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Similarly, while wanting to be regarded by his staff as " A friend first, and a boss second, probably an entertainer third ", he displays a chronic lack of awareness and regard for others ' feelings.

In the first episode of the series, he brings Dawn to tears by joking that she is to be fired for stealing Post-it notes.

At the end of Series One, a not-unexpected restructuring of Wernham-Hogg sees Brent's boss pose Brent an unattractive choice: he can accept a promotion to the Corporate board, which would lead to the Slough office being merged to Swindon and most of his employees ending up unemployed, or he can keep his post in Slough and the Swindon office would then be merged to Slough, with his workers remaining on the payroll.

Brent, failing to see any dilemma or conflict of loyalty, immediately and delightedly accepts the job and is later bewildered by the failure of those who will be made redundant to be pleased for him.

However, he later fails a medical test and the plan for the branch merger is reworked, with Brent's Swindon counterpart moving to Slough as David's superior and bringing several of his own genuinely loyal personnel with him.

An unctuous older worker named Malcolm, tries to confront his ( in Malcolm's view ) falsely noble tale of " turning down " the corporate job with the medical news by faking high blood pressure, Brent refuses to admit this to Malcolm.