Dunder Mifflin Paper Company, Inc. is a fictional paper sales company featured in the United States television series The Office . It supposedly trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol DMI , and describes itself as a "micro-cap regional paper- and office-supply distributor with an emphasis on servicing small-business clients". It is analogous to Wernham Hogg in the British original of the series, and Papiers Jennings and Cogirep in the French Canadian and French adaptations. The company may be modeled on the real-life W.B. Mason paper company.
As the show has become popular, two websites have been created. NBC sells branded merchandise at its NBC Universal Store website. Its logo is prominently displayed in several locations in downtown Scranton, Pennsylvania, where the show is set. Since the show airs in many different countries, Dunder Mifflin has become associated with Scranton internationally – in a 2008 St. Patrick's Day speech in the suburb of Dickson City, then-Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern identified the city with the company.
Overview
A fourth season episode, "Dunder Mifflin Infinity", said the company was founded in 1949 by Robert Dunder and Robert Mifflin, originally to sell brackets for use in construction. U.S. News and World Report likens it to many real companies in its size range: "It is facing an increasingly competitive marketplace. Like many smaller players, it just can't compete with the low prices charged by big-box rivals like Staples, OfficeMax and Office Depot, and it seems to be constantly bleeding corporate customers that are focused on cutting costs themselves." The show's creators share this assessment – "It's basically a Staples, just not as big", says co-producer Kent Zbornak – as do some of those companies. "Since Dunder Mifflin could be considered among our competitors", says Chuck Rubin, an Office Depot executive, "I think Michael Scott is actually the perfect person to run their Scranton office."
The company is depicted as based in New York City, with branches in smaller Northeastern cities. Episodes take place at the Scranton branch, managed by Michael Scott (Steve Carell), but other branches have been mentioned and seen. The now-closed Stamford, Connecticut branch was seen when Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) transferred there during the first half of the third season, before it was merged with the Scranton branch. Another episode, "Branch Wars", gave viewers a brief glimpse of the Utica branch, one of several purportedly in upstate New York. Zbornak says that city was on the short list for where to base the show, with some of its writers having ties to Central New York, and that they always intended for at least a branch office to be located there, for reasons of phonetics. "Utica was just such a different-sounding name than Scranton," Zbornak says. But also, "we had done a little research and thought our kind of business could survive in Utica."
A Buffalo branch has been mentioned in several episodes, and a Rochester office was also mentioned in the episode titled "Lecture Circuit: Part 1." The fictional Dunder Mifflin website also lists a Yonkers branch. Albany rounds out the New York locations, leaving three other branches in other states: Akron, Ohio; Camden, New Jersey; and Nashua, New Hampshire. In Company Picnic, it is announced that the Camden and Yonkers branches have closed, and that the Buffalo branch is about to close.
Business writer Megan Barnett has speculated that Dunder Mifflin may be modeled on the real-life W.B. Mason paper company, based near Boston, in Brockton, Massachusetts. It is similarly regional in focus, serving corporate customers in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states. Like Dunder Mifflin, its original product line (rubber stamps) was something other than paper, and it faces stiff competition from national and international chains. It, too, has a branch office in Stamford, but Mason's has remained open. In 2009 it had an accounting scandal that resulted in a $545,000 payment to corporate customers, much as Dunder Mifflin had to deal with the arrest of Ryan for embezzlement the year before.
Depiction of corporate culture
The company's "clearly dysfunctional" top-down management style is a major source of tension on the show, notes Chicago-based writer Ramsin Canon. Corporate headquarters rejects the television commercial Michael created, as he in turn insisted on his own ideas for the commercial and ignored his employees. Ryan Howard (B.J. Novak), who began as a temp, becomes Michael's new boss because he has an M.B.A. despite never having sold any paper or paper products in his life. Michael, in turn, treats his own employees the same way. The show's depiction of a dysfunctional corporate culture has led some commentators to liken Dunder Mifflin to the fictional software maker Initech in Mike Judge's cult comedy Office Space and the nameless company in which the Dilbert comic strip is set.
Dunder Mifflin is also depicted as struggling to accommodate the demands of a diverse workforce. Episodes have focused on sensitivity training sessions and other informal efforts. Sexual harassment has occurred often enough, however, that it has lent its name to an episode. Employment lawyer Julie Elgar started a blog analyzing each episode for plot developments likely to be actionable if they occurred in real life and estimating the legal bill and/or possible verdict the company would incur should a suit be filed (as indeed Michael's former supervisor, Jan Levinson (Melora Hardin) did in one episode, alleging wrongful termination). Greg Daniels, the show's creator, said many episode plotlines are in fact based on anecdotes recounted during the sensitivity training he and the other members of the show's cast and crew are required to take annually as employees of a General Electric subsidiary. The episode "Boys and Girls" showed that the company strongly resisted unionization efforts by its employees, to the point of closing down a branch, as many real companies do or threaten to do in the same situation.
Locations and sets used
The office and warehouse of the Scranton branch office are sets on the production company's office in Van Nuys, California (a real office was used in the show's first season). The parking lots and exterior of the building are likewise the exterior of the building (except in the first season, when the building's exterior was different because a different shooting location was used). Since the stage set had no windows, writer Jennifer Celotta's office was dressed to look like Michael Scott's when the script called for him or someone else to look out the window into the parking lot. In the second and subsequent seasons, the office interiors and exteriors are at a different location in Van Nuys.
Some viewers have presumed that the Pennsylvania Paper & Supply Company's tower, a downtown Scranton landmark which appears in video footage shot by cast member John Krasinski for the show's opening credits, is the Dunder Mifflin office. The real company, which also sells paper and office supplies, has welcomed the exposure (and increase in business) and has a ground-floor showroom where it sells both its products and T-shirts with the tower. It plans to add a Dunder Mifflin logo to the circular insets near the top of the tower.
Presence in real world
The success of the show has led to the sale of actual products with the Dunder Mifflin logo as souvenirs. NBC sells branded T-shirts, mugs, calendars and other items at its website , as well as in the NBC store located in New York City. In 2006, the website 80stees.com ranked Dunder Mifflin second only to Duff Beer from The Simpsons as the best fictional brand.
At the first annual The Office convention in Scranton in 2007, fans who had paid for reserved seating at an "uncommon stockholders meeting" in the Mall at Steamtown received an annual report and complimentary ream of paper. A nearby elevator shaft is also decorated with the company logo. While the Scranton branch's address, 1725 Slough Avenue, does not actually exist (the street name was invented as a tribute to the original British version of the show, set in Slough, near London), the company logo can be seen two places in the city's downtown section outside the mall: on one of the pedestrian overpasses along Lackawanna Avenue, and a lamppost banner in front of City Hall.
Two websites purporting to be the company's exist. Dundermifflinpaper.biz (now also available at Dundermifflin.com) is the main site, with basic information about the company, and dundermifflininfinity.com, which is allegedly the company intranet, serves as an official NBC fansite.
References
- ^ a b c d "About Us". Dunder Mifflin . http://www.dundermifflinpaper.biz/about/ . Retrieved 2008-04-04
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