Customer Survey

"Customer Survey" is the seventh episode of the fifth season of The Office and the 79th episode overall. It was written by Lester Lewis and directed by Stephen Merchant. It first aired November 6, 2008. It was viewed by 8.35 million people.

Cold open
Michael has apparently announced to everyone in the office that he is engaged to Holly. This is far from the truth, as Darryl points out. The staff prods Michael to call his mother to tell her about the engagement, which he does. His mother does not believe him, as he has apparently done this before, and he is forced to reveal the truth, disappointing everybody. Kelly is particularly disappointed, having just bought a bridesmaid dress (white) which she is now forced to return for a partial refund.

Synopsis
Kelly gives the customer survey reports to Michael, and Dwight and Jim are shocked to find out that their feedback is abysmal. Jim is somewhat disappointed as he was intending on using his anticipated satisfaction-based bonus to buy his parents' home (he has not told Pam of this), but he otherwise takes it in stride. Dwight, on the other hand, is vehement that something influenced the numbers and suspects Kelly of tampering with the reports, perhaps with co-conspirators. Dwight talks about it to Jim, who doesn't believe him until he notices Kelly being uncharacteristically succinct with him when they talk. When asking Ryan about Kelly's recent behavior, Jim notices that Ryan has a coffee mug with his face on it, something he had noticed Andy also had earlier. Ryan explains that the mugs were party favors at an America's Got Talent party Kelly hosted over the summer. Jim discovers that everyone in the office has one, except for him and Dwight, as they didn't attend the party, and he deduces that Kelly tampered with their reports out of spite. Jim and Dwight have Michael confront her about this, and she ultimately comes clean regarding the reports. After dismissing Dwight and Jim, Michael pretends to confront Kelly about her deceit but actually commiserates with her because no one goes to his parties either. They relish in Jim and Dwight's discomfort.

Pam buys a miniature Bluetooth device for her and Jim so they can stay in touch throughout the day without being caught. Jim tells Dwight that he is only talking to himself when he is really talking to Pam, and Dwight thinks that Jim needs a friend. Pam helps Jim realize Kelly's unusual behavior with him and figure out the truth about the satisfaction reports. Near the end of the day, one of Pam's friends from art school, Alex, comes to visit her at the corporate office. He pulls her into the conference room and tells her he thinks that she shouldn't move back to Scranton. Jim, still listening on the Bluetooth, remarks that it's pretty clear Alex has a crush on her. Alex goes on to tell her that if she really wants to pursue a career in art, then only three months in New York isn't going to do any good for her. He leaves, and Jim and Pam are left to silently ponder this.

Andy shows Angela a wedding tent he would like for their wedding. Angela agrees on the condition that the location is on a hand-plowed farm with an old barn, within special requirements, and within a 5-8 mile radius. Andy looks up possible locations and chooses Schrute Farms as the location since he is acquainted with Dwight and believes he can get a good deal. At the end of the episode, Dwight accepts the offer to hold their wedding on his farm. Dwight further offers to meet Angela's every need, day or night. She is clearly pleased by this and has to suppress a smile.

Deleted scenes

 * Michael makes up a story of how he proposed to Holly, starting with a 10-carat diamond ring, and becomes increasingly ridiculous and inconsistent.

Trivia

 * After the episode aired, Kelly's America's Got Talent mugs were available for purchase on the NBC online store. This was opportunistic on the part of NBC. The episode was not written with the idea of selling mugs.
 * Michael is not the central character in this episode.
 * At the time the episode aired, the Bluetooth earpieces used by Jim and Pam were impossibly small. (Fake headsets were used in the episode.) By 2015, such tiny earpieces became reality.
 * When Jim offers the Snoopy mug to Andy, Pam says, "That's mine." Pam's regular mug is pink, but presumably she took it to New York with her, and the Snoopy mug is her backup.
 * The man in the first wedding photo in the binder that Dwight shows to Angela and Andy at the end of the episode, is the same man that was running the booth for the funeral home in "Job Fair". The writers loved the actor's look so much that they brought him back.

Amusing details

 * When Michael calls his mother, Kelly hides behind Phyllis because actor Mindy Kaling is trying to hide her laugh.
 * Michael says "smudge" instead of "smug." Dwight attempts to emulate Michael's actions again by putting his feet up on the desk, only for Michael to rebuke him for it once again.
 * Dwight and Michael seem to forget that Jim is pretending to be a customer and that the million dollar sale isn't real.
 * Phyllis turns around startled when Dwight begins yelling during the mock sales call.
 * Dwight plays music in his car as he says that customer service may be monitoring their conversation. Afterwards, it is revealed that customer service was in fact monitoring their sales calls.
 * Michael tells Kelly not to keep saying she was raped to get out of things "not again, don't keep doing that," revealing she has done so multiple times before. This is similar to "Dunder Mifflin Infinity", when she told Ryan she was pregnant to get his attention.
 * As is usual for a corporate office, Alex would have had to make an appointment or wait at reception as a visitor until the intended personnel was notified, which even Michael, Jim and Karen had been seen doing in past episodes. So it was unlikely that he would be able to enter the office past reception and go to a (presumably) back office region to surprise Pam. He'd also have to know where (or at which building, or on which floor, or in which side) Pam worked.

Connections to other episodes

 * Kelly buys a white bridesmaids dress for Michael's alleged wedding. She also wore a white dress to Phyllis' wedding. On that occasion, she tells everyone that there was an "emergency", but confesses to the camera that she just looks really good in white.
 * This is not the first time Kelly has asked for reimbursement for clothing items from Michael. In "Booze Cruise" she tells Michael that she bought a new swimsuit for the cruise, and is upset when he tells them they won't need one, because she "already took the tags off."
 * Kelly's America's Got Talent mugs make appearances in future episodes.
 * In this episode, Kelly is mad at Jim and Dwight for not coming to her party. In "Business School", Kelly tells Pam that she will "definitely", "for sure" come to her art show, but she doesn't come.
 * In this episode, Kelly is mad at Jim and Dwight for not coming to her party. In "Business School", Kelly tells Pam that she will "definitely", "for sure" come to her art show, but she doesn't come.

Goofs

 * Pam began her three-month art program in "Weight Loss" at the beginning of the summer. This episode takes place in November, yet Pam is still in school. When asked about this, writer Lester Lewis jokingly pretended he had to answer a phone call.
 * When Dwight surprises Kelly in her nook, there is already a camera in place watching Kelly touch up her make-up. It is not clear why the the documentary crew would be covering that, nor is it likely that they could have gotten into position in time. When asked about this, writer Lester Lewis jokingly agreed that the cameraman was "chilling with Kelly at a most convenient time."
 * When Dwight meets with Jim, Pam's Toyota Yaris is in the Dunder Mifflin parking lot, even though she drove it to New York.

Behind the scenes

 * The story was already in development when director (and original Office co-creator) Stephen Merchant joined the project. He participated in final rewrites. Merchant had difficulty entering the country because the form asks whether you were involved in Nazi atrocities, and Merchant thought it would be funny to say "Yes". It was not funny.
 * This episode begins a stretch of episodes in which Matt Sohn served as cinematographer. Randall Einhorn, the show's regular cinematographer, was preparing to direct the next episode "Business Trip", and in subsequent weeks was either doing post-production on previously-directed episodes or preparing to direct new ones.
 * The writers wanted Kelly to be mad at Jim and Dwight for not coming to her party, but couldn't figure out how they would solve the mystery. The writers weren't satisfied with Dwight tapping her phone or Jim finding a recording device. Writer Lester Lewis came up with the idea of using the party favor mugs as clues. He started with Andy, which is a subtle clue because he is probably the character most likely to have a mug with his own face on it, just because. Stephen Merchant was excited about the fact that the episode was a miniature whodunit and relished showing little clues as the story unfolded.
 * The scenes involving Jim and Pam talking on their earpieces were shot separately. The scenes in Scranton were shot first, with Jenna Fischer reading her lines from off-screen. Script supervisor Veda Semarne took careful notes about any changes to the script so that when they shot the scenes at Corporate later in the week, John Krasinski could repeat his lines and Jenna Fischer could respond to them. In the scene between Pam and Alex, the very tall John Krasinski had to curl up and hide under the table in the conference room to read his lines, since that was the only place he could be and remain off camera.
 * A joke that got cut (for good reason) was that upon learning of Michael's purported engagement, Dwight gave him a piece of jewelry to wear for the wedding, with the implication that it was stolen from a Jewish victim of the Holocaust by one of his relatives.
 * After Michael calls Jim into his office, the camera whip-pans to Jim at his desk. The two parts of the scene were filmed on different days, and Steve was not at work for the second half of the scene. (Presumably due the unwritten policy of always giving Steve Carell Monday or Friday off so he could spend more time with his family.) The two parts of the scene were combined during editing, using the whip pan to hide the seam.
 * Angela Kinsey couldn't overcome her Southern accent in order to say the original scripted line "hand-tilled field". It kept coming out as "hand-tealed field". After several failed takes, writer Lester Lewis changed the line to "hand-plowed field", to Kinsey's enormous relief.
 * In the script, Dwight and Jim merely met in the parking lot for a chat. It was Stephen Merchant's idea that Dwight pull up in his car and screech into his parking space. In fact, Merchant wanted Dwight's peel-out to be even bigger, but the parking lot wasn't big enough.
 * The Buttlicker scene was based on an experience of director Stephen Merchant. He worked at a call center, and during the training, the employees practiced their lines with other employees role-playing as customers. Merchant thought it would be useful if he played a more difficult customer, to give the other trainees experience handling a call that didn't go as planned. Eventually, the person in charge of the training told him to stop because he was upsetting the other trainees. The writers took this story back to the writers room and came up with the Buttlicker scene. In another telling of the story, Merchant didn't want to be in training in the first place, so he was "the worst customer ever," until the trainers told him to stop.
 * In the Buttlicker scene, Jim's "I am irate" was improvised, and some minor words were changed, but the scene as filmed was otherwise identical to the script. In one take, Steve Carell improvised hanging up the phone and shouting, "We got the Buttlicker account!"
 * B.J. Novak came up with the idea of the tiny Bluetooth earpieces. He joked that they had a million-minute plan with Dunder-Mifflin Wireless. Unfortunately, it costs a million dollars a month. In 2008, unlimited cell phone plans had just come onto the market but were out of reach of most consumers.
 * It wasn't until the first day of filming that Stephen Merchant realized that Jim and Pam's Bluetooth headsets did not actually exist. They added Pam's line about buying it in a Japanese electronics store to try to explain it away.
 * During the filming of the scene in Kelly's nook, John Krasinski came up with the idea for Pam's excited "That's what she said!"
 * In the script, Dwight was supposed to punch the air triumphantly after solving the mystery. Rainn Wilson improvised the air-kick in one take, and it stayed in the episode.
 * It was scripted that Kelly's fake crying causes her and Michael to laugh, although after Steve Carell starts laughing (as Michael), Mindy Kaling's laugh becomes genuine.
 * The character of Alex was intended as a roadblock between Pam and Jim. He was enamored of Pam, leading up to a profession of love in this episode. Public response to this story line was strongly negative, and the show quickly pivoted away from it.
 * There were ten alternate versions of the final scene between Pam and Alex at Corporate, ranging from what was written in the script (where Alex professes his love for Pam) to a version where he is concerned about her artistic career but has no personal feelings. Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski were not comfortable with the version in the script and were pleased that director Stephen Merchant agreed with them. The show spent several hours filming all the variations of the conversation in the side room and ultimately settled on the one in which Alex talks only about Pam's artistic career.
 * Sommer had a source inside the show that gave him unauthorized copies of scripts ahead of time. He saw that his character professes his love for Pam in "Customer Survey" and was surprised to find the scene rewritten when the real scripts appeared. Up until that time, his character had a crush on Pam, and he was unable to completely change his interpretation of the character to "good friend" when it came time to shoot the scene. Sommer was devastated when director Stephen Merchant came up to him and said, "I don't know why you're not getting this." He ended the day feeling as if his acting career was over.
 * In the script, Jim says to Pam during her conversation with Alex, "Cough if you still love me," and Pam coughs.
 * On the set, Stephen Merchant added the tag where Dwight recognizes the Bluetooth earpiece, in order to break the tension.
 * After filming completed, Angela Kinsey took home her mug. She still has it and uses it to hold pencils.

Cultural references

 *  is a movie set in Nazi Germany.
 * Andy calls Jim "Tommy Tuna", a pun on the name of performer  and Andy's usual nickname for Jim, "Big Tuna".
 *  is an American politician.
 * Dwight plays ' by ' to mask his conversation with Jim in his car.
 * Alex invites Pam to a  retrospective. Chuck Close was an American artist known for his large-scale photo-realistic paintings. He was alive at the time the episode aired but died in 2021.

Main cast

 * Steve Carell as Michael Scott
 * Rainn Wilson as Dwight Schrute
 * John Krasinski as Jim Halpert
 * Jenna Fischer as Pam Beesly
 * B.J. Novak as Ryan Howard

Supporting cast

 * Ed Helms as Andy Bernard
 * Leslie David Baker as Stanley Hudson
 * Brian Baumgartner as Kevin Malone
 * Creed Bratton as Creed Bratton
 * Kate Flannery as Meredith Palmer
 * Mindy Kaling as Kelly Kapoor
 * Angela Kinsey as Angela Martin
 * Oscar Nunez as Oscar Martinez
 * Craig Robinson as Darryl Philbin
 * Phyllis Smith as Phyllis Vance

Recurring cast

 * Rich Sommer as Alex

Guest cast

 * June Squibb as Michael's mother (voice)
 * Steve Zissis as Dwight's client (voice)