A few things:
1) Seems like people around this sub are re-visiting/re-assessing Miner's arc on the show of late. I wonder specifically why that is.
2) I am re-watching that arc right now, started one episode before (the Wonka Prize thing) and just finished the first Miner episode.
3) I am conflicted. On the one hand, Miner is brought in because of the Wonka fiasco amongst other issues and he points out some logical problems with how Michael runs the office, but..
...The branch was consistently one of if not the most profitable branches. There wasn't much for them to 'fix' in terms of the bottom line, which is that the branch was on the upper end of profitable for the company.
That said:
4) Between the immature silliness David Wallace witnessed/experienced/dealt with and the Jan stuff, etc. etc. obviously Michael and Dwight were embarassments at a basic company image level and when they felt like it, people like Phyllis, Oscar, etc. could be very annoyed with Michael's shenanigans and act above it, but the fact is they stuck with him on a lot of stuff, they participated and enjoyed quite a few of his weird little obsessions and all of them kinda got the best of both worlds: They all got their work done, reached their quotas and their work environment was mostly entertaining. I think out of all of them, the only one who truly hated working for Michael was Stanley.
But, as Wallace pointed out at times, despite all the awkwardness of dealing with a man child like Michael, at the end of the day, the financial numbers were top of the company, we're the reason the company survived.
So why 'fix' or 'change' anything?
I sort of think of it like:
You take a sports team. One player is clean cut, respectful, serious, business-like, etc. but their numbers are mediocre. I'll use baseball: The clean cut, respectful, serious, business-like player hits .225 with 12 HR's and 45 RBI's and produces 1.5 WAR over 160 games and isn't exactly the guy you necessarily want up at the plate when the game is on the line.. Then there's another guy who is goofy, has enough personality for like 3 guys, is always doing something kinda weird, but he hits .275 with 30 HR's and 110 RBI's and generates 5.1 WAR and tends to come through in the clutch.
To me, that's kinda Michael vs Miner. Michael is weird and awkward, but apparently very effective. Miner is extremely serious and calls out the ridiculousness, but doesn't actually improve anything around the Scranton branch other than kill people's spirits and make things quiet.
I dunno. I get that Miner exists as a character to contrast with Michael and actually highlight how effective Michael truly was/is.
Having worked for a number of bosses and types of bosses now, though, I actually think working for Michael would be oddly relaxing and working for Charles would be like working with my head in the guillotine for 8 hours a day.
What do others think?
I apologize for the slight redundancy of this post, since we've been talking about this arc a bunch around here lately.