Every watch worn in The Office

The Office was never going to top anyone's list of shows worth watching for the timepieces. It is a sitcom about a paper company in Scranton, Pennsylvania. And yet nine seasons produced more identifiable watches than most prestige dramas manage in half the time, worn by characters who never once discuss them on screen. When Steve Carell left the show in 2011, he reportedly gave the entire cast Rolexes as a parting gift, the most expensive watch to ever touch a Dunder Mifflin wrist, and it never once appeared in the show itself.

Steve Carell as Michael Scott wears the Timex T78582 in a photograph from his early days at Dunder Mifflin, years before the Dundies and the motivational posters. A steel-bracelet digital Timex with an expansion band, sold at pharmacy counters and airport gift shops for $40-50. It is the watch of a man who bought something functional without thinking twice, before he had a self-mythology worth building around. He clearly did not know that yet. The watch did.

Michael Scott wears a Timex T21752 through a stretch of The Office that includes a mullet, a striped tie, and a blue fanny pack. Round case, dark dial, black croco strap, date window, nothing to explain. It is the most correct thing he is wearing in that entire photograph. Michael Scott is almost always wrong about everything else in the building.

Michael Scott's most-worn watch across The Office is a Timex T2D611, and it has a perpetual calendar complication that adjusts for month lengths and leap years automatically until the year 2100. On a Patek Philippe, that function costs tens of thousands of dollars. On the T2D611, it costs whatever Timex charges, and nobody at Dunder Mifflin will ever ask about it. Three of Michael's watches are registered on WatchReel. All three are Timex.

Dwight Schrute runs a beet farm, reads Sun Tzu, and considers himself a superior specimen of humanity. His watch has a phone book in it. The Casio DBC-30-1Z stores 30 phone numbers, memos, and schedules, alongside an 8-digit calculator, a serious tool for a man who treats information as a form of power. It cost $30-50 new. Dwight's watch is one of the most on-the-nose character props in the entire series, and it works precisely because the show never treats it as a punchline.

Jim Halpert wears a Victorinox Infantry 24656 through most of The Office: white dial, large Arabic numerals, canvas strap, a Swiss field watch that does exactly what it is supposed to do without requiring explanation. Early in Season 1, before the Infantry becomes his regular watch, he wears a different field watch entirely, black dial, brown strap, same format. Jim Halpert, the most outwardly normal person in Scranton's most unusual office, picks the same kind of watch twice without appearing to think about it either time.

Jim Halpert's Halloween impression of Dwight Schrute in "Product Recall" gets the glasses, the mustard shirt, and the parted hair exactly right. The watch is close but not quite: a Casio EDB-610-1C, one step up from Dwight's actual DBC-30-1Z in Casio's Databank lineup. The entire costume reportedly cost eleven dollars. Jim did enough research to get the brand correct. He did not do enough to get the model right, which is the joke underneath the joke.

Leslie David Baker as Stanley Hudson wears a Timex Easy Reader T2N092: large numerals, gold expansion bracelet, absolutely no frills. Stanley spends nine seasons doing the crossword, waiting for retirement, and caring about exactly as little as his watch requires him to. Both exist to do one job. Neither has any interest in doing more than that.

Ed Helms wears an Orvis Field Watch as Andy Bernard, the a cappella-loving, Cornell-educated salesman who considers himself a cut above Scranton. Orvis built its name on fly fishing and hunting gear, not watches, and the model Andy wears is no longer in production, one of the harder pieces on this list to track down. A preppy American field watch for a man convinced he belongs somewhere nicer. Whether Scranton agrees is a different question.

Robert California talks his way into the CEO position at Dunder Mifflin Sabre during his interview for regional manager. The Rolex Datejust on his wrist, a stainless reference consistent with the 1601, fluted bezel and Cyclops lens, has been in continuous production since 1945 and has not needed to prove itself since. James Spader's most controlled character wears the one watch on this list that requires no explanation, on the one person in the building who would never offer one anyway.

Darryl Philbin runs the Dunder Mifflin warehouse wearing a Casio AMW-320C, a dual-display ana-digi in a resin case, practical and under $50. Nine seasons pass. Darryl gets promoted upstairs, then to a corporate role in Austin. Nobody in the writers' room ever mentions that Roy Anderson, the man who works directly under him, wears the exact same watch.

Roy Anderson works in the Dunder Mifflin warehouse and shows limited interest in anything happening on the floor above him. His Casio AMW-320C is the same reference worn by Darryl Philbin, his supervisor, for all nine seasons, without either the costume department or the show ever drawing attention to it. Roy eventually leaves to start a tile company and does considerably better than anyone expected. The watch, in hindsight, was not wrong about him.

Clark Duke plays Clark Green, a temp who arrives late in The Office and works his way toward relevance with a confidence that consistently outpaces his results. The Timex Weekender T2N654, a $35 canvas-strap analog, is the watch of someone who has not yet worked out which version of success they are chasing. It is the last watch this guide covers, and the newest character to wear one.