Outside, Jim and Pam, salesman and receptionist, are dreading the Dundies. Pam interviews a comparison to "a car wreck that you want to look away, but you have to stare at it...because your boss is making you." I'd rather be there with them than anywhere else. Well, maybe Kelly would be more fun, because I don't care about her feelings like at all. So of course Michael enters, booming out a Fat Albert voice -- Jim's last name is "Halpert" -- before realizing that nobody is laughing (Jim looks to us for empathy); Michael smoothes it out like it never happened. He takes us on a tour of the office, all the different people that have won awards in previous years of the Dundies. It is immediately apparent that every year, everybody wins. This fact, alone, lends itself to comparison to the Special Olympics.
"Jim, why don't you show off your Dundies to the camera?" Again sneaking a look at us, Jim tells a quick lie -- that he keeps his Dundies hidden to avoid getting "cocky" -- and Dwight, the Assistant to the Regional Manager, blurts that he keeps his in a display case over his bed. Which is creepy, but not the kind of creepy that Michael is allowed to note. So, of course, he does, making a protolinguistic sound of horror before pronouncing this to be "T.M.I." Which he then explains to us, in aggressively unnecessary detail, as though we are children. "I used to say âdon't go there,' but that's lame." I would like for Michael to write down the rules of everything. Just so we'd know, once and for all.













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