One of the most touching parts of The Office is a scene in Season 7 with Pam and Jim. They’re hidden away in the stairwell, the camera panning around sneakily to catch a conversation they’re having about Pam’s new role as Office Administrator.

Pam emotionally laments that she’s frightened to fail, and Jim, as always, assures her she hasn’t. The subtext being: Pam’s great! She’s pretty! He loves her! Also: this is TV. Failure doesn’t exist.

But in a starkly serious moment, she replies, “That’s what you said about Art School, and that’s what you said about sales… I’m not an artist, and I’m not a salesman. So what would you call it?”

This time, Jim doesn’t have a response. He knows, and the audience does too, that her shortcomings are real. Pam’s career really is fraught with failure: she hosts an art show and gets mercilessly burned, she goes to art school and doesn’t graduate, she tries her hand at sales and can’t seem to land a deal.

Welcome To Reality

This article isn’t about roasting Pam. In fact, I think Pam’s career is important to talk about. Her progression is an all too familiar portrait of how many women exist in the workplace — never taught to speak up, have confidence, or push ourselves further than where we are. She finds it more comfortable for her to support her partners, Roy and Jim, and her boss, Michael, than to stand out and back herself.

failure and complacency and the day-to-day, soul-crushing grind is a real thing

She’s often considered a role model for “what not to do”. But a character genuinely struggling with their failures is something we rarely see on television. Usually, knock-backs are considered a stepping stone to genuine success — a hiccup in a montage that’s representative of how life goes.

And sometimes that’s true! But often it’s not. Sometimes, when you get knocked down, you find yourself just staying there.

I personally don’t want to be shown another Sex & The City or Suits, where the protagonist is a shining genius who has a perfect career. If Pam shows us anything, it’s that failure and complacency and the day-to-day, soul-crushing grind is a real thing. And it’ll come for all of us at some point in our careers.

Art For The Sake Of It

But despite all of the above, Pam does show us a form of success. She still went to art school. And she still does drawings for captions contests, and makes comic books for Jim. Her painting is hung up in the office, overseeing her coworkers every single day. Her art exists as part of her life. Whether she makes it into her career isn’t important. A lot of people don’t turn their passion into a way to make money, and that’s OK.

Along with this, she’s a mother and a really caring friend. She brings in a steady paycheck. We need to make that version of the story — that version of success — more acceptable.

At the end of the episode, the one I was referencing at the start of this episode, Pam does succeed. She bluffs her way in to convincing Dwight to stop being such an asshole landlord, giving her what she needed to keep moving forward. She didn’t get a magical letter that told her she won a graphic design competition, or receive a huge medal saying “You Won At Life”.

She set out to get the little win, and she got it.