I do not own any characters or anything else in relation to The Office US.
What harm could one last prank between friends do?
Jim was standing alone in the elevator as it took him up the seven floors to the Dunder Mifflin Stamford branch, his foot tapped nervously as he clenched and un-clenches his fists in the pockets of his jacket. He didn't understand why he was so nervous; he was famously good at reading a room and knowing exactly what to say. So why did this feel so different?
The elevator opened with a chime and he stood still for a fraction of a second longer than normal before stepping out and being greeted by the muffled shouts of his new colleagues. There was no one at reception expecting him or even anyone that was aware of his arrival. He walked slowly up to the reception desk looking around at the empty front office and leaned against the desk. Unsure of what to do he looked down at the desk and saw a memo with his name written in bold on the front. Reaching over the desk, he picked up the sheet and read, 'Jim Halpert filling the position of Assistant Regional Manager will be coming in today, ...' at that moment a woman he presumed to be the receptionist walked over and positioned herself behind the desk,
"good morning", she said "you must be Jim?" she said questioningly.
"Yes, that would be me." he responded awkwardly. He stood there in silence for a few seconds whilst she looked at him expectantly.
"could you show me where my desk is?" he finally got out.
"Of course, I'll take you to Josh's office. Follow me." and with that she walked briskly past all the empty desks to where the noise had been coming from.
The first thing he noticed in the chaotic scene in front of him was that everyone was wearing headsets and seemed to be playing some game together on their computers whilst shouting feverishly seemingly to no one in particular. He stood still for a moment and took in the room. There was a huge mildly tinted window with a gorgeous view overlooking a harbour with lots of tiny boats visible in the distance. He looked at his new colleagues still shouting, and his heart dropped. How was he supposed to throw himself into his work if the office was going to be this noisy and chaotic? God he sounded like Dwight.
He slowly made his way down the aisle between the rows of desks towards the office that the receptionist had pointed him towards and caught a glimpse of the game they were playing. It reminded him of the game half-life that he had often caught Dwight playing during what he claimed were 'privileged extra lunch minutes' given to the Assistant regional manager despite Jim repeatedly reminding him that he was in fact the Assistant to the regional manager and that yes, there was a difference. He continued to move down the aisle and eventually reached the door of Josh Porter, the regional manager. He tentatively knocked on the thin wood and when he didn't get a response, he peeked through the slats catching site of his new boss, playing the same game on his computer with his two monitors taking up most of his desk. He knocks again. Louder this time as he is frustrated that no one has even looked up at him since he stepped out of the lift save for the receptionist. After waiting a long 10 seconds without any response he twists the handle and opens the door closing it behind him as he steps inside his boss's office.
"Hey Josh!" He half yelled.
"Hey, you must be that new guy uh, Jim!" He exclaims after finding the same memo that Jim has seen earlier on the receptionist's desk.
"Yeah uh, that's me. Your Josh, right?"
"Yes, that would be my name." He says tapping his desk twice before standing slowly and making his way around the desk and towards the closed door.
"Have you been shown around yet and introduced?" Josh asks him as he opens the door into the office space.
"Em, no actually, I don't even know where my desk is so..." he trails off not knowing where he had planned on taking this already awkward conversation.
"Ok well your desk is right over there beside Karen." Josh says whilst pointing towards a desk beside the Latino woman, who aggressively pounded her fists on her desk and shouted something about friendly fire at the posh looking man seated at the desk in-front of her, and next to the big window overlooking the harbour.
"Ah yes, thank you Josh" he said already regretting his decision to transfer.
"well why don't you get set up with your computer and all that and then I'll call you back into my office in around an hour or so, ok?"
"sure thing."
Jim walks slowly, almost tentatively over to his new desk and cautiously pulls out his chair. as he sits down, he turns to his new desk mate and gives a nervous smile.
"Hi, I'm Jim." he says quieter than normal.
"I know." she replies, "I read the memo... We all read the memo." and with that she releases the laughter that she has been holding back since he sat down. "My name is Karen by the way." she says once she has stopped laughing, which has given Jim enough time to put his brief case on the desk and undo the clasps. "And that idiot in front of me is Andy, the woman breast feeding across the aisle from him is Hannah, and that's all the important people you need to know for now." she finishes shrugging.
"But you only named two other people?" he says confused.
"Exactly, Andy is the other guy in sales, and Hannah is the head of accounting. no one else here is really of concern to you unless you mess up and Josh will most likely introduce you to them all when he gives you the tour anyways."
"oh, ok" he responds before turning back to his computer. After a couple of minutes, he turns back to Karen, "so hey, what's that game that most of the office seems to be playing?"
"oh that?" she asks pointing at Andy's screen. "that's Call of Duty"
"Why aren't you playing it?"
"Oh, I had work to do so I let myself die early into the game and blamed Andy for it. You see, this whole daily office game of Call of Duty all started as a kind of team building exercise and a rewards scheme. when you die you can only respawn once and if you die again after that then you have to go back to work."
"Ok I get it" he said still not really understanding but also not wanting Karen to think he was a complete idiot.
After his short conversation with Karen, Jim went back to setting up his desktop and logging into his Dunder Mifflin account which allowed him to place orders for clients with the warehouse and send the invoices off the accounting to be processed. the last thing he did was sign into the company IM (Instant Message) and check his inbox. he had one message from Dwight which he chose to ignore and one from Pam wishing him luck on 'behalf of the office' which he knew was just her trying to be nice knowing that no one else would make contact with him except for maybe Oscar about his final cheque or Kevin about Fantasy-football. He sits for a moment spinning slowly from side to side thinking of a reply, he checks the time on his monitor and sighs, 11:48, nearly time for his tour with Josh. He sends Pam a short, busy reply so that she doesn't think he's ignoring her saying; 'Thanks Beesly, haven't had a minute to myself yet and am supposed to be having a tour around now but I'll call you this weekend when I have news to report.' he leans back and stretches before pressing send. He knows it doesn't sound like his normal witty self and half hopes that Pam will be worried about him.
"Jim" he hears Josh call from his office just as he was turning off his computer
"Yeah, just a sec." he shouts back.
