How Much Money Did Jim Spend Pranking Dwight On The Office?

Heroes are hard to come by, and even more difficult to emulate. It's just not financially viable. Want to be Iron Man? A prospective Tony Stark can expect to drop between $100 million and several billion dollars, depending on the era. Being the Hulk is probably even more expensive, once you factor in the cost of pants.

Maybe you aim a little lower — considerably lower. Maybe you decide to live like a middlingly successful paper salesman who takes joy in the simple things, like putting smiles on the faces of your coworkers and slowly shattering the already damaged psyche of a beet farmer. How much could it possibly run to live that Halpert life, scamming Dwight with lighthearted shenanigans designed to push him, inch by inch, closer and closer to dribbling lunacy?

A lot, as it turns out. At least, that's the conclusion contributors to Reddit's /r/theydidthemath forum have come to. Summoning the combined mathematical acumen of the Dunder Mifflin accounting department (minus Kevin), users crunched the numbers on each of Jim Halpert's pranks, starting on day one with The Office's pilot: a packet of stapler-encasing Jell-O runs about $1.09. No biggie, right? You could probably afford to gelatin around 90 percent of your coworker's stuff, setting up that "flan" pun 20 or 30 times without needing to reconsider your budget too much. Unfortunately for you (in this rhetorical world where you want to live like Jim), Jell-O is just the tip of this all-consuming iceberg.

Jim's pranks from the show's first season remained relatively affordable, according to the spreadsheet put together by Reddit user jmorley14. Building a pencil fence, assuming that he paid for the office supplies himself, racks up around $17 in expenses. Aside from that, Jim spends the season reminding the world that the best things in life — like locking Dwight in the conference room and tricking him into buying a purse — are free.

Things ramp up in the second season, with Jim paying everyone $5 to call Dwight "Dwayne." $70 total — money well spent. But by season 3, obsession has clearly begun to cloud Jim's mind. Sending Michael and Dwight a "Gaydar" device that's actually a metal detector? A little over $100. Hiring a Benjamin Franklin educational speaker instead of a stripper? $400. Shipping Dwight's desk from Pennsylvania to New Mexico? $956.14, according to a quote that the stalwart researcher got from FedEx on overnight rates for a 150-pound item. Later, Jim's most expensive prank comes in the form of hiring a nanny and buying Morse code lessons for himself and Pam, at an estimated cost of $3,120. In total, the Halpert clan is thought to have lost just shy of $6,000 to their war on the favorite son of Schrute Farms.

And it gets worse. As other users have pointed out, six grand is at the low end of the spectrum in terms of Jim's estimated expenditures. It doesn't take into account things like replacing Dwight's clothes with custom tear-away suits, a professional photoshoot with Pam, the kids, and Steven, or most importantly, the potential cost of damages across the years. Remember when Jim set up a murder scene in Dwight's hotel room? Consider how much a hotel would charge for a mini bottle of tequila, then imagine what kind of fees they'd rack up for a series of enigmatic clues scrawled across the wallpaper. "Yes, Cece, we're having ramen for dinner again. Because daddy hates his coworker, that's why."