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CALMCO.
Illustration of Michael Scott as Prison Mike from The Office — the manager you don't want to become.

Am I Michael Scott?

An honest 10-question quiz for managers.

You'll get 10 first-person workplace scenarios. Pick the option closest to how you actually operate. Michael Scott will react to each. With a keyboard, press 1, 2, or 3 to answer instantly, and ← → or Enter to move between questions.

Not a manager? Take the employee version instead →

Methodology & Scoring

Each scenario maps to a workplace red flag documented in peer-reviewed research or major workplace surveys. The same patterns identified in the employee-facing version apply here — only the point of view changes. The sources below shaped both the scenarios and the scoring thresholds.

Scoring: Each scenario is scored 0 (healthy), 1 (occasional friction), or 2 (persistent pattern). Total scores range from 0 to 20.

Sources by scenario

  1. The Feedback Ambush — Zhao, Dunkailo, Clair & Boyd, “When Feedback Crosses the Line” (HBR, 2026). 23% of 402 employees reported public shaming; 78% recalled destructive feedback years later.
  2. The Moving Target — Tubre & Collins, “Role Ambiguity, Role Conflict, and Job Performance” (Journal of Management, 2000). Meta-analysis showing role ambiguity significantly predicts stress, burnout, and lower performance.
  3. The Credit Thief — Chen, Li, Yang, Zhang & Hou, “The Idea Is Mine!” (Frontiers in Psychology, 2022). 418 leader-employee pairs: credit claiming triggered anger and reduced job performance.
  4. The Loyalty Test — Parker & Dinesh, “More than 4 in 10 U.S. workers don’t take all their paid time off” (Pew Research, 2023). 46% under-use PTO; 21% fear job loss for taking it.
  5. The Inner Circle — Graen & Uhl-Bien, “Development of Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Theory” (The Leadership Quarterly, 1995); Li, “Perceived Workplace Favoritism” (Central Michigan University, 2018). 47% of employees reported favoritism; even favored employees had higher exhaustion and turnover intent.
  6. The Fire Drill — Smith, “5 Tactics to Combat a Culture of False Urgency” (HBR, 2023). False urgency kills deep work and drives burnout; multitasking from urgency culture cuts productivity by up to 40%.
  7. The Information Trap — Jiang, “Why Withholding Information at Work Won’t Give You an Advantage” (HBR, 2019). Three studies: knowledge hiders are 17% less likely to thrive; poor info-sharing costs large firms ~$47M/year.
  8. The Ethical Gray Zone — Kish-Gephart, Harrison & Trevino, “Bad Apples, Bad Cases, and Bad Barrels” (Journal of Applied Psychology, 2010). Meta-analysis of 136 studies: organizational pressure drives unethical decisions more than individual character.
  9. The Micromanager — Zak, “The Neuroscience of Trust” (HBR, 2017). High-trust companies see 74% less stress, 106% more energy, 50% higher productivity. Autonomy is “the antidote to micromanagement.”
  10. The Slow Drain — Salvagioni et al., “Physical, psychological and occupational consequences of job burnout” (PLoS ONE, 2017). Systematic review: burnout predicts cardiovascular disease, depression, insomnia, and mortality below age 45.

Baseline surveys