After seven seasons, Steve Carrell is finally stepping down from The Office. As office manager Michael Scott, Carrell was a master of the late-oughts vogue for the comedy of discomfort: needy, controlling, nonplussed, and starved for intimacy. The skin-crawling awkwardness that pervaded the office of The Office always made it hard for me to watch (although I did eventually watch a couple of seasons) and now in retrospect I think I understand why: Michael Scott is the epitome of the bad professor.

Professors are in many ways middle management and like Michael we have our own small captive audiences that we play to. Our little pronouncements can give us a small sense of power, and we specialize in making others jump through our hoops. It’s for this reason that I found Scott’s behavior so atrocious. Positions of authority give one the opportunity to do less when they obligate you to do more, to be more indulgent of one’s desire to feel potent when one should be more selfless about what you can do for others.

I’m sure we’ve all met teachers like Michael Scott — in fact I’m sure our students see more than a little Michael Scott in our own behavior from time to time. While I did eventually come to like The Office (or at least the first couple of seasons) I still come away from every episode thinking: ‘note to self: do better than that’. There has been a lot of wild speculation in the press about whether the show can go on without Carrell, but I am sure of one thing: whoever they get to fill his shoes will not do as much to remind us of sound pedagogy as he did. Adieu, cautionary tale extraordinaire.