Office Movies 101: Office Space

In this blog, a lot of what I do is write seriously about problems in the office world that others have dealt with only under the guise of humor. As with court jesters under medieval tyrants, it would seem that most creative people feel safe addressing the multiple challenges of office life only with satires that have grown increasingly bitter over the years. This doesn’t solve any of the problems, but it does help us to identify them, which
is half the battle. (For that reason, when I started researching Making Peace with Your Office Life, the first thing I read was not a book on organizational psychology but The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams. If you want to know what’s really going on, start with the humorists.)

In the first few minutes of the 1999 comedy, Office Space, one can identify a host of office issues. In those opening scenes, we see Peter, who appears to be suffering from a severe case of the office blues, driving to his office and starting his workday at Initech with his coworkers, Michael and Samir. Here are some of the challenges Peter encounters:

1. Disconnected office location. Peter’s office is located not in a downtown business district or residential area but in an outlying area that he and his coworkers can only reach by driving through heavy traffic, thus already arriving at work feeling stressed, or – like Milton, who appears to have Asperger’s syndrome – taking a bus that may or may not get them to work on time. The exterior of the building is sterile and functional, nature is nowhere, and the only places to which Peter and his friends can escape appear to be cheesy, chain-type restaurants, where the waiters are forced to wear cutesy smiles and silly buttons called “flair.”
2. Sensory depriving office interior. The inside of Peter’s building is an unbroken sea of gray under harsh, white fluorescent lights. Peter’s cubicle isolates him from others while failing to keep out annoying sounds such as the repetitive chirping of a phone receptionist or Milton’s radio.
3. Bullying. Peter’s boss, Bill Lumberg, is a bully. He talks to his employees in a demeaning, threatening tone, keeping them terrified that he’ll fire them. He also tortures Milton by continually moving his desk, filling his cubicle with boxes, and, worst of all, taking away the red stapler that Milton loves.
4. Insufficient, repetitive, and unrewarding work. Peter spends his days either sitting around or engaged in a repetitive task that involves changing dates from two to four digits in preparation for the millennium.
5. Poor organizational structure. Peter reports to eight different supervisors, all of whom show up to inform him that he has failed to put the cover sheet on a “TPS report.”
6. Ego deprivation. Peter receives only negative feedback about petty mistakes, nothing positive about his contributions. Nor is he given any projects at which he might distinguish himself and thus experience a sense of accomplishment. Although the consultants eventually recommend his promotion, his boss does everything he can to try to prevent it
7. Lack of support for workers with disabilities. Milton is obviously mentally disabled, yet no one provides any sort of accommodations for this, thus violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. Instead, management bullies and torments him. Milton’s coworkers appear equally heartless in depriving him of his piece of Bill’s birthday cake. No one shows any kindness to him whatsoever.
8. Inadequate equipment. Peter and his two friends, Michael and Samir, are continually battling with a printer that keeps getting jammed. This later leads to a fantasy-fulfilling scene for those of us with printer problems in which the three men steal the machine, take it out in a field, and go at it with baseball bats.
9. Uncompassionate, demeaning, management-controlled office culture. Peter’s boss appears to have total control over the office culture and bullies his employees with forced fun schemes such as “Haiwaiian shirt day.” The women who work at Initech appear to have been chosen for their unattractiveness, lack of genuine empathy, and willingness to fake happiness at all times and counter legitimate complaints with nymphet scolding -- “Somebody’s got a bad case of the Mondays” -- and the men for their corny jokes and bad taste. One of my favorite scenes is when the whole, brain-dead staff sings “Happy Birthday” to the boss in an unenthusiastic monotone.  
10. Uncertainty. The employees at Initech are all terrified of losing their jobs, especially after the “two Bobs,” (consultants) show up to interview everyone and make downsizing recommendations. The person who is most terrified of this is Tom, who does get laid off after thirty years in a job he hates but then has a car accident. Severely disabled, he nevertheless throws a party to celebrate because he’s so happy that he’ll never have to work again due to the settlement.

While Office Space clarifies some of the issues associated with routine office jobs, as a comedy it offers no realistic solutions to problems. Instead, it uses the silly device of having Peter go to a hypnotist who dies of a heart attack before waking him from a trance that makes him stop caring about his job. Peter then becomes a complete goof-off, but when he tells the consultants the truth about Initech, they’re so impressed that they recommend his promotion, but at the expense of his two, more competent coworkers.

Instead of problem-solving realistically about ways to improve their job situations, Peter, Michael, and Samir express their anger at Initech by turning to white-collar crime. Michael designs a program that allows them to embezzle funds. Meanwhile, Milton plots a different type of revenge. (I won’t spoil the story by telling you what.)

If Peter had come to me for therapy, I would have advised him to think about changing careers, but in the meantime, I would have suggested he break the problems down in his present job as I have done here and think of ways to address each of them, one by one, considering what he could change and what he might have to accept. In his car on the way to work, for example, he could play music or booktapes he might enjoy rather than sitting in silents. Perhaps he could take a walk outdoors before starting his day. He could deal with the annoyance of Milton’s radio and the receptionist’s chirping by bringing headphones to work and using them to block out the sound with white noise or music. If it bothers him to have eight people tell him about his mistakes, he could make a list of the eight people and send them a daily group e-mail asking for feedback, giving himself more control over the process.

Instead of strategizing this way, however, all Peter does in the movie is complain, goof off, and steal from the till. For that reason, even though at the end, Peter moves on to a different type of career, one can’t help wondering how long his new happiness will last. Every type of work has problems attached, and studies have shown that those who are dissatisfied in one career usually end up dissatisfied after changing careers. If Peter had been my client and his career change didn’t do the trick, sooner or later I would have had to point this out to him.