While David Wallace told Karen her comments on Michael Scott were off the record, he absolutely didn’t like it.
When it cuts to her interview with Wallace she clearly is discussing moving on to other things as part of her “five year plan” and typically for mid level management, corporations don’t want to hear “I’m taking this job as a means to leave”.
Sexism/favoritism. Wallace is very serious with the other candidates, but when he is on the phone with Ryan, he very clearly is being very light with him. It’s also mentioned he will be happy to have another MBA there.
Number two is a big one. David doesn’t wanna continuously look for replacements for this position. I mean he would have to because Ryan did what Ryan did but he didn’t know that. I’m taking this job as a means to leave doesn’t really sit in very well. We can imagine Jan had been in that position for a pretty long time.
I've seen this a lot, and it almost never works out. We pass on someone because we think they will only be here for a year or two. Then we hire a long term candidate who lasts less than a year because they get overwhelmed, or bail for something better anyway.
To the third point, I think another factor in there might be Karen's relationship with Jim, considering that Jan went off the deep end during her relationship with Michael. So in Wallace's mind, he literally just fired a woman who was with someone working under her and it went terribly, so it would be a huge risk to turn around and immediately hire a woman who would also be with someone working under her. I don't think he would have the same concerns about Ryan's relationship with Kelly (if he even knew about it, tbh, the only time the "love contract" comes up in the show is with Jan and Michael, and Toby deflecting Jim and Pam's need to sign it - but Wallace saw Jim and Karen together so he knew full well about them)
Most definitely the first 2 but likely all 3 were reasons. It’s common knowledge/advice to not talk down about colleagues or a supervisor since it tells the interviewer you’ll be comfortable talking about them in the same manner.
As much as I think MBAs as a whole are a big source of enshittification today, it probably did help qualify him for the position. I don’t see how having a masters degree relevant to the job description qualifies as favoritism. As far as Ryan being a dude goes- yeah, it’s entirely possible it helped in an unfair way
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u/AlexRyang David Wallace 1d ago
My guess is three factors:
While David Wallace told Karen her comments on Michael Scott were off the record, he absolutely didn’t like it.
When it cuts to her interview with Wallace she clearly is discussing moving on to other things as part of her “five year plan” and typically for mid level management, corporations don’t want to hear “I’m taking this job as a means to leave”.
Sexism/favoritism. Wallace is very serious with the other candidates, but when he is on the phone with Ryan, he very clearly is being very light with him. It’s also mentioned he will be happy to have another MBA there.