Creed Bratton (The Office)

Creed Bratton is a character from the NBC sitcom The Office, played by the musician of the same name as a fictionalized version of himself. He is depicted as an elderly man working in the Scranton, Pennsylvania branch of Dunder Mifflin Paper as a quality assurance director. He claimed he was born on November 1st, 1925. In the final episode of season 7, Creed is the temporary manager of the Scranton branch as the company looks to hire a new manager to replace Deangelo Vickers. At the finale of season 9, Creed is arrested for his various crimes over the years after he faked his own death.

Creed Bratton
Creed Bratton as his fictional self
First appearance	"Pilot" (2005)
Last appearance	"Finale" (2013)
Created by	Greg Daniels Ricky Gervais Stephen Merchant
Portrayed by	Creed Bratton
In-universe information
Aliases	William Charles Schneider Jeff Bomondo "Papa Smurf" Creed Burton
Occupation	Guitarist in "The Grass Roots", Quality Assurance Director, Dunder Mifflin Scranton, Acting Regional Manager of Dunder Mifflin Scranton
Nationality	American, Swiss

Overview

Creed Bratton is a former hippie and homeless man who is a quality assurance representative working at the Scranton branch of the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. It becomes more apparent throughout the series that he is a prolific criminal and is arrested after faking his own death in season 9. Throughout most of the series, Creed has the most seniority and is the oldest at the Scranton branch.

Origins

Although not much is known of Creed's origins as a child, he claimed to have been born in the United States and having a Swiss passport in the episode Lotto and recalls being born on November 1st numerous times. In The Injury, Creed mentioned being in an Iron Lung as a child.

In Finale, manager Dwight Schrute mentions how Creed was in the band the Grass Roots in the 1960s, as well as how he sold drugs, trafficked endangered species meat, and stole weapons grade LSD from the military.

Dunder Mifflin

Creed was never actually hired, but walked in one day, and acted like he worked there and has been going in every day since then. He now serves as the quality assurance manager. Creed can be counted on to shirk nearly all responsibility, ranging from informal office duties such as spring cleaning[1] to his primary job responsibilities.[2]

Personal life

Creed teeters on the edge of homelessness and has professed his willingness to do whatever it takes to avoid becoming homeless again.[2] He lives in Toronto, spending three nights a week there in order to milk the welfare state, and surreptitiously sleeps under his desk the remainder of the week.[3] In another episode, he reveals to Jim that he lives in Scranton near "the quarry" and invites Jim to "throw things down there" with him, to which Jim sarcastically answers, "Definitely we should". Creed was additionally briefly romantically involved with Meredith Palmer.[4]

Lack of morals

Creed appears not to be bound by moral guidelines, exhibited most notably by his kleptomania. The episode "Casino Night" provides the first glimpse into this side of Creed's personality. He steals gambling chips in order to win the evening's prize and admits in a talking head interview, "I love stealing things" and "Oh, I steal things all the time. It's just something I do. I stopped caring a long time ago." Once revealed, his kleptomania returns in subsequent episodes, either explicitly or implicitly. For example, he takes a toy from a toy drive drop box[5] and returns $40 to Michael; when Michael says that he didn't give Creed the money, Creed tells him, "In a way, you did," implying that he stole it from Michael.[6] He has been caught stealing at least twice by Jim. In the episode titled "Local Ad," Jim buys breakfast for Pam because she slept at her desk all night. When she wakes, Jim explains that Creed snatched her hash browns while she was asleep on her keyboard.

Creed's lack of shame or morals extends beyond mere kleptomania. He places his wedding card on another guest's gift,[7] and blatantly stares at Pam's chest when she wears a low-cut sweater. When she asks him to stop, he serenely says, "In a minute."[8] In a deleted scene, Creed says that he has a friend named Jorge who will hook Toby up with anything he wants, including "this amazing coffee that you snort". Creed also was seen searching through Pam's desk in Season 4, episode 2.

When it appears that the branch will be closing in "The Merger," Creed lists all of the office equipment on Craigslist and can be seen throughout the episode selling printers and computers illegally. Upon learning that the branch will not be closing, he uses the money to buy the staff drinks.

In "Product Recall," he not only engineers the firing of a blameless employee to cover for his mistake, but he sends around a sympathy card for her and then pockets all of the cash in it, throwing the card in the trash.

Creed believes that his blog URL is www.creedthoughts.gov.www\creedthoughts, but his "blog" is actually a Word document with the title expressly chosen to look like a URL, set up by Ryan Howard, wanting to "protect the world from being exposed to Creed's brain". Describing the content of the blog, Ryan says, "Even for the Internet, it's pretty shocking." NBC provided the character with an actual blog.[9]

References

1. Episode "The Secret".
2. Episode "Product Recall".
3. Episode "The Coup," deleted scene.
4. Episode "The Manager and the Salesman."
5. Episode "A Benihana Christmas".
6. Episode "The Negotiation".
7. Episode "Phyllis' Wedding".
8. Episode "The Coup".
9. "Creed Thoughts". NBC. Archived from the original on December 1, 2011.