Hardly Working

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Sarah:A tiger broke into the office! Jeff: Well that doesn't make any sense. *beat* Jeff: The tiger's eating me!

College-Humor's Hardly Working is an online series of shorts taking place in the office from which the College-Humor website is run. The series is written by and stars the CH staff. The first shorts were ten-second-long, one-joke bits shot with a cam-corder for fun, but as their popularity grew they expanded into full sketches several minutes long and shot with multiple professional cameras.

Most of the shorts take place in the context of supposed everyday life working at the website. The most prominent subseries within Hardly Working is Jake and Amir, a Boke and Tsukkomi Routine between the two titular characters.

Tropes used in Hardly Working include:

• Acting for Two: Or three or four. Several cast members play multiple characters, often with little more than a wig as a distinction. Streeter Seidel and Josh Ruben are the main examples
• Added Alliterative Appeal:

Pat: I made you this balloon animal. Streeter: I made you this bassoon animal. Pat: I made you this doubloon animal. Dan: No more "words ending in -oon" animals! (Streeter drops a spoon animal)

• Ambiguously Gay- Jake frequently enourages all the guys to kiss each other, or suck each other off. "See Office Fight"
• Answer Cut -In You'll Never Guess:

Dan: I’m going to the conference room Sam: You’ll never guess what they're doing there Dan: Oh, let me guess. They’re all topless, reenacting the final, climatic scene to A Few Good Men. *Cut to conference room* Pat: YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!

• Bi the Way - Most of the male cast. It's played around with a lot.
• Blood Splattered Warrior- Jake in Over Realistic Buck Hunter
• Boke and Tsukkomi Routine - Amir and Jake, respectively
• Brick Joke: In "Stewie Keychain". It's even lampshaded with a good bit of Breaking the Fourth Wall.
• Butt Monkey: The whole cast takes pretty equal turns in being the Butt Monkey. Mostly Pat, though.
• The Cameo: Lin-Manuel Miranda, rapper and Broadway lyricist, shows up in "Rap Battle."
  • Parodied in the episode "Jump the Shark," where Tony Hawk supposedly shows up.
• Casual Danger Dialog: Taken Up to Eleven in "Emergency Flirt": A tiger is trying to break down the door and Pat is flirting with a cute animal control operator.
• Censor Suds: Showering With Girls.
• Cloudcuckoolander - Amir is a disturbing example.
  • Dan ventures into this territory as well.
• Cluster F-Bomb- In "Jeff Goes Christian Bale"
• Cool Teacher- Dan in "Cool Teacher". Though he's so cliche he just annoys everyone. Also, they're not actually his students.
• Dead All Along - Streeter in Camouflage.
• Death As Comedy
• Dead Baby Comedy - Not as consistent as oother shows, but when they do you will know. The "worst" offender is probably parent game.
• Depending on the Writer: The personalities of both Amir and Jake in Hardly Working differ somewhat from their characterization in their own series, ironically with Jake frequently being an obnoxious idiot and Amir often as the straight man.
• Divide By Zero - "I'm tweeting about how pissed I am that twitter's down"
• Earthshattering Kaboom: As a result of Murph tweeting about how Twitter is down.
• Ensemble Cast
• Evil Counterpart: Wa-Dan.
• Expectation Lowerer: Pat in Wishful Thinking.
• Fake Irish: When Streeter goes from being Irish-American to just Irish.
• Five-Man Band
  • The Hero-Jake
  • The Lancer-Amir
  • The Smart Guy-Pat
  • The Big Guy-Streeter
  • The Chick-Sarah
  • The Sixth Ranger-Dan/Jeff
• For Want of a Nail - Time Traveler
• George Jetson Job Security - In most of the Hardly Workings with Ricky he's either firing somebody or gets close to. In "Fired Up" he almost fires a girl, who simply says no to him and it's over just like that.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: In "Consciences."
• Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: Jeff in Flash Forward.
• Happy Birthday to You: In celebrating Sarah's birthday, nobody remembers the birthday song.
• Heterosexual Life Partners - Amir thinks he and Jake are this. Jake is perpetually disgusted and horrified by him.
• Hoist By His Own Petard: In "Pee Prank," Streeter tries to pull the "fingers in hot water while sleeping" prank on Jake, but when he tests the temperature of the water, pees himself.
• If I Can't Have You: Pat in "My Bloody Valentine".
• The Internet: Shows up several times, as they work for a website. Once, they even found the source of the Internet.
• Jumping the Shark: Parodied in the episode "Jump The Shark," in which a new SpinOff is introduced, Tony Hawk appears as a Guest Star, two characters get engaged, they move to a new building, Amir gets replaced, and Jeff gives birth to a baby Supreme Court justice. Also, the whole cast gets replaced at the very end with a younger cast.
• Mind Screw: Often.
  • From "Trading Lunches:"

Pat: I will give you that rice krispie treat I ate yesterday. Dan: I don't know, didn't you eat that yesterday? (Pat spits out a whole rice krispie treat) Dan: No Thanks.

• Motor Mouth - Amir in "Speed 3- Blabber Mouth".
• Negative Continuity - Characters are killed off or change careers all the time, but return immediately in the next video.
  • Inverted by Jake and Amir. So far there has not been any continuity errors and it even has the odd Continuity Nod or two.
• Papa Bear - Pat's Step Dad in "Step Dad" sees himself as this, based almost entirely on the fact that he gets Pat extra large cheese pizzas.
• "Previously On..." - Parodied in "Last Week".
• Right Behind Me - Parodied in All Nighter He's Right Behind Me.
• Screams Like a Little Girl - Dan in "Dodgeball." And "Stomp."
• Serious Business: "Desk Toys," "Box Fort," "Jinx," "Religiously," and "Basketball Phone," to name a few.
• Shout-Out - Loads, usually to popular movies or songs.
• Small Name, Big Ego- Ricky is portrayed as this, having a full scale picture of himself in his office and scattered around the office in general. He also is his own favorite employee,as shown in "Ricky's Diary".
• Stalker With a Crush- Amir has a binder with in-depth descriptions of everything Jake has ever worn to work since he's started working there. Jake is understandably disturbed by this.
• Stay in The Kitchen- Sarah gets a whirlwind of misogynistic insults in "60's Day". Mainly because she was aiming for late 60's,while everyone else was going for late 50's/early 60's.
• The Aggressive Drug Dealer - Seen in Amir and Streeter.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill - Attempted in "Bug".
• The Smurfette Principle - Sarah is portrayed most of the time as being the only girl in the office, with most of the guys there having a crush on her. Exemplified wonderfully in "Sarah's Revenge".
• Took a Level In Badass - Everyone in Die Hardly Working.
• Train Station Goodbye: Parodied in Wait!, where no one can tell who they are saying goodbye to.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend - Amir's "Overgrown Guy Girlfriend". Also counts as The Load.
• What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?: Both played straight and subverted. In "Double Jointed," Streeter, Pat, and Sarah are able to rip off their scalps, tie up people with their tongues, and stick their hands through their stomachs. Amir enters, does a Vulcan salute and Pat and Sarah throw up.
  • It helps that the episode is stop-motion animated.
• X Meets Y: Stella meets The Office.