Our wonder dog, Honey, has taken to joining us for meal preparation. Our kitchen & dining area are big enough for all of us normally, but when two people and a dog -- a large, long dog who stretches out on the rug near the sink, which is in the middle of the working area -- want to make supper, the area is more than crowded and the number of grunts and "Honey, move!" and swear words that arose during onion or carrot chopping made us realize we needed to train Honey to stay out of the main kitchen area during meal prep. That's where Les Nessman comes in.
Andy & I watched WKRP in Cincinnati from the first showed and loved all of the characters, but most particularly Johnny (who reminded me of my brother Jim), Herb and his wonderful suits, and Les. Les taped off his office space in an open concept work area and his co-workers had to knock before they could go in. Honey doesn't knock, but she is now aware of the
tape on the floor, and is becoming more cautious about "entering" during meal prep time.
I've cribbed from Wikipedia for those of you who don't know who Les is.
Les is the ludicrously incompetent news director of WKRP and has been with the station since 1954. Knowing next to nothing about sports, he makes several glaring errors, for example mispronouncing golfer Chi Chi Rodriguez's name as "Chy Chy Rod-ri-gweeze" and calling a swimming event "breast stroking."
Les is a five-time winner of the fictitious Ohio radio news trophy, the "Buckeye Newshawk Award," the coveted "Silver Sow Award" (for excellence in farm news, particularly hog reports), and the "Copper Cob Award" (also for farm broadcasting). Sanders explained that the Silver Sow award was invented as a plot device to give Les a reason to ask Jennifer on a date. The award subsequently "tickled the fancy of hog producers across the country."
Les is featured in WKRP's most famous episode, "Turkeys Away", where he reports on a disastrous station promotion using many of the same phrases as Herbert Morrison describing the 1937 Hindenburg disaster. This scene from "Turkeys Away" is widely acknowledged to be one of the funniest moments in television history.
Les longs to "move up" to a higher-paying job as a TV newsman, and in one episode he shows a video tape to his station friends of himself reporting the news; unfortunately for Les, the tape is so cheaply and badly made, that Nessman runs out quite embarrassed. In another episode, Les shows Venus Flytrap how he has been dyeing his skin black — a parody of John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me. When Bailey Quarters is promoted as a reporter, Les is jealous enough to attempt to upstage her by plagiarizing an initial draft of one of her news stories, unaware that it is partially fictional and thus puts the station's broadcast license in jeopardy
Les works in the WKRP bullpen, a big room with desks for several of the employees. Les believes that as the news director, he should have his own private office, so he puts masking tape on the floor around his desk indicating where walls would be if he had his own office. He insists that anyone who approaches his desk must knock at an imaginary door and wait for permission to come in. He mimes opening and closing a door whenever he sits down at or leaves his desk; once he even took out a set of keys to lock the nonexistent door. All of his colleagues respect his insistence on maintaining his own private space, and play along with his "walls" charade. Mr. Carlson even "knocks" by clicking his heels together, although Jennifer was permitted to ignore the imaginary walls.
