"The Office" is instead an exercise in comic austerity; its humor rests entirely on the wincingly embarrassing missteps and vagaries of David and his lackluster staff members.

Truly embarrassing missteps are unlikely, saysJohn McMillan, an economist at the University of California at San Diego, because other countries have already made them.

Mostly, they concerned embarrassing missteps or were leaks by whistle-blowers who saw things going wrong and wanted to tell somebody.

That would turn out to be an embarrassing misstep.

But his departure is the latest sign that Mr. McGreevey is trying to retool an administration hampered by sagging polls numbers and embarrassing missteps.

Still, the company has made some embarrassing missteps recently, as in its failure to swiftly respond to consumers' taste for new toothpaste flavors and formulas.

He suffered some embarrassing missteps with appointees and saw two of his vetoes overridden by the Democratic-controlled Legislature, a record for a first-year Mississippi governor.

But Acela has had more than its share of embarrassing missteps.

Of course, MSN was originally the banner for one of Microsoft's most embarrassing missteps, a subscription-based on-line service meant to crush America Online.

But they said that the failure to disclose the flaw promptly and fix it was an embarrassing misstep for the company.