I’m presently watching a sitcom called “The Office”, a few episodes per week, because it is a favorite of several of my friends and I have been told that it is a sort of modern cultural touchstone that it will be useful for me to have an understanding of when interacting with others. This has been a bit of a difficult show for me to relate to, as I’ve never worked in any kind of office/cubicle environment, and the majority of the characters all seem like unbelievable caricatures to me.

Of all the characters, the one I instantly hated on sight was the Assistant to the Regional Manager, Dwight Schrute. His fussy need for logic and structure and his obsession with following rules and laws annoyed the crap out of me immediately, and I hated his awkward ways of trying to strengthen his bonds to people and his single-minded loyal devotion to his duties.

And then a terrible thing happened: my best friend said that I didn’t like that character because he behaves in a lot of ways that I do. And then I REALLY hated Dwight Schrute.

The episode I watched most recently, Season 2 Episode 20 – “Drug Testing”, serves as a good illustration of why I hate this character. Upon discovering evidence of illegal drugs on company property, Dwight begins an investigation to determine which of his friends or coworkers may have broken the law and company policy. He goes as far as even serving as the catalyst for drug testing being done in the office, an action that could potentially lead to one of his friends being fired or even arrested.

This sort of black-and-white, polarized thinking made me angry—both because of how it could lead to harm for people Dwight cared about, and also because of the fact that I could EASILY see myself doing the exact same thing at points in my life if I wasn’t careful.

Remember when I talked about role-playing games a couple entries back? In those types of games, there’s something called “character alignment”, which is a system of categorization for a character’s moral and ethical perspectives on life.

The character alignment in role-playing games that I like the best is “Chaotic Good”—characters who act according to their own conscience for what they see as the greater good, regardless of whether or not it goes against societal expectations.

So it’s no surprise that I outright dislike Dwight Schrute, who I believe is confined by a “Lawful Neutral” alignment, intractably obeying rules and laws, even if those structures will cause harm unnecessarily to people he cares about.

The resolution of the episode briefly gave me hope for Dwight, however, as he broke the rules by helping his supposed closest friend—the perpetrator—to subvert the drug testing and get away with his technical misdeed. A devastated and conflicted Dwight then resigns as a Volunteer Sheriff’s Deputy out of shame and deference to the law, which disappointed me since he was ashamed of deciding to surpass the structure of laws he’s ruled by in order to help someone close to him.

Regardless of any comparisons made between me and Dwight Schrute, I am resolute that my natural alignment is different from his. My ethics certainly also veer towards “Lawful”, as my instant inclination is always to follow the rules as they’ve been set out, and it makes me upset to see other people circumventing them and acting “illegally”. However, my moral compass points toward “Good” and not “Neutral”. I strive to work within the laws to find loopholes and ways of using the rules to achieve what I think is ultimately morally right–I’m unwilling to be a puppet to the rules.

I don’t particularly like the lawyer-like boring predictability of being “Lawful Good”—my ambition is to become something much cooler like “Chaotic Good”. But given my own savior complex and ideal of wanting to save everyone, I definitely can’t accept any “Evil” or even “Neutral” alignment wherein someone would abandon others in need out of deference to rules and regulations.

And THAT is why I hate Dwight Schrute.