"Office Space" 1999

“Office Space”

Dom Portwood: Hi, Peter. What's happening? We need to talk about your TPS reports.
Peter Gibbons: Yeah. The coversheet. I know, I know. Uh, Bill talked to me about it.
Dom Portwood: Yeah. Did you get that memo?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah. I got the memo. And I understand the policy. And the problem is just that I forgot the one time. And I've already taken care of it so it's not even really a problem anymore.
Dom Portwood: Ah! Yeah. It's just we're putting new coversheets on all the TPS reports before they go out now. So if you could go ahead and try to remember to do that from now on, that'd be great. All right!

This movie should be required viewing for anyone who has ever worked in an office. It perfectly captures the inane tasks, the weird coworkers, and the horrible fax machine. But it really captures the bosses. In every office job there is an organization chart, kind of a reverse family tree. The lower you are on the chart, the more bosses you have above you. I worked in an office where I had a team lead, a supervisor, a manager, and a Vice President. And those were just my direct line. There were others within the department that were also in charge of things I did. You had to be careful not to hit reply all to the wrong email.

I have had a Lumbergh. A female version of Lumbergh, even down to the glasses. She was not good at confrontation. I’ve managed people too and there is a good deal of confrontation involved in any leadership position. This manager had a terrible time with it. She would walk around for a few days looking like you had kicked her dog. Finally she would step up, tell you the problem, look like she was waiting for a blow to the head and run off.

This movie gets quoted in every office I have worked at since it came out.

Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.
Bob Porter: Don't... don't care?
Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my a$$ off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now.
Bob Slydell: I beg your pardon?
Peter Gibbons: Eight bosses.
Bob Slydell: Eight?
Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.

Who hasn’t dreamed of making such a speech. If you don’t see your coworkers in this movie, you aren’t working in an office.

Milton Waddams: [on the phone] 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 married, 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.