The Fictitious Creed Bratton
There is another Creed Bratton, however, one who is arguably better known and more popular than the original: the quality assurance manager of paper company Dunder Mifflin on the NBC comedy The Office. Not only is this Creed Bratton portrayed by, as well as named after, the real Creed Bratton, the fictitious version is eerily similar to the original.
“Back in the Sixties I was with the Grass Roots,” Creed explains in a deleted scene from the season three episode “Booze Cruise.” “We toured with Janis Joplin, The Doors, Cream. We had a lot of fun. Now I do quality assurance for a paper company. As you can imagine, drugs played a part. They still do. My work calls last about ninety seconds and that’s about as long as I can concentrate.”
Although Creed can be seen in the background during early installments of The Office, he did not play a prominent role—or even given a speaking part—until the season two classic “Halloween.” In that episode, Scranton branch manager Michael Scott is forced by his superiors to layoff a member of his staff. After much stalling and procrastination, Michael decides upon Creed Bratton and calls him into a closed-door meeting to tell him the bad news. Fortunately for fans of the show, the discussion does not go as planned.
“You don’t have to do this Michael,” Creed argues. “Fire someone else. Fire Devon. He’s terrible. I am so much better at my job than Devon.” While Michael backpedals from the unexpected nature of Creed’s remarks, the quality assurance manager continues as if he has already swayed his superior. “Thank you. I knew you’d see it my way, Michael. God bless you. You’re a fine man. You will not regret this either. Devon is terrible, no one’s going to miss him.”
And with that, Creed walks out of Michael Scott’s office with his job intact.
Devon, however, is not the only person on The Office to lose his job because of the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of the fictitious Creed Bratton. When a disgruntled paper mill employee places an obscene watermark on Dunder Mifflin product, the blame is initially placed at the feet of the quality assurance manger. “Every week I’m supposed to take four hours and do a quality spot check at the paper mill,” Creed explains. “And of course the one year I blow it off, this happens.”
The blame does not stick for very long, however. Creed immediately calls the paper mill and explains that he was supposed to meet with one of their floor managers the previous week but the person was absent. He goes on to ask which floor manager was off that week as well as the specific day. With the needed information in hand, Creed approaches Dunder Mifflin salesman Dwight Schrute.
“When I went over Wednesday for the spot check I got a call from Debbie Brown saying she has an emergency dentist appointment,” Creed tells Dwight. “Now I’m told she told her manager she had the flu. I’m a trusting guy but I just wish Debbie Brown had been there. We would have caught this.”
Debbie Brown, a working mother, is subsequently fired from her position.
“I feel terrible about Debbie Brown,” Creed tells the camera. “She got fired because of Dwight. So I thought I’d pass around a goodbye card, maybe everyone could put in a couple bucks to help her through these difficult times. Why do bad things always happen to the good people? It is tragic, just tragic.”
In the end, Creed takes all the money he has collected out of the envelope, sticks it in his own pocket and throws the actual card in the trash.
“Oh I steal things all the time,” he previously explained in the season two finale of The Office. “It’s just something I do. I stopped caring a long time ago. You should see how many supplies I’ve taken from this place. Honestly, I love stealing things.” In that episode, called “Casino Night,” Creed distracts patrons at a Dunder Mifflin-sponsored charity event and proceeds to pocket their gambling chips. As the evening draws to a close, he emerges as the person with the most chips and receives a mini-fridge and a $500 donation to his favorite charity as a reward.
“I’ve never owned a refrigerator,” he remarks about the first prize while commenting in regards to the second, “There’s a great soup kitchen in downtown Scranton. Delicious pea soup on Thursdays. I’ll probably give the money to them.”
While Creed’s antics have made him a fan-favorite, it’s his offbeat comments like the ones above that have truly endeared him to aficionados of The Office. Some other examples of these Creedisms include:
“The only difference between me and a homeless man is this job. I will do whatever it takes to survive, like I did when I was a homeless man.”
“I’m not offended by homosexuality. In the Sixties, I made love to many, many women. Often outdoors, in the mud and the rain. And it’s possible a man slipped in. Would be no way of knowing.”
“I run a small fake ID company from my car with a laminating machine that I swiped from the sheriff’s station.”
“I’ve been involved in a number of cults, both as a leader and a follower. You have more fun as a follower but you make more money as a leader.”
“Creed Bratton has never declared bankruptcy. When Creed Bratton gets in trouble, he transfers his debt to William Charles Schneider.”
That last quote is of particular interest as William Charles Schneider is the birth name of the actual Creed Bratton. While The Office has not shied away from using the real first names for much of the support staff—including Angela, Phyllis and Oscar—the character of Creed Bratton has apparently been modeled after the original more so than anyone else on the show.
“I think maybe they were gonna incorporate the music part of it with me and then it didn’t happen,” the real Creed Bratton explained to Beatweek Magazine in May 2010. “So I ended up with my first and last name, but William Charles Schneider is my real name. And that’s my real passport. It’s crazy. Why? I don’t know. But it certainly makes me confused. I’m not gonna get caught trapped in any country, am I? Because if they say ‘Well that’s not you,’ I can say, ‘Well let’s go online, I’ll show you it’s me.’ I’ve got documentation, quite a lot of it. Wikipedia knows who I am, buddy.”
Fans of The Office know who Creed Bratton is as well. From being able to identify Northern Light Cannabis Indica from a simple photograph of a marijuana plant to selling office equipment to make a quick $1200 when it incorrectly appears that the Scranton branch was shutting down to replacing a card on the largest present at a wedding to give the appearance that the gift was actually from him, Creed Bratton has left an indelible mark on the NBC sitcom as much as any other character. And while the real Creed Bratton may not have the mischievous persona of his fictitious offspring, he apparently does share the same offbeat personality.
“It will probably destroy my cred—destroy Creed’s cred—to tell you that I live a really clean life these days,” he told Spinner.com in March 2010. “But I do get asked to perform secret ops from time to time.”
Anthony Letizia (July 19, 2010)
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