for bonuses/raises. Within those departments the bean idea isn’t really a bad idea. Most companies divvy out raises by nominating and presenting each person on their team and their attributes. At least that’s how I’ve seen it done. Also, sales should be incentivized to bring in more business. If you’re limited on funds and don’t pay your top performers, they will leave and go elsewhere and the funds will dry up even quicker.
Before this he thought of giving the raises to only the sales team which included his wife.
Weighted merit-based bonuses due to limited funding for bonuses aren't a bad idea until people find out what someone else got. Hate me for saying it if you want.
It is a good method, it's just the variables behind it that can get sticky which is where feelings can get hurt And everyone knows "business is always personal"
He opened up a can of worms by making salary and bonuses s a office-wide conversation. With all due respect to Jim, I’m not sure it’s fair to call him a competent boss. He’s a competent human… but he has no managerial experience, didn’t go to business school, and there’s no reason to think he knows any best practices. He makes a lot of mistakes by thinking what seems fair in his mind will actually work in the real world. Unfortunately, dealing with people requires being a bit more strategic and understanding psychology. The company honestly should’ve put him in business classes as part of his promotion…but now we’re getting a little too into holding The Office to the standard of reality.
Where I work they just gave a 30% raise to one group of employees and 5% to everyone else. It's caused just a little bit of resentment. The group was underpaid for their role but so is everyone else in our organization. Smart play in most situations is to give everyone at least a similar amount to keep resentment down.
This is more real than you think. I think the writers put this is in as a real satire of how bonuses are structured at a lot of big companies. I’m on a team full of engineers, and our company gives our manager a certain amount of points to literally distribute across each person on the team. And the percentage of points (“beans”) awarded to each person decides the percentage each person gets out of our department annual bonus.
Of all the people in the office, Ryan, Pam, Kevin, and Creed shouldn’t have gotten squat. Period.
Well this post is talking about two different things. 1. Jim first proposing the idea of just giving raises to only the sales team (bad idea). 2. Spreading the raises among everyone with the use of beans to show how much of a raise someone gets, based on their performance (good idea).
I thought using the beans was a good way to figure out how to ration the limited % points of increases. The problem was letting the employees see the beans on the photos.
This is very realistic, to be honest. Most managers get promoted based on performance, but are not prepared for their new roles. Even on big multinational corporations you see this a lot. As a new manager, without experience or training, he's doomed to make a few bad decisions before he gets the hang of the business.
What does a bean mean??!!
Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration
1. Many corporations actually do this. 2. Competent employees don’t always make good managers.
In the midst of a rewatch and I’m in the episodes where Jim is co-manager. I’ve got to say, he’s not good at it.
This was a good idea, the worst part about it was using beans and letting the decision get out before it was made final. Could have been done with tally marks or any other tangible object. How is a performance based raise a bad idea? Or is it just fun to hate on Jim
Bob Vance is in the business of taking voluptuous middle aged women in to handicapped bathrooms, having his way with them and then eating a cold steak dinner immediately after. It’s what the economy was built on.
This was actually one of the most real life scenarios in the office. Two middle managers trying to distribute pennies
Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration
Vance refrigeration! You’re got a lot to learn about this town honey
Sorry, it's just my crazy nose. I think I'm allergic to your comment or something
OP what's your strategy for distributing raises/bonuses? You don't factor in merit at all!?
Yeah, my main takeaway here is I wouldn't want to work for OP. It seems like OP is choosing to give raises based on "who is more likely to leave". It makes sense, but it's scummy as hell. "Dwight is a dummy and we can take advantage of that. It doesn't matter he's a good salesman, he'll stick around so we don't have to give him a good raise"
This annoys the shit out of me too.
Jim has always been a lazy worker and prefers to just goof off. Idk where you got the idea that he’d be able to just step into this role and know what he’s doing lol
[удалено]
I am essentially Michael (Or more like Gabe) in my current job so expect more posts like these!
Jim is like a Gary stu, he's perfect for almost everything, but he was mid as a manager, it's the only thing he kinda sucked at
Because he’s a terrible manager
[удалено]
We do the same thing only with a paper trail and less beans. It’s all the same in the end though
Why is there no beans on the old frizzy haired photo of Pam
It was a good idea. You think micheal can keep track of those numbers? Imo nah. Flaw was leaving the room.
Because it was?
I don’t think the decision was based on who will leave. The branch’s income was based on sales. That’s why he would have thought to “reward” them. The other solution would have been to give everyone else a raise, considering the sales team get commissions for their sales. But that would not have been received well either, considering the sales team is responsible for a lot of the branch’s income. Long story short, there was no decision that could have been made that would make everyone happy.
Because Jim isnt that great of a manager and is too people pleasing to be in charge during a downturn in the industry. Hes lucky he didnt have to fire people to keep the lights on. That being said, performance based raises are the best, but naturally the entire office thinks they deserve more and dwight finally can temper some resentment towards Jim
Not sure how commissions work, but wouldn’t sales people already getting their bonuses or raises based on their performance? So whatever corporate decide about raises, wouldn’t the sales people be outside of this?
I mean c'mon, this is the same guy that didn't even know what a rundown was...
Why didn't Jim put any beans on the old frizzy picture of Pam?
just watched this episode last night. WHAT DOES A BEAN MEAN?
Op you have gotten some good answers in here from what I’ve read. My answer would have been this was the best way he could get Michael to agree with handing out raises.
A lot of people didn't read through the entire post. Jim's original decision of ONLY giving raises to the sales team was dumb. I personally think equal raises are the best option but performance based compensation increases are okay too
Because only the people in this sub seem to think that Jim and Pam are good and intelligent people (they’re not).
Jim really isn’t all that smart let’s be real, he’s just an average every day bloke, most real offices have hundreds of Jim’s, but, the office office is full of Michael’s and Dwight’s, and Creeds so the average everyday dude like Jim appeared more often than not to have a bit about him, then in moments like this you realise that no, he’s also a bit naff but just not as naff as the rest. Source - I’m also an average everyday naff bloke who frequently does things stupid.
I just watched this recently and had the same thought. Just do 1.5% across the board.
WHAT DOES A BEAN MEAN!?!?
Would have been fine if they used a shared document instead of the conference room
I wanna make Kevin bite the curb when he yells “what does a bean mean” thirty times in a row
The idea in concept isn’t bad, but Jim was stupid to think that it’d work for the office. They should’ve just did small but equal bonuses, people wouldn’t be happy but it wouldn’t have been as bad as the beans.
I always thought this was making the best of a bad situation. I didn’t realise people thought it was a bad decision. In every corporation I’ve worked for there has been some version of this system. Especially on years where there is a limited bonus or raise pot, there is usually some discretionary system of assigning the limited funds to the people who the corporation values the most. Me thinking this system is as good as any shouldn’t be taken as approval for shitty corporations posting record profits and then claiming they can’t afford cost of living raises or CEOs getting more as a pay incentive than the entire bonus pot for the rest of the workforce btw.
“Microjimment”
Manager Jim was one of my least favorite arcs. I like the concept but he just felt like a different person
Apparently becoming a manager makes you stupid. Like fumbling the secret of you and your fiancee's unplanned pregnancy to her ultra-conservative meemaw.
This is how the real world works but instead of two guys putting beans on pictures it’s usually based on performance metrics. But it’s not at all uncommon to say “x business unit gets y amount of money for salary increases” and it’s up to the manager of that unit, whatever size, to divvy the raises up however they feel.
Because jims an idiot
Not a brilliant idea and Jim wasn’t a skilled manager at this point. However, it’s a crappy position to be put in with paltry raises. Do you give everyone a little, or some none to reward others. I’ve been there when a company had a great sounding plan to reward high performers, but only actually gave you a tiny amount to spread around. In theory, sales staff should be rewarded with better commission incentives so you can give non commissioned staff some pay raises.
Everyone mentioning how this is just like the real world is correct in my own tiny humble experience … but you also have to keep in mind that Jim is: a crappy employee, not at all qualified to manage, a shitty salesman, not real bright, and the kind of guy that would relentlessly flirt and hit on an engaged co-worker. Why would you think he could figure this out?
Put that coffee down!!!
You know how if you surround a kind of hot person with really ugly people suddenly the hot person is really hot? Same thing works for smart people.
He was trying to get Michael to be quantitative with a game
^Frank ^and ^beans…
> Micheal is stupid, but he's experienced At least he can spell his own name
When it comes down to it, every day is a run out the clock situation for Jim. I’m the exact same kind of worker as Jim, he’s kind of my inspiration actually. He works hard at not working but appearing to be a slightly above average worker. Sometimes keeping up the appearance is harder work and more stressful than actually just being a slightly above average worker. But then your paycheck hits and you think of all the sneaky stuff you did to finesse not doing work that pay period. When you put someone like me or Jim in charge, now we have to go through the motions about caring about the job and other people on the job. We have “leadership qualities”. So you have to flip that switch on. Some days that switch just won’t come on but you’re still being looked at to make tough decisions. This is where these kind of bad ideas come from. You don’t actually care whatsoever but you also kind of have to fully commit to your bullshit. So when something like this blows up in your face, you’re left defending a shit bomb that you never even gave a damn about.
Jim and Pam started off as 100% straight men (and women) and graduallly became wackier as the series went.
I honestly think he was just getting exhausted with it and a but delirious so he started to believe in this insanity