The Absolute Worst Thing Jim Halpert Did To Dwight On The Office
Everyone can relate to being bored at work. Whether it's that there's simply not much to do, or because the job is just tedious and repetitive, most people have asked themselves, "What am I doing with my life?" on multiple occasions while toiling away at their day jobs. Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) clearly wondered that a lot on the classic comedy series The Office, and he managed to find a not-so-constructive way to deal with his boredom.
There were many questionable things about Jim, but perhaps the biggest one is the fact that time and again, fans of the sitcom watched him prank his colleagues at Dunder Mifflin, most often aiming the joke (or was it bullying?) at his desk mate Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson). You can see how Dwight would have been an easy target for Jim: As someone who liked things to be in order and was a bit neurotic, it didn't take much to rile him up. The fact that he was super gullible didn't help either, and Jim was constantly at the ready to take advantage of this.
Over The Office's nine seasons, Jim pulled more borderline-cruel pranks on Dwight than we could even count — but which of them was the absolute worst? It's tough to come up with just one, but that won't keep us from trying.
When did The Office's Jim Halpert ever work?
Most of Jim's pranks on The Office were pretty harmless, at least in theory. From suspending some of Dwight's office supplies in Jell-O, to popping his fitness orb, to paying coworkers to call him "Dwayne" for the day, to gradually moving Dwight's desk throughout the workday, to... well, you get the idea, the usual result of Jim's antics was simply frustrating the hell out of Dwight.
Arguably the most concerning thing about some of the pranks Jim pulled on Dwight: how the heck he managed to get any actual work done in between coming up with and executing his shenanigans, not to mention all of Dwight's lost productivity while trying to clean up the messes.
Dwight was by no means Jim's only target throughout The Office's run, though. Michael Scott's (Steve Carrell) "World's Best Boss" mug also landed in Jell-O in the pilot — possibly in response to Michael's horrible prank pretending to fire Pam (Jenna Fischer) — while Andy, on a number of occasions, violently lost his temper after being pranked. Dwight also turned things around a few times to prank Jim, presumably as payback for all the pranks he had to endure. One of those pranks, his snowball attack on Jim, saw Jim have a near mental breakdown when he was the one under fire, showing that although he was happy to dish it out, he clearly couldn't take being on the receiving end.
Jim's harmless pranks aren't always harmless on The Office
Some of Jim's pranks, though, were just plain mean — and some even went so far as to actually present the risk of real harm to his targets. You can only take a joke so far, and to paraphrase Michael, you need to know when to stop. Jim definitely did not.
There are plenty to choose from on the list of horrifying pranks Jim pulled on his colleagues. For starters, slapping Dwight across the face just to prove he could execute an attack from the front is, well, kind of assault. Deliberately braking to smash Dwight's face into the back of the driver's seat of his car could also fit that description. Snaking a wire up a telephone pole knowing Dwight would follow it? Another opportunity for grievous bodily harm, or even death, if Dwight were to fall from high enough. To be fair, Dwight could have made the decision on that one not to climb up the pole, but that wasn't in his nature, now, was it?
Jim's reactions to these dangerous pranks was usually either an amused smile or laughter, never concern that he was putting another person in danger. No matter how annoying Dwight may have been, he certainly didn't deserve to have his life risked by a bored colleague for the sake of some cheap entertainment.
Just how far was too far?
The most horrendous prank Jim pulled on Dwight, though, should seriously have resulted in legal consequences for the jokester. In The Office's season 2 episode "Conflict Resolution," we see Dwight lodging a number of complaints against Jim with Michael. One of these: Jim apparently convinced Dwight that there was an abandoned baby in the ladies' restroom. As a result, Dwight had gone into the bathroom and seen a female coworker, Meredith, sitting "on the can," as he delicately put it.
In any other office, a man barging into the ladies' restroom and walking in on a woman on the toilet would be a fireable offense, considering that most people would quite reasonably consider that to fall into the category of sexual harassment. Not only did this prank put Dwight's career in jeopardy (or rather it would have, in literally any office where Michael Scott was not the man in charge), but it would also have caused serious humiliation and even trauma for Meredith. Let's face it, no one likes to be walked in on while "on the can" in their own home by a family member, let alone by a colleague in their office.
The fact that the show portrayed Dwight as the person making the formal complaint instead of Meredith was also problematic, but that's an issue for another day. Jim's pranks, while admittedly hilarious for the viewing audience, went way too far way too often — and there's no arguing that the old "abandoned baby in the ladies' room" ploy was the absolute worst.