I don't really see a big difference between 'reflecting reality' and 'shaping reality'; this is why people do their hair and makeup in front of a mirror.

Michael Scott being the boss on one of the most popular shows on television is relateable but it also normalizes and conditions us to expect behavior like this from bosses and authority figures in our lives. It doesn't matter if people wouldn't like him in their own life, it reinforces capitalist realism in the minds of the uncritical viewers.

Capitalist realism being the pervasive cultural and ideological belief that capitalism is the only viable economic and political system, making it impossible to even imagine a functional alternative. It suggests this notion is so deeply ingrained that people readily accept the system's flaws as natural facts of life and Michael Scott is the poster boy for abusive, incompetent bosses that you have to accept as an immutable fact of life.

They would have an episode where they put Michael Scott through a fucking struggle session before I turn the TV back on.