Kate Flannery has found one more reason to be sentimental about The Office: the sitcom did not just change her career, it helped change her personal life, too. As the actress prepares to revisit her years at Dunder Mifflin in a new memoir, she has been looking back at a show that gave her much more than Meredith Palmer and a very memorable taste for chaos.

Meredith Palmer may have been the office’s resident chaos agent, but Kate Flannery found something considerably sweeter on set.

Speaking to Variety at Greg Daniels’ Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony, Kate Flannery described her upcoming memoir, Overserved: The Lucky Life of the Office Drunk, as a “love letter to The Office" and connected the sitcom directly to the romance that grew out of her time on the show. She also joked that she and longtime boyfriend Chris Haston are like the real-life Jim and Pam.

"It's basically a love letter to The Office. I'm a late bloomer. I was 40 years old and still waiting tables in Beverly Hills when I got the job," she began, talking about her book.

"And then I met my boyfriend on the show, NBC photographer, Chris Haston, and we are like the real-life Jim and Pam," Flannery gushed. 

Flannery's comparison is not exactly pulled from thin air. Like Jim and Pam, Flannery and Haston met through the workplace before eventually becoming a couple. The difference is that their office was one of television’s most famous fictional workplaces, and their story unfolded while the cameras were actually rolling. Flannery joined The Office as Meredith Palmer in its first season, while Haston worked behind the scenes as an NBC photographer.

That makes the memoir’s affection for the series rather more personal than the usual celebrity trip down memory lane. Overserved: The Lucky Life of the Office Drunk, due December 1, promises behind-the-scenes stories from Flannery’s nine seasons on the sitcom, including the making of some of Meredith’s most outrageous moments.

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And if the show gave Flannery the workplace, Haston apparently supplied the plotline that Meredith herself never saw coming.

Kate Flannery and Chris Haston met while working on The Office, but romance did not arrive with the pilot. According to Flannery’s account on The Jennifer Hudson in 2025, Haston attended one of her comedy shows toward the end of Season 2 and later called her on St. Patrick’s Day in 2006 to ask her out. He knew she already had plans that night, however, so their first date came later.

Haston eventually became a familiar face around the series, appearing as a photographer and even dancing with Flannery during Dwight and Angela’s wedding in the finale. His work also placed him behind some of the show's most memorable visual moments, making their relationship unusually intertwined with the series itself.

Flannery has previously said they did not start dating until she was 41 and credited their age with bringing patience, humor and more realistic expectations to the relationship. So yes, Jim and Pam finally got their happy ending. But apparently Dunder Mifflin had another one hiding in the background.

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What do you think of Kate Flannery writing a love letter to The Office? Let us know in the comments.