While one might imagine stacking and shipping boxes of paper all day, every day, in a muggy warehouse to be hours of laughing and general fun … it's really not. Darryl found that his boys needed some entertainment to get them through the long hours. He put up a basketball hoop, brought in a stereo, and taped Michael's face to the blow-up sex doll.
But when it came to entertaining himself, Darryl had discovered something that was even more fun than basketball during lunch, and loosely connected to the face on the doll.
Darryl discovered one day, perfectly by chance, as it were, that Michael Scott was fun to play with. In fact, there was no greater target in the world for Darryl. He'd teach Michael slang and handshakes, and give him the names and addresses of hip clubs he should visit on his days off. (The enjoyment in this was that Darryl would switch some numbers and well, some words, giving Michael a completely absurd address and a fake club to try and hunt down. The best part was Monday morning, when Michael would have a long, embellished story about what all he did at this completely fictional nightclub.)
Michael accepted everything that Darryl said as absolute truth. Michael probably accepted everything everyone said as absolute truth. Darryl would be surprised if he was the only one to exploit this gullibility. He wouldn't be surprised to learn that anyone who had… really didn't feel all that bad about it.
There was a day in January where Darryl was feeling particularly bored. His usual source of entertainment – Roy – was on vacation with his fiancée, who just happened to be Jim Halpert's main source of entertainment. Darryl sat in the lunchroom with Halpert that day, Darryl with his meatball sub and Jim with his ham and cheese, and they talked shop.
See, Jim was one of those guys that really didn't feel too bad about exploiting the ignorance in others.
Darryl had been tossing an idea back and forth in his head all week. He couldn't come up with any new words to teach Mike, and he still felt kind of bad about telling him to wear his pants backwards all day. (There had been a chafing incident that, as Pam had told Roy and Roy had then told Darryl, had involved the entire office, a bottle of baby oil, and Jan coming down to sort out some potential lawsuits.)
Darryl figured his next idea had to be something a little smaller, but nonetheless funny.
He offered the idea to Halpert. You see, Michael was the kind of guy you could just tell surfed around the internet, finding insane, false news stories, and took them completely at face value. If someone were to send him such a link, he wouldn't even read past the headline before he forwarded the page all around the office, telling people to, as an example, watch out for the cult of cow women who were breeding in abandoned farms just outside of Scranton.
Halpert's eyes had lit up, he'd cast a glance into the next room where that guy Dwight was getting a lemonade from the vending machine, and leaned across the table conspiratorially.
Jim Halpert showed him how to bring his mind games with Michael to a whole new level.
See, now, Michael would do the forwarding of the insane story. He would read the link, he would believe it, and he'd be sure to tell everyone about it.
Dwight Schrute, though, he was special. He'd be the guy driving three miles an hour through the outskirts of town, his potato gun sitting in his passenger seat.
Michael believed the story.
Dwight was the one hunting the cow women down.
It took less than a week for the complete plan to unfurl. They had lunch on Tuesday. By Wednesday afternoon, Jim had perfected the story and created a fake webpage.
The link got to Michael, the story got to Dwight, and by Wednesday evening Dwight got to the middle of nowhere with a potato gun and two ticked off police officers circling the area because someone called to complain about a deranged working class nerd with glasses who was firing potatoes at barns.
The whole thing ended with Michael canceling work early Thursday because he had to leave the office to retrieve Dwight from his holding cell.
It was beautiful.
The very next day, Dwight was ranting to anyone who'd listen (read: no one) about how lax the system had gotten since he'd withdrawn his volunteer badge. Dwight told Darryl, Jim, and a worried Toby that he had tried to tell the officers about the bovine cult, and how he was only trying to protect the peace, same as them. When the officers finally caught him, took his gun, and handcuffed Dwight, he then began berating them because there were tons of people robbing banks all over Pennsylvania right now and they were wasting their time arresting him.
This got the cops worried that Dwight was a cleverly planted decoy, and units buzzed out of the station and all over the Scranton area, checking out the banks. They tried to add "feeding false information to an officer" to Dwight's offenses, but it was laughable that anyone had listened to him.
Then there was Michael. While anyone else at the police station (and this included the camera crew that Michael insisted follow everywhere, even when he wasn't doing anything office related) would tell that Michael had walked into the police station, picked up Dwight, promised him ice cream if he would stop yelling at the officers, and walked him out, this was not the story Michael Scott told.
See, what really happened was that when Michael came in, the police officers asked him for a thousand dollar bail. Michael haggled with the officers, insisting that Dwight was only worth a hundred, if that. Michael was then forced to jump over the counter, wrestle an officer, and escape with Dwight.
For some reason, the promise of ice cream existed in both stories.
Darryl had been amazed at the havoc one could bring to an entire city police force in the space of one email and one fictional tribe of cow people. Jim just nodded; this was amateur hour to a pranking veteran such as himself.
Toby had turned to them with a ghost of a smile, walking back to his cubicle with a lighter step than he had coming from it.
It was the first time Darryl was actually impressed with the guys from the office upstairs.
When Roy got back from vacation, Darryl found that Halpert pointedly left the lunchroom when they entered. It was too bad, but on retrospect it was probably best he save his Michael pranks to false words (like "Razzkatazz" and "Hoppin' Down On the B Train") and the occasional fashion suggestion. Jan had had to make two trips to Scranton in as many weeks – any more police reports and she might choose to shut down the Scranton branch just to save the company from embarrassment.
At the end of the day Monday, after 8 hours of watching Michael walk around the office with his tie around his forearm and his shoes untied, Halpert gave him a salute in the parking lot.
In between them, Dwight sauntered by, clutching his briefcase close to his chest. As he retreated to his car, Darryl saw he had green paint and glitter all over the back of his shirt.
Darryl turned to Jim with a smirk, returning the salute.
Jan didn't need to worry about the police reports embarrassing her company. Jim and Darryl could see to that.
Story Notes:
I wrote this after Casino Night, and it sat unloved and gathering dust on my computer for many months thereafter. Pretty much ignores season 3, so I guess it takes place at some point in season 2. Well, around the time Pam and Roy used up all their vacation days, since that's mentioned in the story! I love the idea of Michael being to Darryl what Dwight is to Jim, so here I went with it.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Disclaimer: I own nothing related to The Office except for my very own Dwight Bobblehead. This story is merely for fun and entertainment: no profit is being made, nor do I claim ownership of anything.
perrynqa is the author of 2 other stories.
This story is a favorite of 1 members. Members who liked The Mysterious Cult of Cow Women, or One Week Darryl Actually Enjoyed also liked 869 other stories.
