Essay On Office Space

2490 Words5 Pages

The movie Office Space is a comedy satire about the nature of work, mostly in corporate office occupations. It is set against the backdrop of Initech Corporation, a software company, and follows the day-to-day life of Peter Gibbons, who hates his job. Peter goes to work every day in frustrating traffic and stares at a computer screen without doing very much actual work. He feels belittled by multiple bosses, especially Bill Lumberg, for making seemingly innocent mistakes, and he expresses a desire to quit working and do nothing at all. He commiserates with his coworkers and friends Samir and Michael, who are also frustrated with their jobs and their other coworkers. When Peter is hypnotized by his therapist, he stops caring about work, despite the fact that his office has just hired two consultants, presumably to facilitate company lay-offs. Samir, Michael, and Peter’s other coworkers are full of anxiety and cautious in their evaluations with the consultants, but Peter shows up late and is brutally honest about his lack of work ethic and motivation, as well as his opinions on upper management. Surprisingly, Peter is promoted and told about the impending lay-offs of his hardworking friends Samir and Michael, which leads them to plant a computer virus which will steal fractions of a cent from the company’s accounts every day and deposit them into another bank account owned by the three men. When a miscalculation in the virus causes them to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of fractions of pennies, Peter, Michael, and Samir worry about the consequences, and Peter ends up writing a letter to take the blame for the theft. Luckily for them all, Milton, a strange employee who has been taken advantage of for years by I...

... middle of paper ...

...kely find humorous. It is likely that most people will have had a boss that is irritating and micromanages them, like Bill Lumberg, and relate to Peter neglecting to show up to work on Saturday and coming to work in flip flops to play tetris. It is probable that most people have experienced workplace stress in one form or another, whether related to autonomy or threat of layoffs, lack of control or interpersonal conflict. It is also likely that people will understand, and even empathize with Peter’s CWBs, because stress is unfortunately something that everyone has to deal with, and sometimes people who are stressed want to complain, tear up the office, and go fishing instead of work. I think overall, people will get a few laughs and maybe some moments of internal reflection out of watching Office Space, so I definitely would recommend it to friends and coworkers.

Open Document