The Office: An American Workplace (Documentary)

The Office: An American Workplace is a documentary that chronicled the everyday life of the employees at the Dunder Mifflin Scranton branch for 9 years. It was a sub-series of the an overarching franchise of 'American Workplace' documentaries. The documentary footage involved filming around the office, interviews with relevant people and hidden cameras. In Moving On an ad shows that the show was set to premiere in may 2013 for 9 nights, presumably meaning 9 episodes in total for the 9 years it covered. In Finale, at the one year anniversary there is a banner, showing that the box set included 5 discs, typically one hour episode would be divided on 3 episodes per disc on the DVD format. This presumably means that the last 2 discs included special features. 
== Plot synopsis ==
The Office: An American Workplace is a documentary, 9 years in the making that chronicles all aspects of the life of the employees of the Dunder-Mifflin Scranton Branch. 
== History ==
In Moving On when Oscar Martinez left his computer to perform his ‘Ads for Abs’ workout routine, an online advertisement for the documentary played.
In Promos, the employees see the first promo premiere online. At first, they are excited to see old footage of Michael Scott and themselves, but they soon realise many personal and private moments were caught on camera. In a second Dutch promo we see footage of Angela cheating on Robert Lipton with Dwight . The employees gather in the warehouse to discuss this issue. They turn off their microphones but the audio is still picked up. This is later revealed by Brian to be because of a special kind of mic that can pick up audio from 100 yards away. Stanley discusses how he had been cheating on both his partners with somebody new. Angela and Oscar leave a voicemail telling the senator that the documentary will out his sexuality and Angela reveals her relations with Dwight. 
In Stairmageddon the first 'reviews' for the show come out. While these are referred to as reviews in the show, the show had not yet made it's premiere and the article is formatted like a preview for the show, rather than a review so it is more likely that the Andy misinterpreted this. The 'review' describes Kevin as a 'Falstaffian Accoutant', insults Andy in a number of ways and says Dwight Schrute 'is chasing for a manager position he will never get'. The review also touches upon the Oscar-Robert Lipton Relationship. 
In A.A.R.M. the employees at Dunder-Mifflin Scranton prepare for the premiere of the documentary. Kevin organizes a watch-party of the documentary as it premieres at Poor Richard's. The bartender initially says they cannot switch off the college baseball, Andy returns, meaning more people want to watch the show than college baseball. The show begins it's premiere with the dialogue from the beginning of Pilot. 
In Finale, one year after the documentary aired, the stars of the show reunited in Scranton for a panel. While initially the turnout seemed underwhelming, Andy discovered that many fans were waiting in a queue outside, resulting in an ultimately packed theatre. Many questions are thrown at the stars. Many are passive-aggressive comments about Pam and Jim, and that Pam doesn't deserve Jim, but Jim shut these claims down quickly. A day later, a afterparty was thrown for the DVD release of the documentary. In a deleted scene, Studio executives reveal to Clark that they are working on more American Workplace documentaries and invite him to be a producer. Clark declines, citing that he is happy with his current life. 
==Acknowledgment==
The people being filmed infrequently acknowledged the documentary crew. Many times the workers at Dunder-Mifflin would look at the camera jokingly, most notably Jim Halpert. 
When Michael Scott made his departure from Scranton, he handed his microphone to the documentary crew. Pam took her mic off too to say her final goodbye to him. 
In 2013, the documentary crew was acknowledged far more by the employees. The operator of the boom microphone Brian Wittle had frequent interactions with Pam Beesly, eventually getting fired for defending her against an enraged warehouse employee. 
== List of Crew Appearances ==
File:Documentarytimeframe.jpeg|Ad showing the episode count and release date of the documentary 
File:Documentaryad.jpeg|Documentary ad on Oscar Martinez’s computer 
==Trivia==
*The documentary was made conceived by the showrunners as an in-universe way to explain the shows Mockumentary format.
Category:Movies