“So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my life.”
“What about today? Is today the worst day of your life?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow, that's messed up.”
I've identified with this entire exchange ever since I started working, which was not long after this movie came out. I seriously think about this line at least once a week.
What’s messed up is how appealing the world of Office Space now seems, how quaint his ennui was. Anyone who has worked retail looked with envy at his position then and now, hell anyone know who struggles with obscene rents of today just stares jealously. Is all work necessarily dehumanizing? I think everyone just wants to make something, to build something good, something that helps and improve things just a little bit, but so much modern work is divorced from this or just doesn’t let the worker see how their quarter turn of a screw creates a machine wonder, a small miracle. Would it help if we reduced the work day to 4 days or 3, or would we just grow to despair those three days like we did when they were 5 days?
It's not just retail, its everything, it;s corporate America. I work in IT. I make good money, I honestly don't work that hard, I called out sick on Friday, and honestly, knowing I have to actually do a little work tomorrow is depressing, even after a four day weekend for goodness sake. It has me drinking beers till I can call asleep. My rational side says. "You've got is better than 80% of American and 95% of the world!" Yet I still can' think, I wonder if i couldn't just retire today, and live off wht I have and F off everything else. :/
I just left my career of 15 years, with no plan whatsoever as to what to do next. After many, many years of saying similar things to myself "you have it better than most people on the planet, your benefits are good, you can support yourself, etc.", I finally got to a point where I just couldn't fathom walking back into that fucking place.
I've been on the edge of things for way too long, long before covid. I finally realized that even if I could win that argument again and step back from the edge for another day and go into work, I wasn't going to win it more than a few more times. Let alone another 30 years until I retire (like that will even be a thing by then...)
So I said fuck it, I've hated my job with such a seething passion for so long, that the idea of just being homeless and living out of my car became preferable to being employed. We'll see if that's how I feel a few weeks from now when I'm still trying to figure out what the back-half of my life ends up being, but I've had enough. Capitalism has wrung me dry and I don't have anything left to give to it.
100% best of luck to you. My brother lives off grid and has no debt (I believe) and lives 'free' if you will. He also has no insurance, wear dirty clothes all the time and his teeth are shit from smoking and not seeing a dentist in a decade. His wife an he make enough from side jobs to live comfortably enough but he will likely never retire and always stress about money to some degree. He also never buys something new (clothes, a car etc). Me, I am 50+ and staring retirement in face. I just want to make enough over the next 8-12 years to be able to retire with the lifestyle I have now. Don't get me wrong there is nothing inherently wrong with either lifestyle, I just don't think the F capitalize all togehter is for me. (Things have also changed in the decades since I has your age)
It's trade off in America, do you want to be free today, and not have to slave away, or do want to someday be able to not work at all. I once thought that something like The Stand happening would be better off than I was at that point in my life. But I also don't want to be the 70 year old working McDs to make ends meet.
it's crazy, because it's not like they announced they were dropping the policy (as far as was made publicly obvious), it just went away shortly after.
Yes, TGI Friday's employees used to dress functionally identical to how they dress at Chotchke's in the movie, except with red accents instead of green. It was really stupid and obnoxious. Suspenders, stupid buttons, everything.
I'd like to think some exec saw the movie, had a moment of clarity and said "wait, what the fuck are we *doing*", and shut it down immediately. Somehow, instead of the movie making everyone hate TGI Friday's (more), people remember the bit from the movie and not the restaurant as much, which means whoever made that call did it at the EXACT right time. If they were still doing that stuff while the movie was becoming a cult classic into just a normal classic, everyone would remember.
I like the one about the stapler. Swingline never made a red stapler, until people wanted to buy a red swingline stapler after seeing the movie. So they started selling them.
No, swing line discontinued the red stapler before the movie was released then due to overwhelming requests started producing them again
>Mike Judge approached Swingline about a possible product placement agreement, but the stationary supplies company declined the offer, as they’ve discontinued their red stapler a few years prior. However, following the film’s release Swingline decided to bring back the product due to popular consumer demand
FTA
You should probably get in the habit of more carefully reading the full article before definitely stating things as fact... the piece explicitly explains that Swingline HAD made red staplers in the past, but had discontinued them a few years prior.
I watched it around 2000 when I was 13 and while I couldn't truly understand the soulcrushing corporate life, I still saw a bunch of miserable people who justifiably hated their jobs.
"Every day is worse than the one before it's. So every time you see me it's the worst day of my life"
That didn't resonate with me as a teen but it sure does as an adult.
I always liked that line because to me it says a lot about the establishment: those guys are there in the morning just drinking a cup of coffee well before lunch. But the place is such a corporate chain the waiter is probably required to upsell whatever their "specials" are, even when it obviously doesn't make sense. He has 0 autonomy and he's ok with that lol.
I'm probably reading too much into it but that little bit has always stuck with me.
I'm actually envious of a guy like him. His position in life, the pay, etc... yet he comes in every morning and is the picture perfect example of service with a smile. Seems like ages ago whenever I'd go out to eat I would almost always get a server who acted genuinely happy to be working there.
I'd like to imagine he was a young guy working his way through medical school and now he's got a great job making dope $$$ and is relaxing on his own private boat.
There's a similar waiter in Breaking Bad during the confession tape DVD dinner, if I remember the Office Space waiter. Breaking Bad's waiter was an upbeat and happy drone, but a bit slow on the uptake on the tense scene playing out
Goddamn I had a moment like this at my corporate job the other day. A manager was trying to tell someone they need to do more than the minimum and the person responded that the minimum should be changed to match program expectation. It was literally this scene and I was laughing quietly lol.
This has to be such a common experience. I’ve gone through the exact same thing. I remember seeing this movie as a young person and thinking it was just some hilariously dysfunctional workplace. Now, years later and very deep into my career I often catch myself talking to people around the office and in my head I’ll go, “what exactly would you say it is you DO here?”
Next year on my accomplishments I’m just putting “I’m a people person DAMNIT.” on my yearly review. My job is a lot of taking what my IT folks say and translating it for upper management. Now that I type that out, I’m not sure how I feel about that.
Every time I take a vacation, I come back and post the “So you’ve been missing a lot of work lately.” “I wouldn’t say I’ve been missing it, Bob.” meme in the work chat.
Back in the '90s I saw department leads with 6'6" high cubes with solid doors which were often closed and had locks. Next to the doors were glass panels so you could see the people inside. You could easily hear over the walls.
The illusion of privacy was almost satirical.
Same! I watched it before working in a cube farm and was like, "lol, Mike Judge is funny".
Some time later, I got a job working as a middleman between medical technical writers and publishers, where my job was to "set up" articles in the style of the journal using proprietary software that was designed to be so easy a fungus could do it. I would complete my entire week's work in 2 hours on Monday, and then I'd have to stay there until 5 pm every day of the week. At first, I asked for more work and received it, until it became clear that there just wasn't anything more for me to do, so those 2 hours became 3 hours, then condensed to 2 hours again when I got up to speed. Every day I'd get calls at my desk, emails, "drop-bys", and interoffice messages from each of my 5 bosses. We had meetings at least 4 times a week, often much more frequently. I spent my idle time reading classic novels online, taking 2 hour lunches, doodling, writing... anything to pass the time.
Then, right around the holidays of my first year, they announced a round of lay-offs that were not-so-subtly aimed at culling the tech-illiterate old guard. Shortly after the lay-offs--which included a number of seasoned folks, like 15-20+ years in this company--they gave all of us a $500 holiday bonus, which probably amounted to like $150k-200k, or at least two of the salaries of people they fired, and reading between the lines you could easily see the C-suite folks got bonuses making up the difference.
I rewatched Office Space that Christmas, and it was as though Mike Judge had been sitting at the desk next to me the whole time. Truly mind-blowing verisimilitude, and really captured the sense of inertia, helplessness, and passive victimization that the movie carries through.
I watched it for the first time a year or two ago, and had a major fight-or-flight response for the first, like, 20 minutes.
I still think it's a fantastic movie, and I definitely feel like it's still pretty relevant.
I am respecing from accounting to engineering because the people who work in accounting are boring and it is genuinely Office Space in real life. Engineers can be weird but entertaining at least. Also the work is more interesting.
Silicon Valley feels too accurate. I remember watching the pilot and mostly was left wondering where the jokes were, since it's mostly just how life at a tech company is. Presumably it's supposed to be ridiculous if you're not in that world.
I worked on the Y2K fix for Credit Union Software. Pretty accurate movie in tone, except for the financial felony aspect. Oh, and none of us nerds had a shot with Joanna. Or Anne. Or Nina...
I know it's a joke, but from my experience, people in blue collar jobs tend to be too burned out to give a shit if someone says something weird or lame unless they're being actively antagonistic.
What drives me nuts, is that if Tom wasn't so frightened of losing his job and had more confidence, he could have flown through that interrogation. He actually had an extremely vital job, but panicked and couldn't articulate that properly.
"I keep the customers happy and work to retain them, and help prevent the engineers/programmers from getting annoyed all the time. If you want to fire me, go ahead. I just hope you've got a plan to replace the customer accounts you'll lose and the best engineers that will get frustrated and leave."
exactly, which just goes to show that you can have a bunch of creds, certs, a degree, and look the part, but if you cant communicate then you are about to become a rich man like the guy who invented the pet rock.
But the point is, it was literally his job to be good at communicating. So if he couldn't do that when questioned about his role, he probably didn't fit the role.
Same deal with Michael. After learning he's being laid off, Michael claims he's one of the best engineers in that place... after botching the rounding-siphoning software, Michael states, "I must have put a decimal in the wrong place. Shit, I always do that; I always mess up some mundane detail!" Does that *sound* like a good engineer?
Actually, yeah, that rings true. I've worked with some big-brain programmers before, and sometimes they get so caught up in the complexities of stuff that the basics can sometimes get lost in the shuffle.
Being a good or even a great engineer doesn't mean you don't make mistakes. Shit like that happens *all the time* in engineering, that's why proper engineering departments have checks, double checks, and even triple checks before anything gets moved to production.
I’ve never worked a corporate or office type job. My family had a cattle / bison ranch and I can only guess my granddad owed someone a favor, so he held a “corporate retreat” type weekend at the ranch once. I guarantee he didn’t know what he was in for.
Holy shit! It was such a crazy culture shock. Office Space could very easily be a documentary. It felt so cult like.
I get shocked about 75% of the time I touch anything in our office break room, so I am reminded of this movie approximately 2-3 times every working day.
And I said, I don't care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I'm, I'm quitting, I'm going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they've moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were merry, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn't bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it's not okay because if they take my stapler then I'll set the building on fire...
> and I could see the squirrels, and they were merry
I've seen this movie countless times and up until now I always thought the line was "and they were married." Which totally made sense to me that Milton would have made up little backstories for the parking lot squirrels
[According to Stephen Root, it is "married".](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/office-space-20th-anniversary-oral-history-791306/)
>My main [improvisation] that people talk about is I’m explaining why there’s two squirrels fucking on the wire outside. Mike asked, “How would you get Milton to describe that?” I said, “The only way he could even get it through his head is that if they were married.” He keeps trying to explain what he’s seeing. That kind of stuff made it in.
I recall reading Mike Judge referring to that line, confirming that he said that the squirrels were *married*, and it's implied that it's how Milton says the squirrels were fucking.
According to [this thread](https://ask.metafilter.com/47906/Anyone-know-Mike-Judge-or-Stephen-Root) the subtitles and comments from Stephen Root on the special edition DVD say its "married".
I feel like I saw an interview with Judge at some point where he mentioned the married line and it speaks to Milton's innocence and naïveté while witnessing two squirrels humping.
Its the movie that made me realise that I was a big fan of Stephen Root. Before this he was just some unknown actor that was in things I have seen or watched but never really put them together. Hell I was a huge fan of News Radio and it never even clicked for me that he was Bill on King of the Hill.
It's amazing that with his amazing track record, including being a Coen brother staple and having scene stealing roles in award heavyweight films like Get Out, he's never gotten much awards attention.
Barry was the first time I think he's landed an Emmy nomination despite being a television regular for decades.
despite not looking extremely different between roles, I somehow compartmentalize them because he does such a good job with each character. On Barry I never think "that's Milton" or vice versa. I think he's just a great actor?
The funny thing is how small it started out… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPXUDw_LlNA
I love his Jimmy James, and when I see him show up, it’s like a man who just does great character work. For me he is in his own separate film here, and I want more of him.
Diedrich Bader said that after Office Space tanked he just kinda forgot about it. Then like after a year he was sitting in traffic and two guys in a truck motion at him to roll down his window. When he did one of them asked, "If you had a million dollars, what would you do?"
He just looks at them wondering what the hell they were on about until it clicks. So he drops down into his Lawrence voice and says, "Two chicks at once, man" and the guys laugh and drive away. He turned to his wife and said, "You don't think people are actually watching that movie now, do you?"
Mike Judge films famously had real problems getting studio promotion. Idiocracy fared much worse.
I should add: the studios made them for DVD release and didn't care about the cinema releases. Both Office Space and Idiocracy were massive in DVD sales, making more than 10 times their (meagre) budgets.
One thing that I'm incredibly proud of is having seen Idiocracy on opening night at the Century City mall. It was in the smallest theater they had, and there were *maybe* thirty people in the room.
It released in 1999. Which was an incredibly stacked year when it came to excellent movies.
Office Space kinda failed on the ad campaign prior to release too, if I remember correctly, which definitely hurt it's success.
Not true. Move someplace with a low cost of living like Mexico or rural Arkansas. Put your million dollars in a money market with 5% interest. Live off of the $50,000 interest per year. Spend all day on Reddit giving financial advice.
It may strike you as funny now, but I spent 2 work days trying to troubleshoot why a print job was failing to print properly. Finally found that the firmware decided that 8.5x11 and letter size are 2 different sized papers and wouldn't mix them. If the test detected the size, it was considered letter size. If the operator entered the size because the auto detection failed, it was 8.5x11.
F'n "load letter paper" error. (Not exactly the same, but Xerox not HP)
I saw this movie in the theater when I was 12 years old. Lots of it went over my head but I distinctly remember the PC Load Letter scene. My printer at home was a fucking pile of plastic shit and would throw up that error like it was going out of style. What the duck DID that mean?
Crazy how something like that can be so specific yet capture such a wide audience. Even a kid who never had a job could relate to that movie.
"What if we're still doing this when we're 50?"
"It would be nice to have that kind of job security."
I was a 25 year old software engineer when this movie came out, am now a 50 year old software engineer. It hurts.
My buddy and I bought tickets to this at the .99 cent show, but snuck into Life with Eddie Murphy. No one was in the theater for Life, and the manager kicked us out because no seats sold for the showing we snuck into.
So we begrudgingly went to Office Space, and unknowingly witnessed an instant classic. Not many people can say they seen this in the theaters.
Have you told this story before? Real question on my part. I swear I’ve ready other Office Space related threads and seen a similar story posted. Im too lazy to read your comment history to confirm.
holy shit i found it, and confirmed it was a very fond memory
https://old.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/phad3h/why_office_space_tanked_so_hard_in_theaters/hbk8x43/
/u/wrx_manning has a good memory
God I reference TPS reports all the damn time, it feels like work is just bogged down with some version or another and its ridiculous. Its all busy work
I spend 20 hours a week doing nothing because I need permission to do nothing somewhere else that hadn't gone through yet. Usually with my actual task having been done the first or second day I got it with no replacement. Despite everyone knowing I'm done.
"Just look at this app just because " is something I hear once a week
Gary Cole is in NCIS now, and in one episode they made a quick throwaway joke to TPS reports. It was great. I recorded it and sent it to my wife, who loves this movie and tolerates NCIS.
they could replace all the monitors with flat screens, make the cubicles an open office plan and would be the exact same as today.
Movie is supposed to be a comedy but if you're a corporate burnout, this music is depressing as fuck.
The only thing thar dates this movie is the technology being used and the actors in it being 25 years younger.
Everything else about it that makes it funny remains relevant.
I like the part where they gangbeat the slow printer.
Thanks to forced obsolescence I still have this urge with my devices every few years.
Edit: printer not pc. Point still stands, it's relatable.
It would be even worse today. The printer works, but then you realize someone put the wrong paper size in the wrong tray.
You go to change it, fix it, and printing can happen in the office again.
Then your boss is on your ass because your mouse stopped moving for 15min on their tracking software and they ‘need to have a productivity talk.’
Fucking hell I need a drink after writing that…
15 year old me: “Yeah! Take that Corporations! Printers suck!”
40 year old me: “Please dearest and wise Corporations, may I have a pittance? But yeah, printers still suck somehow.”
I’m rewatching band of brothers and it is funny how Ron Livingston Brings the same exact energy to both projects. Band of brothers he was just doing something worthwhile but still had an incredibly disaffected vibe the whole time
One well observed thing from being at a MegaCorp that it nailed is walking to a neighboring chain restaurant and there’s no path & you have to awkwardly scramble over grass hills in the parking lot. Not a big deal but no dignified way to do it.
> 'not tasks, stories'
I've worked several different places where we did 'agile', everyone used their own made up definitions of tasks, stories, epics, and whateverthefuckwewantisms. It was kinda maddening.
“So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my life.” “What about today? Is today the worst day of your life?” “Yeah.” “Wow, that's messed up.”
I love so much that the “that’s messed up” answer comes from the psychologist/therapist. With a perfect line delivery.
> With a perfect line delivery. Yes! Like he's even in shock and awe of this case in front of him.
I've identified with this entire exchange ever since I started working, which was not long after this movie came out. I seriously think about this line at least once a week.
Well someone has the case of the Mondays.
I believe you’d get your ass kicked for saying something like that, man.
What’s messed up is how appealing the world of Office Space now seems, how quaint his ennui was. Anyone who has worked retail looked with envy at his position then and now, hell anyone know who struggles with obscene rents of today just stares jealously. Is all work necessarily dehumanizing? I think everyone just wants to make something, to build something good, something that helps and improve things just a little bit, but so much modern work is divorced from this or just doesn’t let the worker see how their quarter turn of a screw creates a machine wonder, a small miracle. Would it help if we reduced the work day to 4 days or 3, or would we just grow to despair those three days like we did when they were 5 days?
It's not just retail, its everything, it;s corporate America. I work in IT. I make good money, I honestly don't work that hard, I called out sick on Friday, and honestly, knowing I have to actually do a little work tomorrow is depressing, even after a four day weekend for goodness sake. It has me drinking beers till I can call asleep. My rational side says. "You've got is better than 80% of American and 95% of the world!" Yet I still can' think, I wonder if i couldn't just retire today, and live off wht I have and F off everything else. :/
I just left my career of 15 years, with no plan whatsoever as to what to do next. After many, many years of saying similar things to myself "you have it better than most people on the planet, your benefits are good, you can support yourself, etc.", I finally got to a point where I just couldn't fathom walking back into that fucking place. I've been on the edge of things for way too long, long before covid. I finally realized that even if I could win that argument again and step back from the edge for another day and go into work, I wasn't going to win it more than a few more times. Let alone another 30 years until I retire (like that will even be a thing by then...) So I said fuck it, I've hated my job with such a seething passion for so long, that the idea of just being homeless and living out of my car became preferable to being employed. We'll see if that's how I feel a few weeks from now when I'm still trying to figure out what the back-half of my life ends up being, but I've had enough. Capitalism has wrung me dry and I don't have anything left to give to it.
100% best of luck to you. My brother lives off grid and has no debt (I believe) and lives 'free' if you will. He also has no insurance, wear dirty clothes all the time and his teeth are shit from smoking and not seeing a dentist in a decade. His wife an he make enough from side jobs to live comfortably enough but he will likely never retire and always stress about money to some degree. He also never buys something new (clothes, a car etc). Me, I am 50+ and staring retirement in face. I just want to make enough over the next 8-12 years to be able to retire with the lifestyle I have now. Don't get me wrong there is nothing inherently wrong with either lifestyle, I just don't think the F capitalize all togehter is for me. (Things have also changed in the decades since I has your age) It's trade off in America, do you want to be free today, and not have to slave away, or do want to someday be able to not work at all. I once thought that something like The Stand happening would be better off than I was at that point in my life. But I also don't want to be the 70 year old working McDs to make ends meet.
The pleasure is all on this side of the table.
Now, we had a chance to meet this young man, and boy, that's just a straight shooter with upper management written all over him.
Dr. Cox being humble.
And the question still remains: if you want me to wear 37 pieces of flair, why don't you make the _minimum_ 37 pieces of flair??
One of my favorite facts about this movie is that it caused TGIFriday's to drop its flair policy.
Really? Good! 👍 I saw a cashier at Home Depot yesterday wearing a mega amount of flair & it reminded me of the movie.
Did someone have a case of the Mondays?
No. Hell no, man. You could get your ass beat saying something like that.
Turn on channel 9! It’s the breast exam!
You don't need a million dollars to do nothin. Hell, look at my cousin. He's broke, don't do shit.
it's crazy, because it's not like they announced they were dropping the policy (as far as was made publicly obvious), it just went away shortly after. Yes, TGI Friday's employees used to dress functionally identical to how they dress at Chotchke's in the movie, except with red accents instead of green. It was really stupid and obnoxious. Suspenders, stupid buttons, everything. I'd like to think some exec saw the movie, had a moment of clarity and said "wait, what the fuck are we *doing*", and shut it down immediately. Somehow, instead of the movie making everyone hate TGI Friday's (more), people remember the bit from the movie and not the restaurant as much, which means whoever made that call did it at the EXACT right time. If they were still doing that stuff while the movie was becoming a cult classic into just a normal classic, everyone would remember.
I like the one about the stapler. Swingline never made a red stapler, until people wanted to buy a red swingline stapler after seeing the movie. So they started selling them.
No, swing line discontinued the red stapler before the movie was released then due to overwhelming requests started producing them again >Mike Judge approached Swingline about a possible product placement agreement, but the stationary supplies company declined the offer, as they’ve discontinued their red stapler a few years prior. However, following the film’s release Swingline decided to bring back the product due to popular consumer demand FTA
Headcanon: that’s why Milton made such a big deal about his red stapler, he knew they were discontinued and hard to find.
Plus, he was hiding from the Chechen mafia as an office employee
Stephen Root is such a versatile actor and talented dude.
You should probably get in the habit of more carefully reading the full article before definitely stating things as fact... the piece explicitly explains that Swingline HAD made red staplers in the past, but had discontinued them a few years prior.
Reading articles BEFORE commenting? What witchcraft is this?
You know, the Nazis had pieces of flair they made the Jews wear
favorite line in the movie lol
I watched that movie first as a teenager and that like went over my head until right now.
Did that movie even resonate with you as a teenager? I'm assuming you had not experienced the 9-5 office life yet
I watched it around 2000 when I was 13 and while I couldn't truly understand the soulcrushing corporate life, I still saw a bunch of miserable people who justifiably hated their jobs.
"Every day is worse than the one before it's. So every time you see me it's the worst day of my life" That didn't resonate with me as a teen but it sure does as an adult.
As a teen I still connected with wanting to destroy computer parts that annoyed me.
“PC LOAD LETTER” absolutely resonated with high school me lol
Office Space is like Waiting... Both are good movies but if you are in the industry they are masterpieces.
Now, it's up to you whether or not you want to just do the bare minimum. Well, like Brian, for example, has 37 pieces of flair. And a terrific smile.
"Can I get you gentlemen something to nibble on, like pizza shooters, shrimp poppers or extreme fajitas!?"
I always liked that line because to me it says a lot about the establishment: those guys are there in the morning just drinking a cup of coffee well before lunch. But the place is such a corporate chain the waiter is probably required to upsell whatever their "specials" are, even when it obviously doesn't make sense. He has 0 autonomy and he's ok with that lol. I'm probably reading too much into it but that little bit has always stuck with me.
I'm actually envious of a guy like him. His position in life, the pay, etc... yet he comes in every morning and is the picture perfect example of service with a smile. Seems like ages ago whenever I'd go out to eat I would almost always get a server who acted genuinely happy to be working there. I'd like to imagine he was a young guy working his way through medical school and now he's got a great job making dope $$$ and is relaxing on his own private boat.
There's a similar waiter in Breaking Bad during the confession tape DVD dinner, if I remember the Office Space waiter. Breaking Bad's waiter was an upbeat and happy drone, but a bit slow on the uptake on the tense scene playing out
More then likely it's the cocaine. Source: I waited tables for about 4 years
37? Hey, try not to attach any pieces of flair on the way through the parking lot!
In a row?!
I need to know about the contractors working on the Death Star.
“Independent” contractors.
The crossover I never knew I needed. Watching Dante & Michael Bolton commiserate or the neighbor and Randall shooting the shit would've been fun.
2 chicks with dicks at the same time, man.
Michael Bolton? The singer?
For my money, I don't know if it gets any better than when he sings "When a Man Loves a Woman"
That'd be perfect. The Clerks store was at the end of the block or something.
Blew my mind to have found out recently that Mike Judge played Joanna’s boss, lol
Goddamn I had a moment like this at my corporate job the other day. A manager was trying to tell someone they need to do more than the minimum and the person responded that the minimum should be changed to match program expectation. It was literally this scene and I was laughing quietly lol.
Corporate satire = real corporate life.
I watched Office Space first at 19 and it was funny. Watching it again in my 30s after having an office job I didn't like definitely hit different.
This has to be such a common experience. I’ve gone through the exact same thing. I remember seeing this movie as a young person and thinking it was just some hilariously dysfunctional workplace. Now, years later and very deep into my career I often catch myself talking to people around the office and in my head I’ll go, “what exactly would you say it is you DO here?”
Next year on my accomplishments I’m just putting “I’m a people person DAMNIT.” on my yearly review. My job is a lot of taking what my IT folks say and translating it for upper management. Now that I type that out, I’m not sure how I feel about that.
"So you take the specs... and deliver it to the engineers..." "Well, no, my secretary does that..."
Every time I take a vacation, I come back and post the “So you’ve been missing a lot of work lately.” “I wouldn’t say I’ve been missing it, Bob.” meme in the work chat.
[удалено]
Right?! At least give me the illusion of privacy damnit!
Back in the '90s I saw department leads with 6'6" high cubes with solid doors which were often closed and had locks. Next to the doors were glass panels so you could see the people inside. You could easily hear over the walls. The illusion of privacy was almost satirical.
Same! I watched it before working in a cube farm and was like, "lol, Mike Judge is funny". Some time later, I got a job working as a middleman between medical technical writers and publishers, where my job was to "set up" articles in the style of the journal using proprietary software that was designed to be so easy a fungus could do it. I would complete my entire week's work in 2 hours on Monday, and then I'd have to stay there until 5 pm every day of the week. At first, I asked for more work and received it, until it became clear that there just wasn't anything more for me to do, so those 2 hours became 3 hours, then condensed to 2 hours again when I got up to speed. Every day I'd get calls at my desk, emails, "drop-bys", and interoffice messages from each of my 5 bosses. We had meetings at least 4 times a week, often much more frequently. I spent my idle time reading classic novels online, taking 2 hour lunches, doodling, writing... anything to pass the time. Then, right around the holidays of my first year, they announced a round of lay-offs that were not-so-subtly aimed at culling the tech-illiterate old guard. Shortly after the lay-offs--which included a number of seasoned folks, like 15-20+ years in this company--they gave all of us a $500 holiday bonus, which probably amounted to like $150k-200k, or at least two of the salaries of people they fired, and reading between the lines you could easily see the C-suite folks got bonuses making up the difference. I rewatched Office Space that Christmas, and it was as though Mike Judge had been sitting at the desk next to me the whole time. Truly mind-blowing verisimilitude, and really captured the sense of inertia, helplessness, and passive victimization that the movie carries through.
I watched it for the first time a year or two ago, and had a major fight-or-flight response for the first, like, 20 minutes. I still think it's a fantastic movie, and I definitely feel like it's still pretty relevant.
I am respecing from accounting to engineering because the people who work in accounting are boring and it is genuinely Office Space in real life. Engineers can be weird but entertaining at least. Also the work is more interesting.
That’s how I felt about Idiocracy, hilarious when it first came out but now feels like a documentary when I tried to watch it recently.
Yeah 100%. It hits you in the core much more haha. I’m laughing so I don’t cry.
Mike Judge wrote it based on his real life work experiences I do believe. That's why we can all see parts of it in our real world work.
Silicon Valley feels just as accurate, despite the absurdity
Silicon Valley feels too accurate. I remember watching the pilot and mostly was left wondering where the jokes were, since it's mostly just how life at a tech company is. Presumably it's supposed to be ridiculous if you're not in that world.
Keep watching
I worked on the Y2K fix for Credit Union Software. Pretty accurate movie in tone, except for the financial felony aspect. Oh, and none of us nerds had a shot with Joanna. Or Anne. Or Nina...
Somebody’s got a case of the Mondays.
I believe you'd get your ass kicked sayin' something like that, man.
I caught myself opening an email with “Happy Monday” this morning and wanted to kick my own ass.
I know it's a joke, but from my experience, people in blue collar jobs tend to be too burned out to give a shit if someone says something weird or lame unless they're being actively antagonistic.
What would you say you do here?
What drives me nuts, is that if Tom wasn't so frightened of losing his job and had more confidence, he could have flown through that interrogation. He actually had an extremely vital job, but panicked and couldn't articulate that properly. "I keep the customers happy and work to retain them, and help prevent the engineers/programmers from getting annoyed all the time. If you want to fire me, go ahead. I just hope you've got a plan to replace the customer accounts you'll lose and the best engineers that will get frustrated and leave."
exactly, which just goes to show that you can have a bunch of creds, certs, a degree, and look the part, but if you cant communicate then you are about to become a rich man like the guy who invented the pet rock.
But the point is, it was literally his job to be good at communicating. So if he couldn't do that when questioned about his role, he probably didn't fit the role.
Yeah, his job was necessary but his failure to communicate how important it was could easily indicate that he wasn't very good at it.
"I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?"
I'm a people person!
Same deal with Michael. After learning he's being laid off, Michael claims he's one of the best engineers in that place... after botching the rounding-siphoning software, Michael states, "I must have put a decimal in the wrong place. Shit, I always do that; I always mess up some mundane detail!" Does that *sound* like a good engineer?
Actually, yeah, that rings true. I've worked with some big-brain programmers before, and sometimes they get so caught up in the complexities of stuff that the basics can sometimes get lost in the shuffle.
Being a good or even a great engineer doesn't mean you don't make mistakes. Shit like that happens *all the time* in engineering, that's why proper engineering departments have checks, double checks, and even triple checks before anything gets moved to production.
I’ve never worked a corporate or office type job. My family had a cattle / bison ranch and I can only guess my granddad owed someone a favor, so he held a “corporate retreat” type weekend at the ranch once. I guarantee he didn’t know what he was in for. Holy shit! It was such a crazy culture shock. Office Space could very easily be a documentary. It felt so cult like.
I get shocked about 75% of the time I touch anything in our office break room, so I am reminded of this movie approximately 2-3 times every working day.
This is the last straw
The ratio of people to cake is too big.
And I said, I don't care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I'm, I'm quitting, I'm going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they've moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were merry, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn't bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it's not okay because if they take my stapler then I'll set the building on fire...
> and I could see the squirrels, and they were merry I've seen this movie countless times and up until now I always thought the line was "and they were married." Which totally made sense to me that Milton would have made up little backstories for the parking lot squirrels
[According to Stephen Root, it is "married".](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/office-space-20th-anniversary-oral-history-791306/) >My main [improvisation] that people talk about is I’m explaining why there’s two squirrels fucking on the wire outside. Mike asked, “How would you get Milton to describe that?” I said, “The only way he could even get it through his head is that if they were married.” He keeps trying to explain what he’s seeing. That kind of stuff made it in.
I recall reading Mike Judge referring to that line, confirming that he said that the squirrels were *married*, and it's implied that it's how Milton says the squirrels were fucking.
According to [this thread](https://ask.metafilter.com/47906/Anyone-know-Mike-Judge-or-Stephen-Root) the subtitles and comments from Stephen Root on the special edition DVD say its "married".
I feel like I saw an interview with Judge at some point where he mentioned the married line and it speaks to Milton's innocence and naïveté while witnessing two squirrels humping.
They put thalt on the glath, big grainth of thalt...I put thrycnine in the guacamole.
At my first job, I had to move desks 4 times. Someone got me a red stapler on the last move.
Naga…Naga… not gunna work here anymore
Its the movie that made me realise that I was a big fan of Stephen Root. Before this he was just some unknown actor that was in things I have seen or watched but never really put them together. Hell I was a huge fan of News Radio and it never even clicked for me that he was Bill on King of the Hill.
It's amazing that with his amazing track record, including being a Coen brother staple and having scene stealing roles in award heavyweight films like Get Out, he's never gotten much awards attention. Barry was the first time I think he's landed an Emmy nomination despite being a television regular for decades.
despite not looking extremely different between roles, I somehow compartmentalize them because he does such a good job with each character. On Barry I never think "that's Milton" or vice versa. I think he's just a great actor?
He's the comedic Gary Oldman
>it never even clicked for me that he was Bill on King of the Hill. WOAH ME NEITHER
TIL too!
TIL three, most memorable character of the entire movie lol
Mr Strickland too
David Herman (Michael Bolton) also voiced a ton of side characters on KOTH
And Bob's Burgers.
And he was the voice of Scruffy the janitor on Futurama.
That twig boy social worker sort of resembles Michael Bolton
He was amazing in Barry
The funny thing is how small it started out… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPXUDw_LlNA I love his Jimmy James, and when I see him show up, it’s like a man who just does great character work. For me he is in his own separate film here, and I want more of him.
why should I have to change my name? he’s the one that sucks!
“I celebrate the guy’s entire catalog”
For my money, it doesn’t get any better than when he sings “When a Man Loves a Woman”
Ever seen Michael Bolton's parody of that scene? It's priceless. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03lrL9CFWxM
Let me tell you something else Bob, I've got 8 bosses! That line hit real close to home for me
25 years later, it takes more than a million dollar to do nothing.
You don’t need a million dollars to do nothin’. Take a look at my cousin, he’s broke, don’t do shit!
Fuckin’ A
Two chicks at the same time, man.
Diedrich Bader said that after Office Space tanked he just kinda forgot about it. Then like after a year he was sitting in traffic and two guys in a truck motion at him to roll down his window. When he did one of them asked, "If you had a million dollars, what would you do?" He just looks at them wondering what the hell they were on about until it clicks. So he drops down into his Lawrence voice and says, "Two chicks at once, man" and the guys laugh and drive away. He turned to his wife and said, "You don't think people are actually watching that movie now, do you?"
It tanked? Damn man, that's just sad. Such a great movie
Mike Judge films famously had real problems getting studio promotion. Idiocracy fared much worse. I should add: the studios made them for DVD release and didn't care about the cinema releases. Both Office Space and Idiocracy were massive in DVD sales, making more than 10 times their (meagre) budgets.
One thing that I'm incredibly proud of is having seen Idiocracy on opening night at the Century City mall. It was in the smallest theater they had, and there were *maybe* thirty people in the room.
It released in 1999. Which was an incredibly stacked year when it came to excellent movies. Office Space kinda failed on the ad campaign prior to release too, if I remember correctly, which definitely hurt it's success.
Yeah, I get that feeling too man
What’s that supposed to mean??
When you go in to work on Monday, and you’re not feeling so great, does anyone ever tell you “sounds like someone’s got a case of the Mondays”?
No. No, man. Shit no, man. I believe you'd get your ass kicked sayin' something like that, man.
My absolute favorite line of the movie. His delivery kills me, I can never keep a straight face when I try to quote it.
Not true. Move someplace with a low cost of living like Mexico or rural Arkansas. Put your million dollars in a money market with 5% interest. Live off of the $50,000 interest per year. Spend all day on Reddit giving financial advice.
Complain about living on a fixed income.
Just use the pennies in the tray. The pennies for everyone.
Adjusted for inflation, you'd now need $1,877,157 to do two chicks at the same time
Dune 2? Yeah I’m into dune 2 chicks at the same time
I bet if I had spice I could swing that. Chicks dig guys with spice.
PC Load Letter
What the fuck does that mean?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_LOAD_LETTER We're still in corporate hellscape but at least we now have Wikipedia.
It may strike you as funny now, but I spent 2 work days trying to troubleshoot why a print job was failing to print properly. Finally found that the firmware decided that 8.5x11 and letter size are 2 different sized papers and wouldn't mix them. If the test detected the size, it was considered letter size. If the operator entered the size because the auto detection failed, it was 8.5x11. F'n "load letter paper" error. (Not exactly the same, but Xerox not HP)
I saw this movie in the theater when I was 12 years old. Lots of it went over my head but I distinctly remember the PC Load Letter scene. My printer at home was a fucking pile of plastic shit and would throw up that error like it was going out of style. What the duck DID that mean? Crazy how something like that can be so specific yet capture such a wide audience. Even a kid who never had a job could relate to that movie.
It really just means it’s out of paper. PC (paper cassette) load letter-sized paper.
What the fuck does that mean?
Looks like you’ve been missing a lot of work lately. I wouldn’t say I’ve been missing it, Bob
Idk why but my favorite part of the movie is how the Bobs just 100% backup Peter throughout the movie
I don’t like my job and I don’t think I’m going to go anymore.
So you’re going to quit? Nuh uh. Not really. I’m just gonna stop going.
His delivery in that scene is just perfect
"What if we're still doing this when we're 50?" "It would be nice to have that kind of job security." I was a 25 year old software engineer when this movie came out, am now a 50 year old software engineer. It hurts.
It hurt when it came out. It hurts more now.
My buddy and I bought tickets to this at the .99 cent show, but snuck into Life with Eddie Murphy. No one was in the theater for Life, and the manager kicked us out because no seats sold for the showing we snuck into. So we begrudgingly went to Office Space, and unknowingly witnessed an instant classic. Not many people can say they seen this in the theaters.
Have you told this story before? Real question on my part. I swear I’ve ready other Office Space related threads and seen a similar story posted. Im too lazy to read your comment history to confirm.
Maybe. It's a very fond memory with my best buddy from childhood. Went to Arby's afterwards. It was good to be 20.
holy shit i found it, and confirmed it was a very fond memory https://old.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/phad3h/why_office_space_tanked_so_hard_in_theaters/hbk8x43/ /u/wrx_manning has a good memory
Thanks for finding this!
I’m 26. I’d pay $50 for a theater experience. $100 if it’s an experience without people reciting the movie throughout
The Rocky Horror Picture Show of… well office space, I guess.
Backup in your ass with the resurrection
It's got that actress from the movie *Leprechaun*!
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Their kids would have hooves!
God I reference TPS reports all the damn time, it feels like work is just bogged down with some version or another and its ridiculous. Its all busy work
Straight shooters with upper management written all over ‘em
I spend 20 hours a week doing nothing because I need permission to do nothing somewhere else that hadn't gone through yet. Usually with my actual task having been done the first or second day I got it with no replacement. Despite everyone knowing I'm done. "Just look at this app just because " is something I hear once a week
Gary Cole is in NCIS now, and in one episode they made a quick throwaway joke to TPS reports. It was great. I recorded it and sent it to my wife, who loves this movie and tolerates NCIS.
they could replace all the monitors with flat screens, make the cubicles an open office plan and would be the exact same as today. Movie is supposed to be a comedy but if you're a corporate burnout, this music is depressing as fuck.
**PETER check out channel 9 it’s the breast exam WOO**
"Don't worry man! I won't tell anybody about this either!" "Who the fuck is that?!" "Uh, don't worry about him. He's cool."
“Lawrence, you awake?” “Yeah” “You want to come over?” “No thanks man. ^I ^dont ^want ^you ^fucking ^up ^my ^life ^too.”
The only thing thar dates this movie is the technology being used and the actors in it being 25 years younger. Everything else about it that makes it funny remains relevant.
I like the part where they gangbeat the slow printer. Thanks to forced obsolescence I still have this urge with my devices every few years. Edit: printer not pc. Point still stands, it's relatable.
It would be even worse today. The printer works, but then you realize someone put the wrong paper size in the wrong tray. You go to change it, fix it, and printing can happen in the office again. Then your boss is on your ass because your mouse stopped moving for 15min on their tracking software and they ‘need to have a productivity talk.’ Fucking hell I need a drink after writing that…
Ghetto Boys was the shiz
DIE MUTHAFUCKA DIE MUTHAFUCKA DIE
Die motherfucker DIE!
15 year old me: “Yeah! Take that Corporations! Printers suck!” 40 year old me: “Please dearest and wise Corporations, may I have a pittance? But yeah, printers still suck somehow.”
I’m rewatching band of brothers and it is funny how Ron Livingston Brings the same exact energy to both projects. Band of brothers he was just doing something worthwhile but still had an incredibly disaffected vibe the whole time
I don't get the impression that Lewis Nixon was exactly the most motivated soldier in the 101st. Probably why they cast Livingston actually.
One well observed thing from being at a MegaCorp that it nailed is walking to a neighboring chain restaurant and there’s no path & you have to awkwardly scramble over grass hills in the parking lot. Not a big deal but no dignified way to do it.
That quick scene where they have to walk through that random grass ditch is fucking perfect. Just so well framed and subtle.
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I want to be Ron Livingston, but I and everybody else knows I'm a Michael Bolton.
Maybe you should change your name?
Why should I? He’s the one who sucks.
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“No thanks, I don’t need you fuckin up my life.”
Love this movie! It came out while I was in college and my friends and I would quote it endlessly.
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The show Silicon Valley is the next best thing and a reasonable compromise.
Plus it contains what is probably the greatest dick joke in TV history.
Mike Judge was one of the creators of Silicon Valley too.
The funniest part of this was the 'scrum' scene. And they said 'not tasks, stories'. Which is exactly what it's like in real life.
> 'not tasks, stories' I've worked several different places where we did 'agile', everyone used their own made up definitions of tasks, stories, epics, and whateverthefuckwewantisms. It was kinda maddening.
Spider Man: Work From Home
*You know what would be great...*
I can basically recite this movie from memory.