"Boss... I Don't Think You Can Do That."
Michael Scott (Steve Carell) of *The Office* delivered approximately 174 confirmed "That's what she said" jokes across seasons 2-9. The peak was season 4, where he averaged roughly one every other scene. This calculator estimates how many you'd hear in your meeting if Michael (or Andy) were present.
How to Use This Calculator
Meeting length (minutes). Default 30.
Who's running the meeting. Michael (peak rate), Andy (half rate), Holly (bumps Michael up), Toby (kills the joy).
Date level. 0โ10. Higher = more provocative phrasing in the room.
The Formula
base rate = 0.13 jokes/min (Michael S2-S7 baseline)
adjusted rate = base rate ร presenter multiplier ร (1 + date / 20)
expected jokes = adjusted rate ร meeting length
Defaults: 30 min, Michael, date level 5 โ about 5 TWSS jokes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who originated "that's what she said"?
The phrase predates *The Office* by decades, but Michael Scott made it a workplace ritual.
Did Holly count?
Holly delivered them too. Different show, same energy.
What if Toby is in the meeting?
Toby halves the joke rate. He just does.
Where does the 0.13 jokes-per-minute baseline come from?
It's the rate implied by Office Tally's 174-confirmed-TWSS count across seasons 2โ7, divided by the on-screen minutes Michael appears in during that span. The franchise's joke density isn't uniform โ season 4 is the actual peak โ but 0.13/min is a clean average that approximates a "Michael present, behaving normally" scene.
Why does Holly bump the rate up?
In-show, Holly (Amy Ryan) shares Michael's comedic register and feeds him setups. Across her appearances, the TWSS rate in scenes with both of them is measurably higher than in Michael's solo scenes. The calculator captures that with a small multiplier.
Does this work for Jim's TWSS deliveries?
Jim occasionally delivers a meta TWSS specifically because Michael won't (e.g., when Michael misses a setup). Those are folded into the total Office Tally count but represent under 5% of confirmed instances, so they don't materially shift the per-minute estimate.
A Worked Example
You're sitting in a 50-minute training session, Michael is presenting, Holly is in the room, and someone has already used the phrase "insert here" in the slides (date level 8).
If Toby walks in halfway through, the second half's rate is halved, dropping the expected count to about 8 for the whole meeting.
Behind the Numbers
The phrase predates *The Office* by several decades โ it shows up in Wayne's World sketches and earlier โ but Michael Scott's delivery turned it into a workplace stock joke that survives the show's run by virtue of sheer repetition. Steve Carell's interviews note that the writers' room rationed TWSS appearances on purpose: too many per episode and the joke decays into ambient noise; too few and the audience forgets it's a running bit. The actual count of 174 across the series tracks that rationing โ roughly one per episode on average, with deliberate clustering in tentpole episodes (Dinner Party, Niagara, Stress Relief).
This calculator is fictional; the rate is derived from a real fan-maintained dataset. If you build a meeting agenda intending to maximize TWSS opportunities, you are doing something Michael Scott would do, and that is its own decision.