The Office

Being a business student, I wanted to review some of the scenes from ABC's famous comedy series "The Office" because my professors have always used The Office to reference the "Dont's" in the professional business world. I took a course last year which was "Ethical Issues in Business" and there were so many things I could relate The Office to in that class. I'll go over some of the classes scenes and why they are the "Dont's". 
First we have the 3rd episode of the 5th season which is called "Business Ethics" and in this scene Holly Flax is conducting an HR meeting that goes horribly wrong. Michael promises that his employees can say whatever they want and have amnesty. So Meredith then tells the office how she trading sex for discounts on Dunder Mifflin Paper Products and Meredith receives gift certificates to Outback Steakhouse. The first issue we have in this is that Michael granted amnesty when he did not have the power to do so. Next is the obvious problem which is Meredith and here unethical behavior which is on many levels. First off being she is trading sex for discounts which could be argued as prostitution, second she is unauthorized to give discounts like that, and third she was losing the company money and time. 
One other issue to touch on that is an ongoing theme throughout the series is the extraordinary amount of time wasted in the workday at Dunder Mifflin. I am aware it is a TV show, however, if a real business were to conduct itself in the manner Dunder Mifflin does I do not see how the company would be successful let alone profitable. Workplace time wasting is actually known as a huge epidemic throughout the country. Millions of employees waste time every day which costs their company money, which then affects the market, and even the US GDP. 

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