Working in the Office

MORNING OF JANUARY 9, 2008

This dream is for all of you fans of the "The Office" (U.S. version). Those of you who don't watch will, I'm afraid, be completely lost. Then again, since when do my dreams make sense anyway?

I was an employee at the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. Michael Scott sent me out on a very important sales call. I arrived at the prospective client's office and had a talk with him. I was very nervous because I was very aware that I have no experience in sales and had no idea what to do. It turns out that really didn't matter, because the would-be client made it clear he really had no interest in doing business with us.

I returned to the office where a very expectant Michael Scott couldn't wait for me to confirm we had a new client. You can imagine how disappointed he was when he found out we didn't.

Michael immediately began to plot "revenge" on the client. He was trying to get everyone in the office involved in a plot to pull a major "prank" on this guy's entire business that would make him regret not signing up with us.

Of course everyone in the Office, including myself (but excluding Dwight Schrute) thought this idea was folly, and we tired to ignore Michael. Still, he somehow made us all go up into "the attic" (for apparently the office had an attic like you'd find in some homes) to get supplies for his prank.

The attic was very small, so much so that it wouldn't hold an entire person. The only way to enter it was to put a ladder on the ground, climb up to the top so that your head was near the ceiling, and then stick only your head into the attic while your body remained on the ladder outside. For some reason this tiny attic had several entrances, because I remember everyone in the office getting their own ladder and sticking their heads simultaneously into the attic. It was extremely surreal to look around and see only your coworkers' heads amidst all the old items in storage.

Something in the attic caused an allergic reaction among us, beginning with Meredith and working its way around. We were all having sneezing fits, so we came down our ladders and as a group informed Michael that we just absolutely would have no further part in his plan.

Michael pouted dramatically, but went on about his plan by himself since we were all such "babies". Meanwhile, I went back to my desk to check my e-mail. The prospective client from before had written me saying he'd changed his mind and would like to do business with us. I relayed this information to Michael and he actually seemed disappointed that he won't get to go through with his prank.

My next memory is everyone from the office in a bus, taking a field trip somewhere. At this point real-life Katie has joined me for the ride with all the fictional characters. We eventually arrived at a backyard barbecue, I think supposedly at Jim's house.

Katie and I soon observed that Dwight was still really sad about his break-up with Angela (following one of the more recent plots in the actual show). At this point we spontaneously came up with a plan to hopefully aid in getting the two of them back together. We took some sparkling grape juice that we'd brought to the picnic and mixed it with some other drink that was there.

We poured the result into two small bottles with the idea that we'd try to convince Dwight that it was a secret love potion that would work if he and Angela both drank it. We weren't trying to play a prank on Dwight, but we honestly believed--in dream logic--that this might somehow make them get back together.

I vaguely remember giving the bottles to Dwight and Angela respectively. Of course Dwight was hopeful, and I even caught a quiver of a smile cross Angela's lips. We left them alone to talk, and I never found out what happened between them.

Next I remember I was with Jim, standing at a concession stand run by Pam. She was making us sandwiches. I ordered a "cereal sandwich" from the menu simply because I wondered what one was. Pam proceeded to prepare two slices of bread with some mayonnaise and some lunch meat, then took out a box of Boo Berry Cereal. She was supposed to sprinkle some of it on the sandwich, but she put it together and handed it to me without the cereal on it. I gently reminded her that she left out the cereal on my cereal sandwich and she got really upset, began to cry, and ran away from her post at the concession stand. Jim and I looked at each other in bewildered shock, he wearing one of the expressions he would typically flash to the camera.

Around this point I woke up. I was focusing very hard on remembering this dream, but I fell asleep again before I could actually jot any of it down in my dream notepad. Then I continued with a new dream along similar lines:

I was in a store and I bought some neckties with funny Michael Scott quotes on them. They were having a special that you got two free "Looney Tunes" ties when you bought a certain number of "Office" ties, so I got them all. I was wondering the whole time if and when I'd ever actually wear any of these...and yet here I was buying them.

That's about the time I became aware of Fox Mulder (yes, from "The X-Files") being in the room. He was in an orange prison jumpsuit. Supposedly he'd been in prison for all the years since "The X-Files" had been off the air and he had just broken out with new information about "the truth".

I went with Mulder to a location that looked like an abandoned high school. Agent Scully and a few random fictional people were waiting there for him. He told them that he had information about the 2008 Presidential campaign, that there was some conspiracy theory revolving around it, and we were all in great danger.

He locked himself up in a room to study and research things about this. Scully and the other people went into a different room, all obviously very skeptical of Mulder. I was left just milling about on my own and tried to get on the Internet to kill time. When I turned on the computer, there was just static like there would be on a TV set with no reception. I realized it was storming outside, and assumed the Internet must have been temporarily knocked out by the storm.

Eventually Mulder emerged from his hideaway and came banging on the door of the room Scully and her people were in. He was saying he'd found a passage in the Bible that he thought explained everything he was trying to prove. They wouldn't even come out of the room, they just yelled through the door that they thought he was wasting his time.

Mulder got very mad and began storming back to his room. I tried to stop him and tell him I was willing to at least listen to his theory, because I felt suddenly sympathetic to him. He wouldn't listen to me though, and just kept marching on towards his room.

As I followed him, we passed former Vice President Dan Quayle. I wondered in the back of my mind if this had anything to do with that Presidential conspiracy theory Mulder had been talking about.

This is about when my alarm went off.