Recap / The Office USS 2 E 15 Boys And Girls

Jan holds a "Women in the Workplace" seminar with the women at the Scranton branch. Michael, jealous at being shut out of the conference room, gathers the men and heads down to the warehouse for what he hopes will be a good old-fashioned male bonding session. Instead, he learns the warehouse workers feel underpaid, and Darryl pushes to form a union. Pam starts to think about art classes.

Air date: Feb. 2, 2006

Tropes

• Actually Pretty Funny: Angela actually starts laughing when Kelly asks Jan whether Michael getting to "second base" with her is a sales term.
• Answer Cut:
  • From a Pam Confession Cam bit back to the warehouse.
    Pam: I don’t know how I fit in with these women. Here, or with Jan. Um, I mean, we get along great. Fine. Um… I guess the person I have the most in common with is…
    Roy: (trying to get Jim's attention) Jim!...Halpert!
  • When Michael picks up his pizza order, he claims pizza is "the great equalizer", he briefly stops himself, wondering if black people like pizza. The camera then cuts to a black warehouse worker eating pizza as Michael sneaks a nod to the camera.
• Armor-Piercing Question: After Roy shoots down her dream of taking art classes, Pam is sitting by herself in the break room. Jim confronts her about it.
  You've got to take a chance on something sometime, Pam. Do you want to be a receptionist here, always?
• Battle of the Sexes: Michael tries to turn the day into this.
• Bookshelf Dominoes: Michael drives the forklift into a row of bookshelves, that fall over in sequence.
• Break the Haughty: Jan gradually loses her composure when she realizes the other women don't really respect her, and that her self-aggrandizing seminar has little relation to the more pressing issues in the company like the low compensation for warehouse workers.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: While the others snicker into their hands, Kelly winks at the camera.
• Call-Back: The blow-up doll from "Sexual Harassment" is now hanging in the warehouse.
• Can't You Read the Sign?: On the trip down to the warehouse, Michael encounters a chalkboard full of shipping schedules, along with the words "DO NOT ERASE". He promptly erases them to write down an "unsolvable" math problem (long division) so he can find out if any of a warehouse workers are secretly geniuses, a la Good Will Hunting.
• Carpet of Virility: Michael unbuttons his shirt, causing Lonny to refer to him as "Hasselhoff."
• Comically Missing the Point: Michael doesn't understand why Darryl is so upset by the mess he's making of the warehouse, because "we'll get somebody to clean that up".
  Darryl: We're the ones that gotta clean that up!
• Condescending Compassion: Jan's presentation about women in the workplace is intended to be a well-meaning attempt to give the other woman in the company some advice on how to move up through the corporate ladder, but comes off as inadvertently patronising (since it accidentally implies that their roles have little value or meaning unless they're moving up the corporate ladder) and is rooted in stereotypical ideas about women and how they relate to men. The women of the office seem to find it just as pointless and borderline insulting as Michael's attempts at bonding with the men.
• Distinction Without a Difference: Kelly does not want to drive a minivan. She wants an SUV. With three rows of seats.
• Hypocrite: Michael's attempts to talk to Jan in a "women-appropriate" fashion turn out to be just slowly and patronisingly drawing his words out. When Jan, after instantly demolishing his weaselly attempts to back out of trouble for accidentally instigating the warehouse workers to unionise, uses the same tactic on him, he whiningly asks not to be spoken to in such a fashion.
• Ironic Echo: Michael speaks to Jan in a very condescending way, which she repeats back to him.
  Let's...be...reasonable...
  The consequences are, everyone will lose their job. What do you think the...pros...are?
• Ironic Echo Cut: From Stanley telling Ryan to slow down on the unpacking because it's a "run-out-the-clock situation", to Jan discussing how men use sports metaphors in the workplace.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • While Angela is hardly the most likeable person in the office, her complaints about the unintentionally patronising tone of Jan's presentation are suggested to have merit; as she points out, she's already a fairly successful woman in a relatively high-ranking position in her workplace who is currently in, what is for her, a satisfying and fulfilling relationship.
  • In a deleted scene, Roy gets in Jim's face about Jim giving Pam advice on what to about the art internship. While Roy is unnecessarily hostile about it (he even shoves Jim, probably enough to have gotten him disciplined if the boss wasn't Michael), he's not wrong that Jim should have minded his own business about something that affects Roy and Pam as a couple.
• Lady Looks Like a Dude: Michael brings in all the warehouse workers for a "guy's gripe session", not realizing that one of the workers, Madge, is a woman. Downplayed in that she is standing in a crowd of men while wearing the same clothes, and Michael is Michael.
• Never My Fault: After knocking over two shelves in the warehouse, Michael blames the forklift, saying it needs to be serviced.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Literally with Michael. His antics in the warehouse cause them to have to reset a two-and-a-half year record of no time loss in workplace accidents.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: invoked Michael compares Roy and Pam to Brangelina and coins "Ram" for their pairing.
• Slut-Shaming: Jan's skirt shows a bit of leg, but otherwise her outfit is a perfectly respectable business ensemble. Angela, though, thinks otherwise.
  Jan: You can use your clothing to send a message about your ambitions by wearing clothes that reflect what you aspire to be.
  Angela: (on Confession Cam) ...I just think it’s insulting that Jan thinks we need this. And, apparently, judging from her outfit, Jan aspires to be a whore.
• Take That!: Jan's "Women in the Workplace" seminar satirizes similar trainings in real life office settings by showing how, while they're meant to be empowering, they are often rooted in stereotypical ideas of women (such as they don't watch or understand sports, they have trouble finding balance between their work and home lives, and that women need to be extra-conscientious about their clothes and appearance).
• Tropaholics Anonymous: When Jan asks the women at the seminar to talk about what they're good at, Meredith reflexively starts saying "Hi, I'm Meredith and I'm an alcoholic," implying she's had lots of experience with twelve-step programs.