personality
Michael Gary Scott is the Regional Manager of the Dunder-Mifflin paper supply company, Scranton Branch; he was promoted to this position because (when he focuses, and is properly prepared) he is an excellent salesman and worker. Unfortunately, when Michael became "the boss", he discovered his own level of incompetence (something they call the "Peter Principle", where a good employee is promoted to an unqualified position). Later on, the title of the company is changed to "Sabre" after a merger, where his office begins to sell printers. He is not on good terms with Jo, the Sabre CEO, because she's smarter than he is and doesn't play by his rules.
As a salesman, Michael does great work. He is a convincing speaker when he isn't adlibbing, and despite his lack of common sense, he can often confuse people into believing he is smarter than he appears. He is devoted, heart and soul, to his work and has a strong set of personal beliefs in how a company and an office should be run. He pursues his dreams blindly and passionately, and frequently has great ideas for the company which he executes in horribly inefficient ways leaving his employees to pick up the slack, making him look incompetent while his branch flourishes.
As a manager, Michael is somewhere between a liability and an annoying friend who you are paid to hang out with. Despite his lack of managing skills and erratic behavior, his office is the most successful branch of Dunder Mifflin-Sabre, due in no small part to his high tolerance for the antics of his (otherwise highly competent) salesmen, like Dwight Schrute.
Because Michael treats his workers like part of his family, one could say they work harder to make up for the time Michael wastes having parties for them, as well as unnecessary meetings about various distractions from his own work. He tends to favor employees who suck up to him over others who he thinks are boring or unattractive. When it comes to sensitive issues, Michael is under the impression that being tactful is the same as discrimination. He brags about his employees being gay, overweight or black as qualities which make them "part of the family". His insistence on identifying them by those qualities (such as Stanley being "urban" because he is black) often offend and upset everyone, despite Michael's intentions being good. When Stamford merged with Scranton, nearly all the transferred Stamford employees quit because of Michael (except an overweight man named Tony, who Michael fired because his weight prevented him from participating in a trivial part of his meeting). Andy is the only one who sticks around, because he's always trying to get on his boss's good side and has friends at Scranton branch.
Like most lonely men, Michael tends to try a little too hard with women, but at the same time, he is actually a very awkward person romantically and will take any remote interest a woman has in him as a sign that they want him. (He got his job at DM by following a woman into the building and "walking out with a job".) He desperately desires a real family, going so far as to propose to his realtor in front of a crowd, after dating her for three weeks. When girls dump him (which is common), he will go to great lengths to try and win them back. When his attempts fail, he will usually blame their refusal on something beyond himself. Frequently, he even shows signs that he is uncomfortable with anything but traditional sex (while dating his boss, Jan, she forces him to try roleplay which he is very insecure about). Whenever the topic of sex is breached, Michael's reaction is usually over-the-top excitement or juvenile comments (such as his favorite catchphrase, "That's what she said!"). He is also sterile; he has had three vasectomies because of his lover Jan, who he wanted to have children with. She at first refused, and prompted him to get the first operation- She then appeared to be changing her mind which had him heading back to get the operation reversed, and then he was snipped again when she said she was sure. She chose instead to go to a sperm bank, fearing what a child with Michael would turn out like (she later introduces Michael to her daughter, Astrid, prompting Michael to feel disgusted, and 'empty').
Because of his consistent success at Dunder-Mifflin, Michael is both an asset to the company and a thorn in its side. He gets work done, but not the way it should be done. His workers spend more time managing his behavior than vice-versa. He irritates Corporate with prank calls, complaints about his responsibilities and anything else he happens to be dealing with. He has a habit of "fake firing" his workers or lying to them to gain an expected reaction as well, or overreacting if he feels they aren't taking his side in any situation. He is also perilously impulsive: When Michael gets a new boss to replace Jan after she gets fired, he takes an immediate dislike to him, feeling scrutinized and stifled because of his strictness. He quits his job on the spot (with his receptionist and Ryan), opening a competing supply company in the same building (The Michael Scott Paper Company). They then begin methodically stealing all of Dunder-Mifflin's biggest clients. When Michael discovers they're broke because of their competitively low prices, Corporate actually believes Michael is masterminding an underdog takeover of the supply business (when really he was acting on an impulsive idea he begins to regret). They beg to buy him out, which he does in exchange for him and his employees to have jobs again at Dunder-Mifflin and on the condition his new boss avoids the Scranton Branch, thereby getting what he wanted all along in an incredibly roundabout way.
In terms of pure personality, Michael has it in spades. About 90% of his behavior and quirks are parodying movies, worn out jokes, outdated pop culture and bad wordplay - he's a self-proclaimed comedian and amateur magician who spends corporate money on magic tricks and even attended a genuine summer magic camp for children- as an adult. Michael is definitely imaginative, even going so far as to dress up as Willy Wonka and put golden discount coupons in several boxes of paper as a marketing tactic.
Jim, early on, asserts that Michael's been making the same jokes for over seven years since he started working there. It's apparently gotten to the point where "That's what she said" is an almost reflexive response for him (such as when he says it in reply to his own comment and then says "No, no time! But she did-- no time!") and a few times he even writes down things to say that he can follow up with it. He will also add "Or, he said," if his gay employee Oscar is present. Oddly enough Michael rarely catches onto innuendoes where this comment would actually be funny (which usually prompts Jim to look at him expectantly and be surprised when he says nothing). However, he has no hesitation in saying it during legal proceedings or business meetings.
Michael loves theatrics and avoids professionalism aggressively, believing that if his employees are his friends, they will like him unconditionally and he won't be as lonely. This attitude seems to go as far back as his early childhood, as seen when Michael shows some of his workers' kids an episode of a kid's show he was interviewed on. On the show, a puppet asks Michael what he wants to be when he grows up, to which he replies, "I wanna be married and have 100 kids so I can have 100 friends, and no one can say no to being my friend."
Whenever he doesn't get his way, Michael reacts with spitefulness like an infant, believing that no one deserves to have fun if he isn't the center of attention. He loves taking credit for good ideas so that people will praise him, but dodges blame like a plague. He will foist blame onto any employee he isn't especially fond of, but is quick to forgive people he likes (such as Ryan, who he manages to rehire despite being a convict who cost the company thousands in fraud). When Pam accuses Michael of being a failure who no one believes in (while starting his own company), Michael says that he works best when no one believes in him, because then he has the motivation to prove them wrong. He mentions that when he was bad at Math, he proceeded to break school records in ice hockey (Jan also asserts that Michael is an excellent ice skater).
There's no easy way to describe Michael Scott. He is really one of a kind, someone so unique that most people don't believe the stories about him until he opens his mouth. Once he does, the first thing he usually says is so offensive or blunt that people immediately dislike him. One odd thing about him is the way he regards people based on a first impression that he never bothers to reevaluate, unless they're a woman. He has a strong, inexplicable hatred of his Human Resources rep, Toby, even going so far as to plant "drugs" in his desk and call the police (which was actually basil that some delivery guys tricked Michael into paying money for). The reason for this burning vendetta is unclear, and Michael is ruthlessly unfair to Toby for no reason at all (one possible reason is that Toby has no stand-out qualities or quirks as well as being required to enforce the rules, and Michael finds him boring, which has slowly become resentment).
Michael has demonstrated several unusual ways of remembering things about his coworkers and his clients. He has a personal rolodex with the names of people he is acquainted with; on the back of each card, he writes things that he has come to associate them with, as well as things he knows about them that he has highlighted with varying colors. These are levels of danger in mentioning them to the people in question. He states that basically anything highlighted on the card is something he simply shouldn't say or talk about (such as one client's gay son). On the back of Dwight's card, oddly enough, it just reads "Tall, beets" and nothing else, indicating Michael has never bothered to learn about Dwight's personal life despite working closely with him for years.
He has several hobbies, including ice hockey and especially improv, although he is indicated to be unpopular in his improv class because he frequently makes up characters that allow him to do whatever he wants. His list of improv characters is quite long, but some examples are his alter ego Michael Scarn, a secret agent that shoots people, whom he has written a screenplay about, and Blind Guy Mcsqueezy, who "accidentally" feels up women because he can't see. Also, Prison Mike, who claims the worst part of prison was "the Dementors." He seems to be competent at basic levels of magic as another hobby, although he buys his tricks from magic shops.
When left to his own devices, Michael gets stir-crazy. He sees his office as a cage or a haven depending on the circumstances- his receptionists often cover for him when he falls asleep at his desk or is hiding from Corporate, but when boredom sets in he takes to wandering the office to try and "connect" or "mingle" with the workforce, usually irritating them or distracting them from doing work. Jim once made a pie chart of how Michael spends his time, with the smallest portion being "Critical Thinking (0.1%)". When things start to feel like they're out of hand, Michael will try to place someone else in charge so he can avoid all responsibility for handling it (this involves nearly all major decisions such as layoffs or even choosing a health care plan). He frequently tries to host his own events (dinner parties, luncheons and even a "pancake breakfast") and always overstocks only to have no one show up or for it to be a disaster. He hosts an office award show each year, known as 'the Dundies', where he invites the entire office to a dinner party, does bad impersonations and gives out awards with unusual criteria. At one such event, he gave out a 'Whitest Sneakers' award to Pam for her shoes, and awarded Kevin for stinking up the bathroom after he used it.
There are times we see where Michael is not only a competent employee but also has moments of brilliance, such as using a bankrupt company that was only three weeks old (his own) as leverage to make Dunder Mifflin hire him back along with Pam and Ryan (including benefits). He fluctuates between being aware of his flaws and acting like he is always the victim or the one who deserves recognition. When not the center of attention, he will either yell, create a scene, or try to interject into people's personal lives to feel like he's "in the loop". Some of his workers occasionally wonder if Michael is actually a business genius and the incompetence is a front for some deeper intelligence- Stanley wonders this at one point, as do his superiors in Corporate (who know that he's doing something right, but will never understand what exactly it is). He has also made many promises that he could never reasonably follow through on, most shamefully his promise to pay for an entire Grade 3 class to go to college in ten years. He is forced to confront those same teens on their graduation day and tell them he was 'expecting to be a millionaire by thirty, and then by forty he had even less money than when he was thirty', although in the end he is coerced into paying for one student's college textbooks.
Above all else, Michael overestimates his own success at anything and everything. He has a feeling of unwarranted self-importance as the manager, the authority of this position being applied to places outside the office, such as a cruise ship or restaurants- usually resulting in trouble.
As a salesman, Michael does great work. He is a convincing speaker when he isn't adlibbing, and despite his lack of common sense, he can often confuse people into believing he is smarter than he appears. He is devoted, heart and soul, to his work and has a strong set of personal beliefs in how a company and an office should be run. He pursues his dreams blindly and passionately, and frequently has great ideas for the company which he executes in horribly inefficient ways leaving his employees to pick up the slack, making him look incompetent while his branch flourishes.
As a manager, Michael is somewhere between a liability and an annoying friend who you are paid to hang out with. Despite his lack of managing skills and erratic behavior, his office is the most successful branch of Dunder Mifflin-Sabre, due in no small part to his high tolerance for the antics of his (otherwise highly competent) salesmen, like Dwight Schrute.
Because Michael treats his workers like part of his family, one could say they work harder to make up for the time Michael wastes having parties for them, as well as unnecessary meetings about various distractions from his own work. He tends to favor employees who suck up to him over others who he thinks are boring or unattractive. When it comes to sensitive issues, Michael is under the impression that being tactful is the same as discrimination. He brags about his employees being gay, overweight or black as qualities which make them "part of the family". His insistence on identifying them by those qualities (such as Stanley being "urban" because he is black) often offend and upset everyone, despite Michael's intentions being good. When Stamford merged with Scranton, nearly all the transferred Stamford employees quit because of Michael (except an overweight man named Tony, who Michael fired because his weight prevented him from participating in a trivial part of his meeting). Andy is the only one who sticks around, because he's always trying to get on his boss's good side and has friends at Scranton branch.
Like most lonely men, Michael tends to try a little too hard with women, but at the same time, he is actually a very awkward person romantically and will take any remote interest a woman has in him as a sign that they want him. (He got his job at DM by following a woman into the building and "walking out with a job".) He desperately desires a real family, going so far as to propose to his realtor in front of a crowd, after dating her for three weeks. When girls dump him (which is common), he will go to great lengths to try and win them back. When his attempts fail, he will usually blame their refusal on something beyond himself. Frequently, he even shows signs that he is uncomfortable with anything but traditional sex (while dating his boss, Jan, she forces him to try roleplay which he is very insecure about). Whenever the topic of sex is breached, Michael's reaction is usually over-the-top excitement or juvenile comments (such as his favorite catchphrase, "That's what she said!"). He is also sterile; he has had three vasectomies because of his lover Jan, who he wanted to have children with. She at first refused, and prompted him to get the first operation- She then appeared to be changing her mind which had him heading back to get the operation reversed, and then he was snipped again when she said she was sure. She chose instead to go to a sperm bank, fearing what a child with Michael would turn out like (she later introduces Michael to her daughter, Astrid, prompting Michael to feel disgusted, and 'empty').
Because of his consistent success at Dunder-Mifflin, Michael is both an asset to the company and a thorn in its side. He gets work done, but not the way it should be done. His workers spend more time managing his behavior than vice-versa. He irritates Corporate with prank calls, complaints about his responsibilities and anything else he happens to be dealing with. He has a habit of "fake firing" his workers or lying to them to gain an expected reaction as well, or overreacting if he feels they aren't taking his side in any situation. He is also perilously impulsive: When Michael gets a new boss to replace Jan after she gets fired, he takes an immediate dislike to him, feeling scrutinized and stifled because of his strictness. He quits his job on the spot (with his receptionist and Ryan), opening a competing supply company in the same building (The Michael Scott Paper Company). They then begin methodically stealing all of Dunder-Mifflin's biggest clients. When Michael discovers they're broke because of their competitively low prices, Corporate actually believes Michael is masterminding an underdog takeover of the supply business (when really he was acting on an impulsive idea he begins to regret). They beg to buy him out, which he does in exchange for him and his employees to have jobs again at Dunder-Mifflin and on the condition his new boss avoids the Scranton Branch, thereby getting what he wanted all along in an incredibly roundabout way.
In terms of pure personality, Michael has it in spades. About 90% of his behavior and quirks are parodying movies, worn out jokes, outdated pop culture and bad wordplay - he's a self-proclaimed comedian and amateur magician who spends corporate money on magic tricks and even attended a genuine summer magic camp for children- as an adult. Michael is definitely imaginative, even going so far as to dress up as Willy Wonka and put golden discount coupons in several boxes of paper as a marketing tactic.
Jim, early on, asserts that Michael's been making the same jokes for over seven years since he started working there. It's apparently gotten to the point where "That's what she said" is an almost reflexive response for him (such as when he says it in reply to his own comment and then says "No, no time! But she did-- no time!") and a few times he even writes down things to say that he can follow up with it. He will also add "Or, he said," if his gay employee Oscar is present. Oddly enough Michael rarely catches onto innuendoes where this comment would actually be funny (which usually prompts Jim to look at him expectantly and be surprised when he says nothing). However, he has no hesitation in saying it during legal proceedings or business meetings.
Michael loves theatrics and avoids professionalism aggressively, believing that if his employees are his friends, they will like him unconditionally and he won't be as lonely. This attitude seems to go as far back as his early childhood, as seen when Michael shows some of his workers' kids an episode of a kid's show he was interviewed on. On the show, a puppet asks Michael what he wants to be when he grows up, to which he replies, "I wanna be married and have 100 kids so I can have 100 friends, and no one can say no to being my friend."
Whenever he doesn't get his way, Michael reacts with spitefulness like an infant, believing that no one deserves to have fun if he isn't the center of attention. He loves taking credit for good ideas so that people will praise him, but dodges blame like a plague. He will foist blame onto any employee he isn't especially fond of, but is quick to forgive people he likes (such as Ryan, who he manages to rehire despite being a convict who cost the company thousands in fraud). When Pam accuses Michael of being a failure who no one believes in (while starting his own company), Michael says that he works best when no one believes in him, because then he has the motivation to prove them wrong. He mentions that when he was bad at Math, he proceeded to break school records in ice hockey (Jan also asserts that Michael is an excellent ice skater).
There's no easy way to describe Michael Scott. He is really one of a kind, someone so unique that most people don't believe the stories about him until he opens his mouth. Once he does, the first thing he usually says is so offensive or blunt that people immediately dislike him. One odd thing about him is the way he regards people based on a first impression that he never bothers to reevaluate, unless they're a woman. He has a strong, inexplicable hatred of his Human Resources rep, Toby, even going so far as to plant "drugs" in his desk and call the police (which was actually basil that some delivery guys tricked Michael into paying money for). The reason for this burning vendetta is unclear, and Michael is ruthlessly unfair to Toby for no reason at all (one possible reason is that Toby has no stand-out qualities or quirks as well as being required to enforce the rules, and Michael finds him boring, which has slowly become resentment).
Michael has demonstrated several unusual ways of remembering things about his coworkers and his clients. He has a personal rolodex with the names of people he is acquainted with; on the back of each card, he writes things that he has come to associate them with, as well as things he knows about them that he has highlighted with varying colors. These are levels of danger in mentioning them to the people in question. He states that basically anything highlighted on the card is something he simply shouldn't say or talk about (such as one client's gay son). On the back of Dwight's card, oddly enough, it just reads "Tall, beets" and nothing else, indicating Michael has never bothered to learn about Dwight's personal life despite working closely with him for years.
He has several hobbies, including ice hockey and especially improv, although he is indicated to be unpopular in his improv class because he frequently makes up characters that allow him to do whatever he wants. His list of improv characters is quite long, but some examples are his alter ego Michael Scarn, a secret agent that shoots people, whom he has written a screenplay about, and Blind Guy Mcsqueezy, who "accidentally" feels up women because he can't see. Also, Prison Mike, who claims the worst part of prison was "the Dementors." He seems to be competent at basic levels of magic as another hobby, although he buys his tricks from magic shops.
When left to his own devices, Michael gets stir-crazy. He sees his office as a cage or a haven depending on the circumstances- his receptionists often cover for him when he falls asleep at his desk or is hiding from Corporate, but when boredom sets in he takes to wandering the office to try and "connect" or "mingle" with the workforce, usually irritating them or distracting them from doing work. Jim once made a pie chart of how Michael spends his time, with the smallest portion being "Critical Thinking (0.1%)". When things start to feel like they're out of hand, Michael will try to place someone else in charge so he can avoid all responsibility for handling it (this involves nearly all major decisions such as layoffs or even choosing a health care plan). He frequently tries to host his own events (dinner parties, luncheons and even a "pancake breakfast") and always overstocks only to have no one show up or for it to be a disaster. He hosts an office award show each year, known as 'the Dundies', where he invites the entire office to a dinner party, does bad impersonations and gives out awards with unusual criteria. At one such event, he gave out a 'Whitest Sneakers' award to Pam for her shoes, and awarded Kevin for stinking up the bathroom after he used it.
There are times we see where Michael is not only a competent employee but also has moments of brilliance, such as using a bankrupt company that was only three weeks old (his own) as leverage to make Dunder Mifflin hire him back along with Pam and Ryan (including benefits). He fluctuates between being aware of his flaws and acting like he is always the victim or the one who deserves recognition. When not the center of attention, he will either yell, create a scene, or try to interject into people's personal lives to feel like he's "in the loop". Some of his workers occasionally wonder if Michael is actually a business genius and the incompetence is a front for some deeper intelligence- Stanley wonders this at one point, as do his superiors in Corporate (who know that he's doing something right, but will never understand what exactly it is). He has also made many promises that he could never reasonably follow through on, most shamefully his promise to pay for an entire Grade 3 class to go to college in ten years. He is forced to confront those same teens on their graduation day and tell them he was 'expecting to be a millionaire by thirty, and then by forty he had even less money than when he was thirty', although in the end he is coerced into paying for one student's college textbooks.
Above all else, Michael overestimates his own success at anything and everything. He has a feeling of unwarranted self-importance as the manager, the authority of this position being applied to places outside the office, such as a cruise ship or restaurants- usually resulting in trouble.