The Office

The office is a staged reality show that follows the day-to-day activities of a group of workers at their workspace. The comedy has a very dry humor that some people like my father find to be stupid. However I find everything about it hilarious. This particular scene shows the office going through a fire drill much different from standard fire drills. Dwight, the office’s “safety officer”, is trying to demonstrate fire safety after a failed PowerPoint demonstration. Dwight takes the liberty of breaking off all the keys in the office doors and then heating the door handles to make it appear that the fire is on the outside of the door. He then creates a lot of smoke to make it appear that the office has caught on fire. The office workers search throughout the office for an exit only to find out that they are locked in what appears to be a burning building. What follows is complete havoc as the workers believe they are going to die.
I think the reason I find this so funny is why is because of the fact that this is supposed to be a fire drill. When I was in high school we had fire drills every few months and each time we had a drill we calmly got up from our desks and wandered into the mass of students slowly filing out the small doors actually happy to get out of class for a few minutes. It was a common joke between my friends and I that if there really was a fire in the school everyone’s reactions would be completely different. Everyone would taking their stuff, pushing and shoving to exit and for the most part going crazy due to the fact that they thought they were going to die. I think the reason I find this clip so funny is because this is exactly what we thought would happen and laughed about but never got to actually see. I find this clip funny because it lets us see exactly how we would act.

Blake Ogden