4
Leaving the Dice Alone: Pointlessness and Helplessness at Wernham-Hogg
What bothers me about this job? Wasted talent. (David Brent, episode 1, series 1)
Wernham-Hogg is in the paper business, an industry everyone knows exists but most people know very little about. Still, the office life at Wernham-Hogg could be any office. It could be your office, or our office. We can relate to life there—and to the staff as well.
Tim “is the person most sensible people are supposed to relate to, yes. And along with Dawn he’s the moral conscience of the show.”1 Tim appears to think morally. He talks about people with dignity and compares such people with his colleagues, finding the latter wanting —or rather wacky. He is looking for meaning in his life, yearning for purpose and authenticity, and thus intends to go back to university. To his credit, Tim respects Dawn’s choices and the fact that she is in a relationship (until the last episode of the second series, anyway), despite his feelings toward her.
But Tim isn’t a saint. He asks Dawn out, he hasn’t gone to university, and he hasn’t left Wernham-Hogg. He doesn’t respect Gareth, and he uses his superior intelligence to belittle him. Nothing unusual here. Most of us live our lives with such moral contradictions most of the time. Sometimes we succeed in living our lives according to what we know we ought to do—and sometimes that coincides with what we want or can do. Other times we engage in activities that go against our values and our intentions. It’s here that Tim is so useful: he reminds us that we’re always weak enough to avoid doing what we know we should.
What if Everyone Threw a Stapler Out the Window?
There are a number of reasons why we relate to Tim more than anyone else in the show. To start with, Tim seems to stand above the mediocrity that surrounds him. He’s always one step ahead of Gareth, for instance. When they fight over a stapler, Tim turns every argument around on Gareth. He’s also able to keep David at an appropriate distance, one moment joking along with him, the other making him embarrassed about having scribbled down quotes from philosophers that he recites to unsuspecting employees in order to impress them.
Tim: Are you reading this?
David: Am I what?
Tim: Reading the quote?
David: Sort of.
Tim: What does … [Tim looking at David’s papers] Confucius, oh, Bernard Shaw.
David: It’s not who said it first, I am passing on my wisdom to you.
Tim: Cool.
David: And don’t tell [pointing at the door] those I’ve been reading these.
Tim: I’m not going to.
David [clearly annoyed]: I’ll put it down there if it’s obvious. (2:2)
Tim’s aware of the pointlessness of his work but, unlike his cohorts, he’s got a backup plan: to go back to university to study psychology. Throughout the series, for Tim, the job at Wernham-Hogg is but a temporary thing. He doesn’t have to care if things go terribly wrong because it doesn’t really affect his life or what he’ll be doing next. In short, Tim seems in control of his own person. In moral philosophy we would say that Tim is an autonomous moral agent. He is an agent with the capacity to know what is moral and also with the capacity to behave morally.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), one of the most influential of all moral philosophers, developed an ethics based on the premise that morality is rational and therefore the same for all rational beings. Just as we can all understand the rules of mathematics, we can also understand the rules of morality. Rational morality will then provide principles that both can and ought to be held by all persons, regardless of circumstances, and be consistently obeyed by all rational agents at all times.2 These principles are captured in what Kant calls the categorical imperative. It goes as follows: “Act only according to that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” Ouch. We’ll explain this shortly.
In the very first episode, a fight over the use of Gareth’s stapler ends up with Tim throwing it through the window. Gareth wrote his name on the stapler to ensure that it was only his stapler—and Tim threw it out of the window in an attempt to get through to Gareth that he was being very silly and unreasonably possessive about a piece of office equipment.
Gareth: Give it back.
Tim: I’m just using it for a second.
Gareth: It’s got my name on it: “ga-reth” [pointing at the Tippexed “Gareth” on the stapler]
Tim: Yeah it says “ga-ret” actually but …
Gareth: Ask if you wanna borrow it.
Tim: You always say “no,” mate, so what’s the point.
Gareth: Perhaps that’s why you should ask.
Tim: Gareth, it was just there, ok.
Gareth: That’s his home, leave it there.
Tim: Ok [picks up the stapler from Gareth’s desk and runs to the window, holding the stapler outside the window]. I’m going to let this go unless you stop acting like a fool.
Gareth [hesitates]: Well, you won’t, so.
Tim [drops the stapler]: Well I have, so.
Gareth: What if that killed someone.
Tim: Oh, they’ll think you’re the murderer. It’s got your name on it.
Gareth: Why would a murderer put his name on a murder weapon?
Tim: To stop people borrowing it.
Gareth [turns]: David.
Tim: I hate the fact that you’ve brought me down to this. [Gareth walks away]
Tim: You bring me down to this, mate.
Has Tim behaved morally? To assess this, Kant contends, we need to know why Tim has done what he’s done. Presumably, Tim is trying to make a point about the silliness of certain disputes. To determine if this is an acceptable thing to try to do, Kant asks us to imagine a world where everyone is trying to do exactly what Tim is trying to do. This is a way of testing the “maxim” (the principled policy someone is acting on—the reason why they do what they do) of an action. If a maxim can hold universally (if everyone could have that maxim without any kind of contradiction), then that maxim is morally permissible.
Whether a maxim passes the test of universality or not is independent of particular results. Gareth’s comment that Tim might have killed someone—a consequentialist argument—is irrelevant here. It does not lead to a contradiction (we can wear helmets!). Neither is the argument of effectiveness—does it stop Gareth’s silliness?—relevant here (it doesn’t in fact stop his silliness).3 What matters is just whether or not everyone could consistently act on the same principle. If they can, then that maxim doesn’t violate the moral law. Or so says Kant, anyway. Because there’s no contradiction in throwing staplers out of windows in order to make a point, it seems Tim’s in the clear.
“It is the Wackiness I Can’t Stand”
One of the reasons we relate to Tim is that he seems to be in control. Tim isn’t whatever people want him to be. He has an identity. He doesn’t go along with whatever is happening. For instance, he doesn’t join in Gareth’s “Mana Mana” song (first episode), as the others do. And on red-nose day (2:5), he refuses to join in “with someone else’s idea of wackiness.” He has an idea of what he wants in his life and it’s not Wernham-Hogg: “I feel a little bit like I’m wasting my time … I’m 30, I wanna retire with some stories to tell” (2:2).
In short, Tim has an identity. He says that “it is the wackiness I can’t stand” and yearns for people with quiet dignity. But we also see Tim on the same episode entering the wackiness by kissing Gareth for a pound, hiding Gareth’s possessions to collect money, and finally holding the check for comic relief with Dawn in the car park, while David is dressed as a bird.
In episode two of the first series, for example, someone cut and pasted David’s head onto a porn picture. The whole team saw this and David gets Gareth to find out who did it. Based on nothing but his own bias, Gareth concludes that Tim’s the one who did it. Tim, despite the fact that he wasn’t responsible for this, doesn’t immediately tell who pulled the porn joke. It’s only when he’s accused in front of Jennifer (head office) and supposedly gets sacked, that he argues that David’s conclusion has to be wrong—“you put your best man on the job”—before revealing that it was Finchy (David’s friend) who pulled the trick on his computer.
Tim gives an account of why he has put his dream on hold when he gets promoted to Senior Sales Rep:
If you look at life like a rolling dice then my situation now … it may be only a three … If I cash that in now, go for something bigger and better … yeah I could easily role a six … no problem, I could role a six … I could also role a one. So … I think sometimes just leave the dice alone. (2:6)
Indeed, one doesn’t gamble with one’s life.
Unfortunately, Tim’s promotion seems to have gone to his head, telling Dawn to do her job properly and putting Lee on the spot (2:1). But, on the other hand, he’s just being professional about the responsibilities that come with the job. He takes those seriously, wearing a suit and tie, telling someone in a supportive way they haven’t done their job properly (2:1):
Ok, listen, I suggest we put this down as a lesson. You have this off over to me by three o’clock today … Three o’clock, please … all right? Then we’ll say no harm done.
But Tim doesn’t seem to be constant about it. There are moments when he just goes with the flow. For instance, while being culturally literate—Tim knows about literature and film—he has nothing better to do than to go out with David, Gareth, and Finchy. He’s aware of the silliness of their idea of “a good night out” because he’s sometimes cynical about it (1:5). And yet he does go out with them. Consider too the ease with which he accepts the promotion at the end of the first series and lets go of his intention to hand in his notice. Then there are the numerous occasions when Tim is left speechless at the stupidity of others—mainly Gareth. Tim knows a situation is unacceptable, but he fails to see how he could bring about a change. He is left helpless with his “moral conscience.”
The term for helplessness in moral philosophy is anomie. Anomie is not the opposite of autonomy (self-rule), but the absence of rule. It denotes a lack of purpose, identity, or values in a person. In philosophy, anomie is described as moral lawlessness where there is no freedom.4 The sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858–1917) called it a state of amorality—not immorality!—resulting from society’s inability to provide a normative framework.
Later, philosopher Karl Polanyi (1886–1964) linked anomie with a lack of embeddedness of the economic activity of the market. Erich Fromm (1900–1980) further suggested that experiences in industrial societies limit the possibility for leading meaningful and self-directed lives and make individuals experience powerlessness and paralysis, leading to alienation in organizations and society.5 Industrial societies, Fromm argued, provide the socialization that strips people of their ability to take initiative. Wernham-Hogg is a paper business, but no one in the office knows or cares what the paper they sell is used for. When Tim gets promoted his focus on himself leaves the rest even more alienated: “I’ve been made Senior Sales Rep which is a great opportunity for me, as people now are comin’ in from Swindon which is a new and exciting sort of venture for me” (2:1).
It seems working at an office is fully self-referential. It’s just about keeping the office going, not about what is actually produced. And that’s why office life is mainly the same everywhere, as long as it’s an office. The sociologist Robert K. Merton (1910–2003) reformulated the notion of anomie and made it apt for organizational analysis.6 For Merton, anomie results from a lack of regulation in goal achievement with no reference to the appropriateness of the goals themselves. Based on that formulation, we can distinguish organizational anomie from anomia at work. Anomie is an organizational state, while anomia refers to the individual’s state of mind. Management promotes organizational anomie when it fails to live up to workplace norms,7 such as norms relating to racism and sexual harassment, but also norms about leadership and motivation.
David is a remarkable example of anomic management behavior. He tells a racist joke at the welcome reception for the Swindon people (2:1), and he puts people down for expecting more from life than what Wernham-Hogg has to offer during the appraisals (2:2). He’s terribly insensitive to what matters to other people, and he fails to motivate them. In a brilliant scene in episode six of the first series, David tells his team that there is good and bad news about the planned redundancies. The bad news is that some of them will have to go and those staying will move to Swindon, but the good news is that he’s been offered the job of national manager. He says it all with the same excitement, and when one of the team explains that they’re disgruntled (“David, there is no good news”), he really doesn’t get it.
Boredom drips from the shots between scenes where we see people sitting at their desks staring at their screens. In episode two of the second series, the Swindon lot complains to David that they’re not expected to work hard, that there is no dynamism in the office, that they’re bored and that “people could get away with murder here.” David’s management style has everything to turn those working at the office into anomic drones.
The anomic person does not see and does not want to know. It’s all too big and complicated, and besides what can be done?8 This gives ground to cynicism both toward the organization and toward management commitment.9 No one on David’s floor seems to be very serious about their job or about Wernham-Hogg as a business. The office at Wernham-Hogg is filled with cynicism, as is office life in general. Still, the people in The Office are not anomics. The situation has everything to let them slip into complete anomie, but we see each of them struggling with it. Tim’s struggling even has physical repercussions (he keeps some indigestion tablets in his pen tidy).10 But, more significantly, Tim’s blatant awareness of the pointlessness of his job at Wernham-Hogg makes him grab every opportunity to give his life some meaning.
Throughout series one, Dawn is his ray of sunshine. He flirts with her every time he passes the reception desk and teams up with her to play tricks on Gareth. He welcomes every new face—Ricky and Donna—with hope that they might make conversation at the office a bit more bearable. The way he lets his promotion go to his head (2:1) and getting together with Rachel (series two) are also attempts to find any tiny bit of meaning that comes along.11
The anomie is daunting, but his moral consciousness always raises its head. Sadly, though, he’s never able to fully carry out what he knows he should be doing. Tim’s not an anomic, but he’s not completely autonomous either.
When, in the final episode of series one, David asks Tim why he’s thinking of leaving, Tim answers: “I’m not thinking of leaving, I am leaving.” Yet he doesn’t leave. We could’ve known that even before he accepted his promotion. Right after the talk with David, we see Tim talking to the camera crew. He says: “It’s like an alarm clock has gone off and I just have to get away.” That’s his consciousness peeping up. He even quotes Lennon: “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans … and that’s how I feel.”12 Tim wants to be in control of his own life. But he immediately adds: “Lennon also said I am the Walrus, so I don’t know what to believe.” And by the time episode six ends, the promotion he gets offered pulls him down again. The “slight change of plan,” as he explains to Dawn, is actually a U-turn. And for what? More of the same. To be precise—and it is striking that Tim uses the same language, intonation, and even mannerisms as David—“500 quid guaranteed a year and if I do a bit of networkin’ there’s a real chance I’ll be in David’s chair in three years, so …”
So even though Tim has the capacity for autonomous action, he seems to lack courage or conviction to behave autonomously. Tim’s dream of going back to university and leaving Wernham-Hogg is hardly an issue in the second series, except for the final episode, when he refuses to replace David as the regional manager. When Neil offers him the job and asks him to do it just temporarily, Tim answers, “I thought that about this job too.” It seems Lennon’s line runs through his mind again. Tim refuses the management job because he feels that if he takes it, he’ll be stuck at Wernham-Hogg forever.
Sadly, in the Christmas special, set a year after the final episode, we find Tim still at his same old desk. Tim is indeed the moral conscience of the show, but he’s not a moral hero. He keeps up his struggle against anomia, but at the same time he lacks the strength to act as his autonomous will dictates. Such is Tim’s character—and it is a rather common one. Most people have a will that is unstable and that fluctuates, fades, or even surrenders under pressure. Maybe, then, most of us relate to Tim not because he is the moral conscience of the show but because—like most of us—he is no moral hero. Like most of us, in fact, he is rather weak-willed.
Tim tries hard, but life’s a bitch. It’s a constant struggle to keep ourselves from being sucked into that anomic swamp that is office life (and Slough life generally). It’s simply too hard to actually do what we have to do whole-heartedly. So we cling to anything that might give us some meaning in life, like a silly promotion, or a job title—“something they give you to do things they don’t want to, for free” (Tim to Gareth on his team leader title in episode one of series two).
But our conscience is stubborn. It doesn’t give in. It has this silly idea that we’re free and that if we really want to, we can change things. And so, perhaps even only once in a lifetime, we really go for it. Most of the time, it’s not job-related stuff, but something we call love. Just like Tim in that moment at the end of the final episode. There he is, explaining to the camera crew: “Under different circumstances something might have happened. But she’s going away now and you can’t change circumstances.” And then it hits him, a full flash of moral consciousness—now or never! He rushes out to Dawn …
Flashes rarely come to two people at once. Dawn is too far in with Lee. Tim goes back to his desk, having dumped Rachel, having refused the management job, and having gotten a “no” from Dawn.
Sometimes it’s better to leave the dice alone.
NOTES
1 This was what Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant said in reply to a question asked by Dominic Green of Gloucester on the BBC “The Office” website (www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffice/). The question, of course, was “Tim represents the viewer, right?”
2 See A. MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd edn. (London: Duckworth, 1993).
3 The contradiction we’re looking for can be a contradiction of conception or a contradiction of will. Either one annuls the maxim to be a moral duty and, as we will see, the maxim of the stapler incident results in both contradictions. A contradiction of conception is when everyone trying to act according to that maxim makes everyone’s ability to do so impossible. If everyone could make objects over which there is a dispute about their use disappear, they wouldn’t be able to make use of those objects anymore. The implication is that there wouldn’t be any more disputes about the usage and thus one couldn’t make those objects disappear. It seems far fetched, but that is where the contradiction of conception or logical contradiction leads us to. The contradiction of will is when we can think of a world where everyone acts on the maxim, but we cannot consistently will such a world. We cannot will that everyone makes objects over which there is a dispute about who can use them disappear because it would make it impossible to get anything done. We wouldn’t get any more stapling or hole punching done, for instance.
4 S. I. Benn, A Theory of Freedom (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
5 E. Fromm, The Sane Society (New York: Fawcett Premier Books, 1955).
6 For a discussion about the relation between organizational climate and anomie at work, see E. E. Tsahuridu, “Anomie and Ethics at Work,” Journal of Business Ethics 69 (2), 2006, pp. 163–174.
7 R. Hodson, “Organizational Anomie and Worker Consent,” Work and Occupations 26 (3), 1999, pp. 292–323.
8 C. Hampden-Turner, Radical Man: The Process of Psycho-Social Development (Cambridge: Schenkman Publishing, 1970).
9 Research into role stress and anomie among police executives has shown this link. See J. P. Crank, R. Regoli, J. D. Hewitt, and R. G. Culbertson, “Institutional and Organizational Antecedents of Role Stress, Work Alienation, and Anomie among Police Executives,” Criminal Justice and Behavior 22 (2), 1995, pp. 152–171.
10 See Tim’s desk on the interactive map at www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffice/map/.
11 But everything he tries wears thin after a while. He tries several times to rationalize staying where he’s at: the “new and exciting sort of venture” that the merge with Swindon entails, the “I’m 30, time to grow up basically, it’s that simple” (2:1) or “I could roll a six … I could also roll a one. So … I think sometimes just leave the dice alone” (2:6)
12 Tim’s quote is inaccurate. It should be “… busy making other plans.”