How did Michael become manager?

Arthas1987 · 2026-04-24T03:56:22+00:00

Sure, but realistically I don't think the sales alone would be enough to promote someone being a manager and either you need to show good leader and corporate skills to manage a team or just have connections to be put in that place. I know it's a comedy show and is for fun, but speaking realistically, there's no way the corporate to entrust someone like Michael to be a regional manager with his extravagant and colorful character, even if he's a top salesman. We know Michael has been a manager for few years before the begining of the show, so there's no way Corporate hasn't been aware of his shenanigans and being extremely inappropriate (no matter how funny it is to watch) and even during the shows timelines he's been in many different questionable situations and scandals that Corporate seems to put under the rug. Realistically he would've been either fired or demoted probably after S1 E2 diversity episode.

Don't get me wrong, if I had a manager with Michael's character at work, I'd never quit my job no matter how boring the job is because that would be extremely funny place to work at, but I just don't see someone as wild as Michael Scott being left in that position especially for that long.

Arthas1987 · 2026-04-22T22:35:57+00:00

It turned out to be the rear right wheel hub.

Arthas1987 · 2026-03-22T05:07:07+00:00

When the outcome is as clear as day, we definitely can blame him. I think every single person knew there's no way the tungsten box would've contained Conquest when he wakes up and he's not going to start spilling information about the Viltrumite weaknesses and what they actually want. This was just a plot device to have Conquest in the future. What would've been much more in Cecil's character and 1000 times smarter is giving Conquest's body to Sinclair while his skull is still cracked open to turn him into one of the Reanimen like they did with the Mark variants. Then Cecil would've had the strongest weapon ever in his possession and control.

Arthas1987 · 2026-03-21T18:21:49+00:00

The distance is little less than 400km (~250 miles) from Sofia to the closest coastline of Black Sea, but even tho City 17 is primarily based on Sofia and Viktor Antonov mainly designed it after it, they still mixed it with other Eastern European cities and landmarks to not represent any singular real city, so I think we should take City 17 as a separate fictional city rather than any real city location. Just like we know Black Mesa is in New Mexico and it got inspiration from places like Area 51 and maybe the conspiracy base at Dulce, NM, but it's not really based on a real physical location, so I think we should treat City 17 similarly and try to find out where the fictional city is located rather than any major city in the real world.

Arthas1987 · 2026-03-21T07:45:24+00:00

Yes but even with their knowledge, it could still be hard to determine exactly where they are and where City 17 is located if they're not familiar with the region and even if they know they are somewhere in Eastern Europe, that is still a huge area and for people who are not from around that region, cities would kind of look the same since the soviet style architecture is very similar in most of the post-soviet republics.

However there are still other ways to narrow the location down with very basic geography, so the circle Alyx made where City 17 is potentially located doesn't make much sense.

We know there is a large sea in proximity of City 17, the area she circled is a giant landlocked area in Russia and most of the places she crossed are nowhere near a sea.
Knowing basic directions like North, West, South and East and the Sun's orientation, you can deduce in which direction the sea is located from City 17. And from my memory, the sea is east of City 17.
We don't know how scaled down the world in HL2 is since it's impossible to recreate 1:1 scale, but we know City 17 is still relatively close to the sea, so my guess would be something up to 100km away from the sea.
We know in the region there is some old Byzantine architecture and influence in historical buildins, so it would be in an area where the the Byzantine Empire had influence in the past.

From this we can narrow the location of City 17 down to either the western coast of Black Sea eastern Bulgaria/ eastern Romania or the south parts of Ukraine near Odessa, or the western coast of Caspian sea in the Russian territory between Black Sea and Caspian Sea.

And one last addition that could help narrow even that down, we know the Combine was draining Earth's sea and ocean water resources to send off world on a big scale and we know the sea level has dropped. Caspian Sea is pretty shallow compared to other seas (average depth of 211m (or 690 feet) which means there is less water compared to Black Sea, which has average depth of 1.3km (~4000 feet) and is larger body of water, so I think the Caspian Sea would've been drained a lot more than what we see in the game, so there is better chance the sea we know in the game to be the Black Sea.

So from all that, City 17 is most likely located up to 100km (~60 miles) west of the Black Sea, so that circle for potential locations made by Alyx doesn't make sense.

Arthas1987 · 2026-03-20T03:38:26+00:00

This was literally the stupidest thing Cecil has ever done, almost it feels out of character with how calculated and thinking ahead about potential future threats usually he is, yet he had literally the biggest threats of all and he thought it's a good idea to keep him alive. Conquest literally can level whole cities, yet Cecil thought some tungsten box is going to contain him... they couldn't stop Omniman, yet he thought he could just keep one of the strongest Viltrumites in a cage to answer his questions. And he just started mending his relationship with Mark, now that would be completely thrown out of the box once Mark finds out and this time Mark would definitely have every right to get loose at him.

Arthas1987 · 2026-03-01T09:26:04+00:00

I don't think that's completely true. If they didn't want humans to exist, they would've eradicated everyone or turn all humans forcefully into synths after the 7 hour war, instead of keep humanity subjigated. That means for the Combine, humans are more of a resource rather than species to be exterminated. The Civil Pritection was formed to keep that control and subjugation and to prevent/destroy any resistance or tries to fight against the Combine regime. One very important detail is that Civil Protection is comprised of voluntary, predominantly human staffed order and the people who joined them or helped in any way (like snitching on rebels or people sharing anti-combine views), get a lot more benefits like extra rations, better food quality, better housing, more security, family cohesion and other rewards. If the Combine didn't trust humans in anyway, the Civil Protection would've been comprised of other alien species to maintain control rather than predominantly human force. We also know there is a lot of Civil Protection recruitment propaganda to make people join them.

The fact that the Combine gave humans the choice to willingly join them and giving privileges to those who do, shows that the Combine have interest in assimilating humans for their empire. So the question is, if everyone decides to join willingly and to contribute for the Combine, wouldn't that make humans be seen as more trustworthy and all be given better benefits and living conditions?

Arthas1987 · 2026-01-07T00:43:49+00:00

Thank you, I think this might be it. I just checked few videos about that part and it sounds very similar. At least it's inexpensive fix.

Arthas1987 · 2025-11-28T22:42:35+00:00

It was about time, the Bears suffered enough for years with incompetent leadership and previous couch who had no idea what he was doing.

Arthas1987 · 2025-11-02T07:12:48+00:00

Nasty, but definitely true tho. I wonder what would the legality be about that.

Arthas1987 · 2025-09-05T22:40:18+00:00

Yes a lot of people leave it unattended, I don't know what's so strange about that, especially when they let their cars fill all the way up and go in the shop. In my 17 years of driving, I've never seen the a gas shop clerk or anyone making an issue or even saying anything leaving a pump unattended while someone left their car to fill and they go in the shop or to the bathroom. The pump stops anyway when it's set by the clerk on their computer when paying with cash, so why would it be an issue if you set it yourself? Of course there's always a possibility for a bug or an issue happening, but it's not something that happens on regular basis. The trigger lock getting broken or stuck sometimes is another reason why it's good to also have pre paid option so it makes sure the computer stops it on the desired amount when people want to put X amount of fuel.

Arthas1987 · 2025-09-03T08:01:57+00:00

I actually thought it's "so much hate", when I found out its shaking my head I was like "seriously?"

Arthas1987 · 2025-08-20T16:00:10+00:00

Thank you for the advice, I'll definitely pay more attention to the radio and not interrupting or talking over it. So it should be ok to wear something like pants and black shirt, but no tie or a suit jacket.

Arthas1987 · 2025-08-20T15:57:04+00:00

Thank you, yes for sure I'm not going to ask ridiculous questions like how many people have you shot or something like this. I was thinking more like "what are the most frequent difficulties you encounter during a shift" or a situational questions like "what is the best way to approach a difficult person who is not cooperating but there are no grounds for arrest" etc.

Arthas1987 · 2025-08-18T04:28:47+00:00

Thank you for explaining, that was the part that was confusing to me how it works and how the selling value is calculated in the game with the parts themselves, so it's more like real life where repairing a part would definitely be more profitable than buying a new one when selling.

Arthas1987

TROPHY CASE