The implication that it has to Jon and Tim’s friendship and Jonathan’s character outside of reading statements is insane to me.
Yes, Jonathan Sims in those early episodes comes off as an asshole and someone who is stuck up, but wouldn’t you be? All we hear from him really is how he reads the statements and adds additional information to them. Wouldn’t you be all gloomy and bit sarcastic if you read through dozens of statements like this daily? Your computer acting against you distorting the audio of only some of them? Which also are the only statements we as an audience hear.
You take over “easy Head Archivist” job just to find out that your predecessor was horrible at her work and you’re the one facing a challenge of fixing that. Let’s be so for real that would drive all of us into a bad mood.
But then it adds one more layer. He trusts Tim. He knew Sasha before hand too, yet, he doesn’t believe she wouldn’t make a joke at his expense and most likely assumed that she’d laugh at him (along with Martin) for believing in it and having them look into it. Even if he couldn’t rule out Tim as someone to make a joke like that, he knew that Tim wouldn’t be cruel about Jon asking him to look into it. If Tim made that joke he would laugh along Jonathan and not at his expanse - or so Jon believed. It is kind of trust that you build over years. Which makes Jonathan seeing Tim’s decline in later seasons so much more cruel.
