Interpersonal Communication In The Film Office Space

When studying Business or other majors in most universities in the United States, every student must endure a recurring theme eventually. In some way, shape, or form every student is exposed to at least one Communication class as a general requirement. Most students ignore the value in these lessons due to the ignorant belief that the information is too obvious or unrelated to their career. The business world is one of these careers that exemplifies the importance of communication studies. The movie Office Space humorously illustrates workplace communication etiquette, as well as, overviews of interpersonal communication through a hierarchical structure. When looking at this film from a communication standpoint, almost every scene demonstrates the structures and styles that Wood describes in our textbook. In the film, the main

He dreads coming to work every day because of the environment his boss, Bill Lumbergh, has created. The monotonous, tedious tasks Peter is given have taken away his motivation in the workplace. One of the first interactions we see is between Peter and Bill. Bill approaches Peter, flexing his hierarchical status as the CEO of Initech in an effort to intimidate his subordinate. Peter responds to this display of power with annoyance, thus proving the obvious, that there is a lack of respect within their relationship. In order for any given organization to succeed, it must have structure. As Wood states in the text, “many organizations rely on a hierarchical structure that assigns different levels of power and status to different members and specifies the chain of command” (2015, p.239). Not only do we see examples of the utopian bureaucratic structure of hierarchical communication, we also see Peter, the outlier, break away from the organization and violate various social